Why I am building a product with a tiny market

Post by srom » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #58

icebraining wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learn nothing else from Wikipedia, learn this: Begging annoys users and isn't particularly successful. As far as I know, Wikipedia fundraising efforts have been very successful. They got $25 million dollars just last year. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...

Yes, and as the fifth most popular site in the world, that is a pittance. They could be making billions with unobtrusive advertising. Given their traffic, the fact that they only raised $25 million last year means that nearly all of their users ignored their pleas for help. Further, when they do their begging, it is very obtrusive and disruptive to the user experience. Where alternative revenue models are available,…

Post by mseebach » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

gnud wrote: post #110

mseebach wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could set up a separate non-profit organisation (that donates its proceeds to the wikimedia foundation) to sell and manage the ads. Place the organisation in a city far from any wikimedia presence to counter casual contact. Put in the charter than there can be zero personnel overlap between the businesses at any level and that nobody at the ads company is allowed to edit any article on wikipedia or any reason, m…

... if they can get by with donations, that seems a tad simpler. Also, I don't have to watch any ads! Hurray for Wikipedia!

Post by asimjalis » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 6:23 AM UTC

kernel_sanders wrote: post #97

asimjalis wrote: post #44

Regarding business model and monetizing, here are some ideas: 1. You could sell tutorials and ebooks on regexes. People who use your tool might want to understand why their regexes are not working. 2. You could license your debugging code/technology. 3. You could sell a corporate license to use your site. Corps’s regexes won't be shared publicly. Others might be. Corps paranoid about people stealing their regexes mig…

This kind of valuable feedback is why I like HN so much. It's kind of you to take the time to organize and share your thoughts, asimjalis.

Post by tsergiu » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 8:48 PM UTC

imechura wrote: post #80

I don't think I am in your target market based on your current positioning, however I am in a position where I would be involved in the decision as to whether my company would pay money for something like this. The company I work for (as an SOA architect) uses regex heavily for many mission critical applications. It costs me 100s of Ks in testing effort when a back-end format experiences major change. We usually don'…

Post by fudged71 » Sat, May 04, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

tsergiu wrote: post #47

asimjalis wrote: post #44

Regarding business model and monetizing, here are some ideas: 1. You could sell tutorials and ebooks on regexes. People who use your tool might want to understand why their regexes are not working. 2. You could license your debugging code/technology. 3. You could sell a corporate license to use your site. Corps’s regexes won't be shared publicly. Others might be. Corps paranoid about people stealing their regexes mig…

Some very useful suggestions. Thank you.