One month after launch | Hacker News Reader

One month after launch

oppsdaily.com

182 pointscdiamand45 comments

Congratulations. Although it seems like a small number, all great journeys start with a single small step.

Having said that, do you really think the "pay what you want" is the best pricing model for you?

For me when faced with this model, I always worry that I am paying too little or too much and often don't do it at all. It feels like a donation. While having a fixed price allows me to use my cost-benefit analysis which guides my reasoning.

Also, programmers always seem to have this fear of asking for money for their services. Why is that?

Wow, great questions.

Yeah, I don't think "pay what you want" is a good long term solution, but it is giving me a sense of the range in which people are willing to pay. Some of those payments are higher than I ever would have felt comfortable charging!

I also feel this fear of asking for money, and I'm not sure why...

Collecting data, including how much your customers value your product, is so important. This is a great way to collect that data.

> giving me a sense of the range in which people are willing to pay

I did this a few times, and usually I paid somewhat less comparing how I would be willing to pay if the service wasn't free.

Yeah "pay what you want" definitely makes me feel uncomfortable

The clientel of these stories would probably be either students at college or professionals working in these fields.

Pay what you want probably yeilds more money for them since the college kids aren't barred from paying something (even if it is $1/month) and the big-earners probably feel better giving more (maybe 5 to 10/month).

It has the drawbacks of having a large group who doesn't pay but it also gives a large group who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford the material a chance to chip into the pot and get something out of it.

One reason i refrain from asking for money for software is that the creators of almost all software i use in my life and 100% of the software i use to create software don't ask for money.

Agreed. The reason I became a programmer is because of all the wonderful people who decided it was worth their while to share their code for free. Being able to do the same for others is a privilege.

I think the counterpoint to that is that working and sharing code for free < working and sharing code for free... and eating.

As my father once told me, "Son, anything worth getting is worth asking for."

Share your talent freely with those who need it, strike a fair bargain with those who can afford it, and sleep comfortable in having made the world a better place.

Or, in other words, pure altruism isn't sustainable.

In other words, you can't exclude yourself from "altruism" while expecting it to actually accomplish what you intend for it to accomplish. If you exclude yourself, you'll just create a situation where others have to come and help you, because you're not sustaining yourself. Which, in that sense, is not an altruistic thing to do for another. So in that sense, the prevalent definition of "altruism" is that of a dysfunctional thing. Maybe it should be called "wholism" or "everyoneism", maybe its definition needs to change -- in our minds and actions first, of course.

As is your ability to share your fine thoughts with us for free on this site.

Don't forget that open source software brings rewards of all types - reputation, outside contributions, and eyeballs.

The beauty - and paradox - of open source is that people produce software, in an act of self-interest, for free.

Ask for money when it makes sense. Give it away when it doesn't.

Just some observations I have, hope they help (I'm on mobile if that matters and I just subscribed today).

#1 - your connection rate seems horribly low. I'm guessing it's all on the originator's side. If so, that doesn't really give me confidence in the service nor in the opportunities in the newsletter.

#2 - your landing page could be way better IMO. There's very little text about what I am signing up for, and if I hadn't come with the blog or HN, I wouldn't have signed up.

First off, you should have 2 calls to action, one for devs (or people who want to sign up to the newsletter) and one for people with suggestions. I read the page and if I had an opportunity, all I can do is sign up to the newsletter, then wait for the next email.

There's very little info on what happens. I signed up, now what. It says you made money in your blog, how? I don't see anything about paying on the main page.

I could go on, but I think you get it. Talk more about the process. People coming from HN and ProductHunt probably get the idea, but organic visitors won't, and you probably can't sustain this model without some organic.

#3 - I signed up today, any chance I can get today's email?

Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to help you out.

These are all great points and I appreciate the feedback!

1. Yep its low percentage, and its a goal to improve this number.

2. You're right, could definitely be better. I made money by successfully connecting devs with the submitters. I left a "pay what you want" link in the email. I only ask people to pay in relation to the value that the conversation brings them.

3. If you want! Drop me a line - cory@oppsdaily.com

It'd be great if when you signed up you got the latest email.

This is a sheer genius idea. The value add would be greater if after getting the idea asked others in the industry if it was also a problem for them. Also ask them if they have the purchase authorization to actually acquire the solution if it was created for them.

That's a great idea!

It seems obvious that you believe the value to be in the "every day" aspect. I think this might be faulty logic.

I might be wrong. But it's in the title "oopsdaily" and then on the home page it says "Every. Day." in bold print.

Are you sure people find the daily aspect valuable? I say this only because It's a ton of work to maintain something like this daily. You may provide higher value, take more time and invest it in higher quality articles every week or month.

Also, judging by the graphs, you're getting high usage at particular times, once a week. You may find the revenue increases as people will spend more time digesting the material.

I actually find the daily aspect to be valuable. It's a forcing function of keeping the description quick and easy to read. It's easy to take 30 seconds to scan the opportunity as part of my daily email ritual, but if it were a longer weekly article I'd have a lot more trouble keeping up.

For everyone asking about yesterday's email, here is the text:

"I work in the motor sports parts, service & sales industry.

An issue we're constantly facing is that we have trouble identifying and locating parts for older model Harley Davidsons.

The ideal software would help us locate and identify the parts more easily, saving us hours of research.

I would pay somewhere around $500 for this software."

As a hobbyist programmer, I have to say this is a fantastic idea. I often find it difficult to come up with dummy problems to solve in order to get some programming in--having a real issue to work out is far more inspiring.

This is useful even for those of us only looking to get some kata like practice. Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

Feedback: Seems like a good idea, I subscribed and I'm looking forward to receiving the first email. In fact, it would be great to get the first one right when you sign up. Going further, why not just have this information on the site itself so you can view it right away, as well as receive email updates?

Hi! Thats a good idea. I'm planning on building out a vault in the next few weeks where you can see all the interviews I have.

Best of luck, I'd like to receive an email when you have that up there. You also might start to get decent search traffic with all that content available to crawlers.

I second what grandparent told you.

I just signed up and confirmed my email. Ok... what's next? What's the deal with money that other people are writing about here?

At a minimum I recommend an email that goes out immediately after a person confirms their email. This thank you email should again briefly explain how your product works because if you explained this somewhere on your site then I missed it and I won't be the only one.

Also, consider sending that day's email to the customer right away so they get some immediate value from your service (even if that email had already gone out that day). As it stands I will likely forget about your service tomorrow and then wonder how you got my email address!

Probably was said already or on your to-do list anyway but here goes, I'd probably set up a "blog" where each post quotes the 1-2 "least-meatiest-most-promising" paragraphs of a daily mail (whenever it's lengthy/wordy enough). With the usual sign-up-4-free-for-the-full thing. Hook up on an RSS or Atom feed for oldtimers like me (signed up already though), because some may be reluctant but come around after a few days or weeks of "promising" snippets. And of course, organic search traffic coming in, ever-compounding as the (partial) content grows.

So, if I understand this correctly, I'll get emails with problems that people are having, so that presumably I'll be able to decide if I can build some solutions for them.

Is this right? Kind of like "hey!, I sure can make an app for this person's problem, I'll get in touch so I can ask him how much is he willing to pay for it"? or am I way off here?

Hey there!

The interviews in the emails are mostly just to inspire your next project or business. They serve as a good starting point for learning more about industry challenges you might not know about.

With that said, I have successfully connected about 1/3rd of the devs who wanted to get in touch with the submitter. There is no expectation of either party needing to do that though.

Excellent, thanks!

The fact that your connection rate is so low concerns me. Have you done some analysis on it?

If these are real problems your submitters have, they should be very eager to talk to someone who might solve it for them. The fact that they don't seem to be is a major red flag.

I would guess that just getting a random problem to solve might not be appealing to all devs.

On the other hand, maybe some people are having problems that may have already a close-enough solution so that why would I want to build yet another one, or maybe some are so hard to implement or would require too much effort that they don't get any interest from devs.

Pretty often when I meet someone and tell them what I do for a living they start giving me all these ideas that I should be obviously doing because they are so great and no one has solved that before, or they ask me if I would know how to solve this 'simple' problem of theirs, only to have them be surprised when I tell them how much it would cost to develop an app that has offline-sync capabilities, social media features, stores pictures 'for free', etc so that they can manage their neighborhood gardens or their pottery class (hint: I'm not doing it for 500 dollars).

I'm guessing some of that could be happening here if the problems-to-solve are not curated by estimated development cost or by simplicity.

Of course, I'm not the OP so it's just a wild guess :)

The problem isn't on the dev side. The devs are the ones reaching out and requesting a connection—it's the submitters who aren't following through.

Ah.

I misunderstood then I think. It makes more sense that way actually.

Interesting idea...thanks for sharing.

Is it always one to one? ...would be good if the problem could be confirmed with other users

A bit unrelated, but on retina devices the screenshot on the oppsdaily landing page looks a bit blurry :)

Thanks for letting me know! I'll try to get a sharper image in there :)

This is an excellent example of open, transparent communication between founder and end user. Great job giving updates so frequently!

Subscribed, not sure how useful this is going to be for me, but will send a few bucks your way nonetheless.

Awesome! Yeah try it out for a few days and if you like it drop me a line.

Edit:

Also drop me a line if you don't like it and let me know why! :D

Sure will do :)

Interesting idea. I just subscribed it. :-)

Thanks so much :D

Maybe a way to vote MVPs on those ideas?

typo: whats -> what's

Great catch! I want to fix this, but I'm a little afraid of deploying with 250 people on the site. Will change soon!

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