Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense • Hacker News Board

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#101

Post by wongarsu » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #59

mrweasel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bill…

This is not true. There is a fairly strong correlation between formal education and ability as a developer, and I say this as someone with close to 2 decades of experience in the problem space. A CS/STEM degree, as degree quality (where the degree was obtained), makes an enormous difference in the average case. People who say the opposite are thinking of developers, often themselves, who were able to become skilled w…

In my experience the best developers are self-taught programmers who then went on to get a CS degree. Probably followed by people who got a STEM degree and then went on to become self-taught programmers (with a jump-start from the little programming they learned in their STEM degree). Getting good with only a CS degree or only self-learning is much tougher, though of course there are examples of both.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#102

Post by arbol » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

janmo wrote: post #56

Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites: 1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker. 2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out t…

Ad blocker tracking is easy. You just proxy the calls to GA/plausible via some other domain.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#103

Post by _1kfq » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

RunSet wrote: post #70

adrianmsmith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan. It looks like success was far from guaranteed before he was hired ($400 MRR and not growing). https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas#february-looking-...

Marketing is like juicing in athletics. It undermines the nominal reason for the enterprise's existence (competition) but once a single competitor begins practicing it, everyone else also has to- not to any benefit, but just to maintain their status quo.

There are really two types of "marketing":

- "Hey, here's something interesting you might be interested in!"

- "Drink Coca Cola"

The second type of marketing is the sort of zero-sum game you're talking about. Everyone already knows about this, Coca Cola and Pepsi spend phenomenal amounts of money, and it kind of just cancels out.

But the first type of marketing is rather different. The simplest kind is making something and then telling people that you made it.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#104

Post by mrmanner » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

RunSet wrote: post #70

adrianmsmith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan. It looks like success was far from guaranteed before he was hired ($400 MRR and not growing). https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas#february-looking-...

Marketing is like juicing in athletics. It undermines the nominal reason for the enterprise's existence (competition) but once a single competitor begins practicing it, everyone else also has to- not to any benefit, but just to maintain their status quo.

This assumes all potential customers know all products and services somehow, without the enterprises communicating their existence? Without marketing, how would we know that website analytics as a service even exists?

Sure we could guess and randomly reach out to companies to ask if they provide it. Answering those inquiries could easily be considered marketing, though.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#105

Post by _1kfq » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

janmo wrote: post #56

Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites: 1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker. 2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out t…

The first two aren't technically possible. And also not desirable, IMHO. That said, [name redacted] can import pageviews from logfiles like goaccess, so that's kind of the closest you can get (although then it's harder to filter bots, so it's more skewed the other way).

That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also in terms of ads; the other day I saw a site which has just , which I don't really see any problem with, and uBlock goes out of its way to block that – meh).

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#106

Post by paulryanrogers » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

MadnessASAP wrote: post #89

RunSet wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diligent readers will observe which aspect(s) of your attempted equivalence do not pertain.

Unfortunately we don't live in the land of omniscient rational actors. Being able to find customers and explain your products value to them, that being marketing, is an essential part of producing a product.

If only marketing stopped at explaining the (actual) value...

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#107

Post by ismaildonmez » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

_1kfq wrote: post #55

Thanks everyone! I should have updated this last week as I had raised enough money and I'm starting a job next Monday. So things should be grand going forward for now.

I love [link redacted], all the best luck with everything!

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#108

Post by bombcar » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 6:07 PM UTC

_1kfq wrote: post #58

mg wrote: post #44

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…

[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible. Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)? I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good…

Always ALWAYS have a way to give money that results in a professional-looking invoice for a professional-sounding product. That’s a great way for people in business to get the cost expensed.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#109

Post by soneca » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 6:19 PM UTC

_1kfq wrote: post #58

mg wrote: post #44

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…

[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible. Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)? I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good…

It’s very very risky to optimize for just “good enough”. You have to build some reserve, or you risk being in the situation you are in.

You don’t need to optimize to earn tons of money, but minimum threshold should more than just good enough. So, if things go wrong, you can spend that reserve and actually be on a “good enough” position until you figure things out

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#110

Post by jddj » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

_1kfq wrote: post #105

janmo wrote: post #56

Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites: 1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker. 2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out t…

The first two aren't technically possible. And also not desirable, IMHO. That said, [name redacted] can import pageviews from logfiles like goaccess, so that's kind of the closest you can get (although then it's harder to filter bots, so it's more skewed the other way). That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also…

I recently had a page import something like site_stats.js (site meant as in a physical building/location) from the same domain as the html request and ublock blocked it.

Had to rename the bundle.

Thanks for [name redacted] btw, I've got a little website that hosts useful information that's hard to find otherwise for a little community (~20 visits / day) and [name redacted] has been reliably telling me whether or not people still use it for a few years now.