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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

#311

Post by leandot »

ihid wrote: post #71
xrd wrote: post #53

This is one of the saddest posts I've read in a long time. I love exercism. It's beautiful, works in the browser and from CLI. The lessons are really well designed. It's the perfect coding school environment. So, I'm sad it isn't viable. But, I think I am really saddened by the comments here, second guessing all the decisions they made. If I were to second guess the people behind most of the comments, I would assume…

Thank you for being so kind and supportive. I really appreciate your comment. I'm ok. I'm hopeful for the future. I believe there's lots of amazing stuff we can do and that Exercism has a great future. But right now it's in a hard, low place. The last few months have been pretty tough emotionally, but I think getting to this place is one of acceptance. The only direction now is up :)

I submitted the article to HN after reading it and I have joined the Exercism Insiders - recurring $10/month, a very fair deal. Hope that has helped a bit!

As someone already mentioned please consider adding ways for monetizing, ads + remove ads, paywall, paid exercises, etc. to stay afloat.

Also please get in touch, email in bio, I don‘t have anything concrete in mind but would like to be in touch. In another life I would gladly be teaching coding, who knows maybe it works out.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#313

Post by nicbou »

filleduchaos wrote: post #266
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…

> Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things In my (limited) experience they mostly don't work because the people/projects that need donations are way too coy about asking for money. Donation buttons get tucked out of sight and/or cloaked in twee language like "buy me a coffee!" I like to point to https://archiveofourown.org as a counterexample. Hardly the most critical project in the world - it's j…

You are right. I'm rather coy about it too.

Personally I don't want to guilt trip my readers into donating. There are affiliate links on the website. It's a business and it works well enough to support me. It feels like double dipping.

Above all, There's a point where it operates exactly like an ad and annoys people just like one. At the moment, American tipping culture is taking over in Germany and it feels like another instance of that.

The nice middle ground would be to ask after doing something especially nice. "That tool sure saved you a lot of time. Donate?" I think that the link in my email signature works especially well because of that.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#314

Post by smt88 »

jessriedel wrote: post #275
smt88 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonprofits are businesses.

They aren't. Look it up in the dictionary. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/business Someone's profession ( their "business") can certainly be working at a nonprofit, but that's because they are getting paid. The nonprofit organization itself is not a business. You might be looking for the word "corporation", which can include nonprofits.

I don't need to look it up because I've started two nonprofits and more than a dozen corporations.

Nonprofits in the US literally are corporations, just with a different tax status. They need revenue that exceeds their costs. Many of them sell things. They can even turn a profit. Ikea operates as a nonprofit in the US.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#315

Post by stavros »

sroussey wrote: post #297
stavros wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please just add a paid tier before shutting down? Just a $5/mo something that shows a badge on your account, or whatever. Call it something other than "donate", "premium account" or something, and see how many people pick it up. You "only" need 1500 people to do that to cover the costs, which is less than a thousandth of your user base. Even if it gives a few useful features to subscribers, that's better than…

I’ve had things with more users and 1/1000 would have been amazing. The difference between $0 and $1 is gigantic though, and a hard ask for content in most cases.

Yeah, I guess that's true, but it's something that can be worked on and optimized, and I have a feeling the OP hasn't focused much on actually making enough money to pay employees.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#316

Post by cdrini »

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…

Very much this. This is the gold standard for non profits. Wikipedia does it, the Internet Archive does it. And the banners are very large and intrusive during donation month. This suggests that they must be having an effect, or they wouldn't be making them quite so large! I think if I was in their shoes, this is probably what I would try. December is generally giving month.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#318

Post by cdrini »

127 wrote: post #247
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.

Yes, but they're not trying to make 1000x more, they just want enough to maintain their existing staff and servers. They're not looking for unreigned financial growth, it's a nonprofit who wants their service to be free and accessible for everyone.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#319

Post by cdrini »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #265
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…

Donation fatigue even is more real than subscription fatigue. The only way I can see this working is a recurring donation with a low enough amount that people will just set it once and forget it. So instead of a $1/month subscription, you could try a $1/month recurring donation.

Donation fatigue? The only time I'm prompted for donations online is Wikipedia and internet archive in December. That's about it. I can't think of any other service that asks for donations.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#320

Post by Jabdoa2 »

Sounds like a very useful service. I just signed up. Did you consider to inform new users that the service is financed by donations? You seem to focus on "always free" which is nice but I guess most people are also ok to pay some money if your service is useful to them. I guess this might drive some more donations if people knew that you need money. Also a banner like Wikipedia (maybe a bit less annoying) would work.
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