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Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

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Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#111

Post by akamia »

inviromentalist wrote: post #93
akamia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems that a lot of engineers have is failing to recognize that their time has a cost. Spending 4 extra hours of your own time setting up a mail server that will cost you $5/month to run instead of paying $10 per month for Office 365 or some other service is not really saving you money because that initial 4 hours of labor is time you could've spent doing other things for the business. It's not free tim…

Counter points- There is no telling if it will actually save time. You could be messing with configurations, have to learn their docs, etc... Or future migration could be expensive in both time and money. The cost savings can/do exist. Especially as things scale or last a long time. Custom is more configurable. People overestimate their time worth? Sure you can theoretically work for 75$/hr, but can you get overtime/…

> There is no telling if it will actually save time. You could be messing with configurations, have to learn their docs, etc... Or future migration could be expensive in both time and money.

Sure. Every situation is different. This isn't meant to be universal. There absolutely are cases where rolling your own may be more efficient. However, my argument wasn't that existing solutions are no effort, just that they are often less effort than trying to do something completely custom or self managed.

Regarding future migrations, the same can be said in the opposite direction as well. You may get to a point where you need to migrate away from your custom solution to something more standard and you'll face similar time/money issues.

> Custom is more configurable.

Sometimes this is the case and sometimes it's not. Sometimes custom is very narrowly focused and as new use cases emerge requires significant rework.

> People overestimate their time worth? Sure you can theoretically work for 75$/hr, but can you get overtime/additional revenue that easily?

The number will vary for everyone. $75 may be too high for some and too low for others. If you're an attorney sacrificing billable time to do something administrative that could be outsourced, $75 may be low. The idea is to tie an actual realistic number to the value of your time.

> What is your value add? If it's software, I might suggest custom is best because that's your business. If you mash a bunch of software suppliers together, you become a middle man. I'm not saying that doesn't work, but I've seen companies go back and forth on this.

In software, I think it's important to know what your product is and to focus on your core competencies. I've seen lots of engineers decide that they need to build something from scratch that doesn't directly relate to their product. Could you build your own credit card processing system? Sure, but unless your business is credit card processing, it probably makes more sense to use something like Stripe. The same goes for lots of different aspects of your product and business.

I'm simply suggesting that you have a limited amount of time in each day and you should do what you can to get the most value out of that time. Don't ignore the value of your time and sacrifice it needlessly.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#112

Post by patwalls »

patwalls wrote: post #25
crazygringo wrote: post #18

Side note, but why on earth is the body text set to 35 px?! I need to zoom my browser down to 50% (a quarter of the pixel area) just to make it readable. This trend of gargantuan body text in blogs has been going on for a while, but this is the worst I've ever seen. When the size of each letter is something like six times the area of letters in my computer's menu bar, something is seriously wrong. Is it unreasonable…

Agreed. I built this Daily Journal app and just been hacking on it for the last couple months. I'll bring the text size down a bit soon.

Made it smaller. Lmk if that looks better?

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#114

Post by [deleted] »

harrisreynolds wrote: post #69
qubex wrote: post #53

I’m going to be cynical and applaud the author at one of the most effective S.E.O. efforts I have seen lately: including his own app on a list of effective and well-curated apps for startups.

This is a great point. A good move by the author. Add some value, but extract some value as well. Here is the process for everyone. Insert your tool in #2 1) Create post about the tools you use 2) Include Webase [1] 3) Watch traffic roll in! :-) [1] https://www.webase.com

[deleted]

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#115

Post by travellingprog »

mxschumacher wrote: post #65

I've read mixed reviews about Upwork (low quality work, people not being paid etc). What are better alternatives to find freelancers?

I've been a freelance full-stack developer for the past 1.5 years. I never bothered trying out Upwork, because I had the impression the price competition there was insane, so I can't comment on the experience there. But I've been on Toptal for the past year and it's been an overall great experience. Not only have I not had an issue being paid, but Toptal actually guarantees my invoice payments: basically there's a clause that states that I can expect a payment from Toptal within a few days after the invoice due date, regardless of whether or not the client actually paid the invoice.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#116

Post by user- »

aantix wrote: post #64
ttoinou wrote: post #40

Upwork (~$1000/month): Freelancers. I especially use Upwork because I don't have to think about all the billing stuff and time tracking, etc. The same for me, and they take a cut both sides (3% or 50 USD / month + 3% fees USD/EUR on my side and 5 to 10% on the freelancer side). I was wondering if there was an alternative to upwork for those who only need it for its automatic billing system + time tracking + weekly su…

https://screenshotmonitor.com/tour * No billing support, but they do have an API. https://screenshotmonitor.com/apidoc/

I would quit if I was forced to install that.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#117

Post by amelius »

qubex wrote: post #53

I’m going to be cynical and applaud the author at one of the most effective S.E.O. efforts I have seen lately: including his own app on a list of effective and well-curated apps for startups.

If everybody does this then I guess it's up to Google to compute the consensus among those lists.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#118

Post by hopia »

reidjs wrote: post #50
jblake wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I've been using Heroku about 8 years now for my solo SaaS business. The most I've ever done in dev-ops is restarting a server and upgrading postgres versions. However, paying around $800/mo, I do fantasize sometimes on switching to AWS. Honestly I wouldn't even know where to start, and likely not a good use of time. For Heroku, I'd like to see HTTP/2 support, automated wildcard certs, and another Performance…

If you want an in-between I'm a huge fan of DigitalOcean. Fantastic documentation, better support in my experience, all in all more welcoming to the 'middle-guy.' Totally understand that it's probably not a great use of your time to switch over if your margins can afford 800/mo with ease.

DigitalOcean certainly is great, I'm using it too, but it's still far more work running your stuff there vs Heroku.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#119

Post by pb7 »

rchaud wrote: post #97
hombre_fatal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beauty of web clients is that you can control the font size if it looks bad on your device.

I don't think it's possible on mobile. Yesterday I found myself needing to adjust the font size on rateyourmusic.com's responsive site, and it wasn't possible. On a desktop it's as simple as "CTRL +" but that doesn't exist on mobile browsers.

It’s quite easy on iOS Safari. Top left “aA” icon, then pick your zoom.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#120

Post by K0SM0S »

ttoinou wrote: post #57
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

upwork has a non-circumvention clause with a minimal $3500 fee to break (it pretty much always scales to be not worth breaking). As to "how will they catch us" it would seem to fairly obvious from the freelancers schedule

They are not necessarily enforceable. It's probably just to scare the freelancers. Once upwork makes contact between freelancer and employers there's nothing they can do to really prevent them from talking between each others and agreeing on working on a new contract. (also I've been told this clause is only for the 2 first years.. ?)

2 years from the date you met on Upwork is indeed when the non-circumvent clause expires.

As for before that, I'll just quote a lawyer from their community forum¹:

> “You might want to read up on so-called 'survival clauses', meaning clauses that specify which terms or provisions of a contract will remain in effect after the contract has been fully executed and the terms of said contract have been met.”

I'm not aware of actual lawsuits, I'd suspect they only skim the top 5-10% (whenever it's enough to recoup lawyer fees), and send a ton of scary stuff to the rest (it's basically free, automatable, and probably works more than we'd think).

But read that post, it'll make it emphatically clear what kind of mindset prevails on Upwork — in particular, notice the "Community Guru" title (lol) and what they have to say, and how they phrase it. IMHO, it's a lot of circle-jerking and virtual notoriety destined to favor group think (conversely muffle subversive ideas). We know it works, e.g some subreddits prove it, and we actually developed that model in online communities since the late 90s (you basically remove all barriers to cult-like non-critical thinking, praising of the platform, and let people go wild with gamified notoriety scores. Works wonders on big apes, before you know it you have an army willing to die defending the platform (half-Stockholm syndrome, half escalation of commitment).

To compound this, there are enough very balanced yet damning pieces online about Freelancer, Upwork, etc. by people who have nothing to gain from slandering these platforms that I, for one, would play by the rules there, and keep a healthy distance. You want your own clients? Find them yourself or better yet, hire a freelancer to do it! Which you are free to find yourself as well within your geography ;-)

Hope this helps. I was very enthusiastic about these platforms and this is one among many, many disingenuous values that drove me pretty negative about them (so, fair disclaimer, I think they're no better no worse than Uber et al; like the idea is good but the execution is too corporate-imbued with all the bad that entails).

[1]: https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/non-circumventio...

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