Hacker News Reader

Misses the point.

Ultimately, we as internet developers need to start thinking about charging customers. I'm always talking with friends about how applications are moving from the desktop online. And some of those applications best fit some sort of pay for use model. How to get users is one thing, but that wasn't DHH's point.

View on HN

I think that if you really look at the startup landscape you'll see that there are a bunch of companies trying to charge people (mine included, although we exist in a different domain than most of the startups I run into). The hardest part of that equation isn't the charging, it's getting the buzz out and getting people to even look at your app in the first place.

Just changing the founder mindset to "charge for something" isn't nearly enough.

The idea of charging for web apps has been tried to DEATH. This "revolutionary idea" has come and gone 50 times over. It is extremely hard to make _more_ from this model than through advertising, being strategically aquired, or just about any other model. I personally have tried, hard.

If people aren't in the spending mode when they go to your site then just forget it.

You're forgetting the second point DHH made. Target small businesses. They're a little more likely to spend money to improve performance than your average Joe internet user.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com