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2M users but no money in the bank

exercism.org

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Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#241

Post by insane_dreamer »

smt88 wrote: post #162
insane_dreamer wrote: post #117

Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $). You've probably thought of this, but it might be easier to charge a very small amount -- say $1/month, which most people even students, could afford, rather than rely on donations. If you get 1% of users paying that, it's still $20K month which is more than you're getting now. (Of course managing the payments themselves…

> Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $ What? No. If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure. Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.

It may not be successful long-term with this model, but it's been very successful so far.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#242

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

nicbou wrote: post #239
8bithero wrote: post #218

I was doing some Exercism tasks the other day and then saw this so if only felt right that I make a donation. Looking at some of the comments there seems to be a number of people who have also just made a donation. Given the state of every service becoming subscription based, I can definitely see a lot of subscription fatigue. Maybe an alternative route you could try is the annual wikipedia "We want to keep this free…

Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things. The vast majority of users don't donate, and that includes the most demanding ones. I offer a ton of free information online. I received raving feedback from people, including some that said I saved them thousands of euros. Just this week readers jokingly suggested giving me a Nobel prize or a statue. Still, donations are one percent of my revenue on a goo…

I'm assuming that you are talking about "All About Berlin"? (I am deliberately not linking, because you didn't, and there is probably a reason for that).

I run a number of apps and services that don't make a dime. In fact, they cost me thousands. I don't mind.

Monetization is a real pain in the ass, and I stay away from it (for these services).

I have the ability to make a lot of money, if I choose, but that's not much fun. I don't really need the money, and I like having full control of everything I do.

I am regularly approached by folks with monetization ideas. Some, are quite good. Others ... not so much ...

Maybe I 'll pursue something, eventually, but I'm in no hurry.

Thanks for your service. Looks like a great site.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#244

Post by nicbou »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #242
nicbou wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things. The vast majority of users don't donate, and that includes the most demanding ones. I offer a ton of free information online. I received raving feedback from people, including some that said I saved them thousands of euros. Just this week readers jokingly suggested giving me a Nobel prize or a statue. Still, donations are one percent of my revenue on a goo…

I'm assuming that you are talking about "All About Berlin"? (I am deliberately not linking, because you didn't, and there is probably a reason for that). I run a number of apps and services that don't make a dime. In fact, they cost me thousands. I don't mind. Monetization is a real pain in the ass, and I stay away from it (for these services). I have the ability to make a lot of money, if I choose, but that's not mu…

I agree that monetisation is a pain. It's the least favourite part of my job because it takes focus away from providing value to my readers. I don't like putting my business hat on.

On the other hand, it allows me to work on what I love full time. This would not be possible if I relied on user donations or even public funding.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#245

Post by Lionga »

deisteve wrote: post #174
Lionga wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move everything to Hetzner (or the like) at double the capacity that AWS has on average and you still spend about 10% of what you spend on AWS. That is how stupid costly AWS is and 99% of people using AWS are wasting money like there is now tomorrow.

Problem is Hetzner has such stringent user verification its tough to get hosting on there. You don't even need to use Hetzner, I'm actually quite surprised they are spending 2k on DB. For the env isolation i understand they need ec2 but... it shouldn't cost anywhere that amount, for instance I have 3 million users on a $40/month digital ocean VPS with just Django + Postgres and I have far more reads and writes. for e…

Sure Hetzner ist just one example. Many provides sell at about 5 to 10% of AWS prices.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#246

Post by Lionga »

ihid wrote: post #179
Lionga wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 1.500 signups per day (45K a month) 70,000 MAU are horrible retention. Usually you need about 10 times MAU to signups. Unless you can make that happen you have nothing that people actually use and not just try out.

It takes people about a month to work through a language track, learn the language, and get on with their life. So I wouldn't expect to have more than 45k MAU. 70k MAU is because people LIKE the site and come back to learn another language. We're not trying to be some business that sucks people into using our site every day and monetise them. We're aiming to teach people effectively and efficiently and then get them…

If there is nobody using your service for more than half a month (at that point they would mostly already be counted for 2 months) almost nobody will ever pay. What is your day 7, day 30 and/or day90 retention?

If is low all you can do is lower costs, which should also be straightforward.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#247

Post by 127 »

8bithero wrote: post #218

I was doing some Exercism tasks the other day and then saw this so if only felt right that I make a donation. Looking at some of the comments there seems to be a number of people who have also just made a donation. Given the state of every service becoming subscription based, I can definitely see a lot of subscription fatigue. Maybe an alternative route you could try is the annual wikipedia "We want to keep this free…

In my experience asking for donations generates about 1000x less money (within that exact order of magnitude) than directly asking for money up front until you get access to the product.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#248

Post by smt88 »

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #205
smt88 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $ What? No. If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure. Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.

From TFA, they’re not a business, they’re non-profit.

Nonprofits are businesses.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#249

Post by cj »

My marketing department this week asked for my approval to spend $50k placing our logo in an IT newsletter with 300k subscribers.

If you have an email list of 2 million… a lot of companies will pay $50-100k for a mention.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#250

Post by [deleted] »

ahstilde wrote: post #140
benreesman wrote: post #15

Where the fuck are the VCs looking at serious hackers with millions of users who haven’t gotten the business model dialed in yet? Y-Combinator says “build something people want”. Two million sounds like a lot of people. I’ve only glanced over this so I could be missing some critical fact, but superficially it sounds like pmarca or pg should write a check before the rest of us stop believing in the startup lottery.

Well, the standard quote leaves out "and will pay for"

[deleted]
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