Show HN: LifeSnapper.com (Alpha) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: LifeSnapper.com (Alpha)

9 pointsSabrinaDent6 comments

We've just launched the alpha of a 10-month bootstrapped project at http://www.LifeSnapper.com

While I'm going to guess that HN is perhaps not our target audience, I wanted to show you guys what we've built because I've done a lot of helpful reading here over the past two years. I shared some really key links found on HN to our coder, Katherine, and our Sugar Daddy, John while we were laying our team foundations out and that stood us in good stead.

We do of course eat our own dogfood, and have made a simple LifeSnap of our company story so far:

http://www.lifesnapper.com/LifeSnapper

We've got (closed) alpha testers, a business model, a dev roadmap, and we're really psyched for the future of LifeSnapper. Feedback very welcome; thanks for looking!

View on HN

Clickable links: http://www.lifesnapper.com/

Demo timeline: http://www.lifesnapper.com/CaraFitz

LifeSnapper's timeline: http://www.lifesnapper.com/LifeSnapper

I like this idea a lot. A lot of these types of photos (weddings, babies, etc.) are put on facebook, but a little too personal for casual sharing, this is a service I could see myself using. What is the business model/how much are you charging?

I am so delighted you like this idea! With the caveat that all business models are pie in the pixel sky until they aren't, the idea we've been building toward is this:

Membership is free. A number of themes are free. Other themes are not free, and are $5 (or less) each. (Tumblr does themes this way and we like it.) You can use any theme you buy for as many of your events as you like.

We are not clear if people will simply buy each theme as they want it or will buy credits to spent on themes ala iStock and Envato marketplaces. The credits model seems to have a lot of advantages. With credits, you could also gift the themes to friends for occasions, which is nice.

We will likely also have a premium membership model that lets you upload video, create slideshows instead of having a static main image per event, and gives you archival cloud storage of your original uploads. This would be $20 per year or less. Premium membership will likely come with some credits, too.

I'd be very keen on feedback about this if you have any thoughts.

well done. seems like a very viable business. Great website. Just make sure that you make a free sign up button nice and prominent on the home page when you're taking sign ups.

Thanks! "Viable business" is good to hear. Will for sure take the big signup button advice when we're ready for public beta :)

well done for a 10 month bootstrapped site. signup for for alpha.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com