Eight years of victory

Archiving didn't work for me for first 3 days, so I sent an email, no response. Followed up 2 days later, no response. Contacted on Twitter, got a response that it'll be looked into, but it wasn't solved. Contacted on Twitter again 3 days later, no response. Finally, it did start working a few days later but stopped again.

I emailed again, no response. Followed up 4 days later, no response. Contacted on Twitter, no response. Emailed on founder's email 2 days later, no response. Another contact on Twitter, no response. I did get a response when I send a DM that the lack of response was due to huge impending work.

It's completely possible that the work was indeed huge and I was growing impatient (for that, I apologise), but I wasn't expecting that the problem is solved immediately but just how and when it'll be solved, that's all.

I didn't send any messages after that and it seems issues are slowly getting fixed. There are still issues with accessing the archived links, but I feel there won't be any point in reporting them. Pinboard is an excellent service that I use every day, but I wish there was more effort to make users feel less frustrated.

All that said, I'm always surprised that Maciej racked in over $100k in revenue his first year. I was of the impression that your first 1-2 years are going to be in the red, unless you have something big to build on (existing business to promote your new one, big twitter following, etc.).

The fact that he has 10x the users now compared to the first year but only 2x the revenue is interesting. I assume that's due to moving the subscription fee to a small but ever incrementing amount to a larger, fixed one.

Any tips/prep advice for someone who has a business they want to launch but dread spending the first couple years making no money/having few users?

  I know there are lots of rival bookmarking services out 
  there to choose from.
  I will consume them all, like I consumed the pie.

I'm very good at archiving links, I use a chrome extension that just does it.

However I'm not so good at the recall side of things. This isn't pinboard's fault, it's just my habits. Right now I just throw links into a box with a few tags and then forget about it.

Maybe one day it will come in useful and I'm glad it's there.

I love Maciej's writing.

Other apps have Intercom or some other support app telling you that you're special and promising you a reply in a few hours. Meanwhile Maciej doesn't reply to your emails or tweets.

And yet, growth.

Perhaps neglect is the secret sauce!

One question, how come the number of users has increased 10x, but revenue only ~2x. Has the pricing model changed over time?

It's like the fair trade coffee of online bookmarking services.