111–120 of 125 posts
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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...
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Same - i dunno if i ever have a use for the project/software, but when he wrote that he doesn't want to "Jimmy Wales" people i just had to :D Also: sometimes, life is just brutal - admitting you actually do need help (and even moreso in such a public way) itself has to be rewarded and commended!
I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.
Even if the developer is a millionaire, it's proper to chip in a few bucks for free stuff that you use and enjoy. Sob story or no sob story.
But honestly, the real solution is for people to stop with this open source nonsense and start charging for their work. There are thousands of potential customers for every boutique app or code solution.
Nobody is entitled to free code, especially not the billion dollar companies who are the main beneficiaries of the hard work of open source programmers.
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…
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> 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…
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Bringing attention to the existence of a thing isn't juicing, it's a necessary part of making something useful. If you build something that's potentially useful but no one ever hears of it, it isn't actually useful until someone hears of it.
Honest, unpaid word of mouth might serve that function if not for the hired shouters and resultant ambient dishonesty. Flipping the microscope, paid promotions distract from honest testimonials with no profit motive. "We are improving your search results by prepending sales brochures."
Also it seems like your gripe is actually with advertising, which would be more sensible. Simply being against marketing is merely proof that you can't possibly understand what marketing is.
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…
I don't see to choose this over various alternatives.
> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Have a case of beer on me, mate.
Hey, I see an intense dislike for Jimmy Wales in this thread. Is there anything well written I can read about it to inform myself?
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/84439-2010-wikipedia-fundrai...
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…
This also validates that maybe something like Setapp for SaaS or Spotify for SaaS might be a good business model.
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> 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.
When you are tapping a new market, absolutely nobody knows about your company, your product and the problems it solves. In fact, often you even have to educate your customer that they have an opportunity to improve their business/life with your product.