Show HN: I made a meme creator that makes around $4k a month
metameme.app
metameme.app
How do you do the tracking? Is it blob tracking or do you use something more sofisticated?
this is how my web flash app is coming along: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6...
I’d love to browse for more examples.
That is a seriously good result for 150 hours give or take. I wonder if Elon peruses HN...
> An unexpected error has occurred.
guess they play/pause functionality does not check if there is something to play/pause.
@steelbrain: should be quite easy to fix.
However there is a point to be made that iOS only grants VP9 decoding to Youtube, certain colourspaces fail to decode on Android etc. ergo gif is a safe default.
I was pretty tired so I didn't read everything that carefully, and just pressed the "upload gif" button expecting file picker, but instead I got an error message that the upload failed. I actually thought your webpage was broken.
Only when I when back and read everything carefully did I realize what had happened. Two and a half suggestions: In my mind upload means its transferred from my device, so consider changing the text to "fetch" or something. Handle empty url as a special case. Like maybe just highlight the url box in a red border or something. And finally the half suggestion: measure whether uploading (my guess, but idk) or fetching is the more common usecase, and emphasize that one visually.
At the very least it will help me improve my understanding of the kind of things for which people are willing to part their hard earned money.
If those questions are too profound, feel free to not address them, but either way, this is impressive for a solo Indy dev.
And what is the tech stack? Do you listen to users feature requests and bug reports?
I have a project in mind myself and all the above questions I wouldn't know how to handle.
Tech stack is swift, and python on the backend. I do listen to user requests and bugs, in fact I get tons of great feedback from my users with how quickly i respond to their issues, usually resolving issues within an hour, all on my own. It takes up a decent chunk of time, but I do care a lot about the customers, so that makes it worth it.
Basically outsourced growth
0 - https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...
I tried replacing localhost with wax.run, but it didn't do anything.
Lastly, considering you are all about marketing and growth, you'll need a landing page that demonstrates this. As in, your landing page needs to be better than most landing pages. While I'm all about minimalism, I found it quite jarring to just land on a page with a half moon on it, which doesn't really do anything.
Some words about who you are would go a long way. There is a "team" link in the navigation and that also doesn't go anywhere (without a login presumably)
Just some pointers. Pm me when we can sign up, because if you are the people who solve marketing for me, that would easily be the biggest revolution in my entrepreneurial journey. I hate marketing so much.
Can you send me a note mike@wax.run ? Would like to stay in touch as we get closer to launching.
Look at the tabs on the website, a page to Win $100, a blog that's low content meme spam written by third party authors. https://metameme.app/blog/
Ideally he should be cross posting these across reddit, insta, tiktok and whatever people use these days to drive traffic.
He keeps saying SEO is everything, and won't drop the tiniest hint about how he's achieving to top Google results.
Go to google. Search "agario site:bostonchildrensmuseum.org"
Takes you here: https://www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org/exhibits-programs/exhi...
Look at the html source: <marquee style="width: 0px; position: absolute"><a href="https://agarr.live/" title="agario">agario</a> - <a href="https://slither-2.io/" title="slitherio unblocked">slitherio unblocked</a> - <a href="https://diepio-2.com/" title="diep.io unblocked">diep.io unblocked</a> - <a href="https://agario.tube" title="agario unblocked">agario unblocked</a> - <a href="https://yohoho-io.live/" title="yohoho unblocked">yohoho unblocked</a> - <a href="https://yohoho.gold/" title="yohoho">yohoho</a> </marquee>
tldr: he is hacking sites or paying someone to hack sites. likely exploiting wordpress vulnerabilities to insert hidden backlinks into thousands of websites.
Can you share your attrition rate? Also, how many want to pay per-month VS the full year (heavily discounted price)?
Thanks!
Retention rate: 82%
Monthly subs: 93%
yearly subs: 7%
Are the users active? Have you thought / analyzed if they pay and forget that it's a subscription? :-?
Have you had to moderate to avoid illegal images from getting into the system?
Are there any patterns to (profiles of) the power users, or customer segments you know about the power users? Amateur versus professional?
Edit: I see you mention “a lot of my users run fairly large instagram pages (50k+ followers)”, so other sites or segments?
You may consider a relationship with another developer where they maintain the Android distro in exchange for some significant percentage of revenue.
1 - https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-1h-20... - source needed, but speaking from experience at scale
There are a bunch of factors that probably cause this, but they're all mixed up and intertwined so it's hard to point at one and go "that's it, that's the reason". Selection bias of the user base (think: socio-economic status, and maybe even average technical know-how or comfort with software); iOS users use their devices way more than Android users, for all purposes (but, is that because of the previous thing? Maybe); it could have something to do with the ecosystems the two app stores have cultivated, causing different levels of trust among the two user bases when it comes time to spend money; it could have something to do with the quality of the experience of using the respective operating systems themselves.
Probably all of those contribute some amount. It's hard to say, though.
Do you have a repo or something for the Android app that curious people could look at?
:)
I've personally sold projects on both Flippa and MicroAcquire and happy to chat about the pro's/con's of each.
The issue I had with Flippa when I listed a business there is that there are a TON of tire kickers. Flippa has a lot of users, but I'd say many aren't serious buyers. Flippa will prepopulate "inquiries" to sellers with some standard questions (ex. "How much time are you spending on the business each week?" etc). I learned to just ignore any message that contained only those prepopulated messages after a while. At first I spent time crafting responses to them only to be ghosted after that. If a potential buyer can't take the time to write their own opening message, they aren't serious.
$1k ARR --> listed for $20K
$240 ARR --> listed for $8K
$892 ARR --> listed for $9K
$99 ARR --> listed for $6.5K
$500 ARR --> listed for $15K
Now obviously people can ask for whatever they want and negotiate down, but you can see that multiples are crazy. To put it in perspective, my little app I sold I had made $5 TOTAL, and sold it fo4 $1500 USD and I had people telling me they would pay more after I had sold it. I think there is just a glut of people that want to get into small side gigs/startups that don't have the skills to code one. They see this as a kick start and lots of people can cobble together a few thousand.
(Translation: I'm benignly curious what apps :P)
Quite impressive that you could do this with a meme creator!
"Your Instagram page will gain tons of followers. You will be famous on Twitter."
If that wasn't intentional, even better!
What would you suggest for a small independent entrepreneur looking to come up with his own SaaS? I'm pretty comfortable with a broad enough frontend and backend stack from my day job. Where I lack is market research.
I've launched some hobby projects online in the past but none of which are monetized in any way, and almost all of them ended up costing money to run or still continue to do so. I'd love to build something for practice (to start out), with the intent of it eventually being good enough of a service for others to use too. I'm just blank on ideas at the moment.
Here's a screenshot - https://imgur.com/a/SzVS75Q
Same in chrome. The cert is wrong, it has the cert of "search.dnsadvantage.com"
edit: oh, please try https://metameme.app
edit: the cert should be sectigo https://imgur.com/a/jb91a0z
I have no problem paying $50—or even $100—for good software, once. Thousands of dollars over the course of years is simply not reasonable.
If you use copyrighted content to parody something else, you aren't protected. Penny Arcade had to pull a comic back in the day when they misunderstood this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/style/elon-musk-memes.htm...
Technically speaking, building a meme platform that takes recompensation into account is an interesting problem.
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1370373708506750977?lang=...
I love memes. I've always wanted to do some kind of a browser based meme maker I could either monetize with ads or a nominal ($10/yr) payment to remove ads.
Edit: forgot to mention, I also spent quite a bit of time improving app store ranking, which contributes significantly to getting more downloads and customers.
2. When it's a subscription as a customer you have more trust that it will continue working. When it's a one time purchase, who knows how long it will last.
Funny, for me this is the total opposite: subscription software may end any time and then you got nothing. One time purchased software you can just continue to use. Well, I guess in the games of rent-seeking, cloud-only, security and updates the viability of this is fading...
What's the difference?
You charge what people are willing to pay, not how much you think your product is worth.
Your product is worth what people are willing to pay.
It's typically much harder to acquire new users than retain current users = subscription model allows you to monetize your userbase over a broader period of time (let's say $5/mo * 6 mo = $30) to a value that would likely be cost-prohibitive. Most users would not spend $30 for this app. But they might sign up for a free trial, and then the $5 subscription.
That’s a shame because it seems like you did the smart and effective solution without wasting your time. A/B testing isn’t needed if the signal is clear enough (¡parachute testing!), and it is hard to get enough samples for a weak signal. Good on you.
If your core customer base pulls in 4 or 5 figures a month from their own hustle, they might be willing to pay up to $15/month for features tailor-made for their needs.
Not saying there aren't people who truly like it. There are. But not everyone who uses it does.
Your comment might apply to addictive games, but you are being extremely dismissive towards a creative app that isn’t designed to be a slot machine. Who are you to tell others how to spend their time or money?
It's really that simple...
For me, .15 a day is negligible. I can easily imagine someone who creates memes for social media choosing to pay that, especially if they feel there is value in supporting the creator. Memes aren't frivolity any more than other content - they're one of the most popular forms of communication on the internet.
Not OP but to counterpoint: I loathe apps that want to be supported by ads. Give me a one-time payment or a subscription. Let me choose if your service if worth paying for. If it's not worth paying for then it's also not worth ads. I'll use adblockers and use your service without ads anyway or else not use it at all.
1. Non-personalized (non-intrusive) ads
2. One time payment
3. Yearly subscription
4. Ads that mine Bitcoin or otherwise make use of my compute resources
5. Monthly subscription
6. Personalized, intrusive ads
I will go out of my way to actively avoid 4-6. For 3 it would hav to be DAMN good software.
Spyvertising is that, but at an industrial scale. If one's creepy and ought to warrant intervention by law enforcement, the other's much, much worse.
E.g. when I look at code I don't want ads for photography equipment, but ads for coding courses or books may be juuust acceptable. It also has the nice benefit of not needing personalization, so the sibling comments' points are also included.
Are you for real?
Want to know what your employer has you working on? Let's see what searches you've done.
Want to know what your employees are doing? Let's see what things they're buying.
Fuck that obnoxious bullshit.
You probably don't want your employer to know that you have cancer, are hiding a fling, and could soon have family problems requiring you to take a leave of absence.
- I think it should be my right to share the details of my work with anyone.
- It's already illegal to discriminate against people because they have cancer, and I don't think that imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going to significantly affect anyone's chances of this happening to them.
- If someone does something and faces consequences for it, I don't think that's a bad thing.
Honestly seeing people's responses here and elsewhere on the internet is kind of a Kafkaesque experience for me because everyone seems so convinced that internet privacy is valuable yet no one seems to actually have thought through their position (no offense to you personally). I guess I can only conclude that my base values differ in this area.
I agree! So why are you letting third parties get that information without you having any ability to provide or decline consent?
> It's already illegal to discriminate against people because they have cancer, and I don't think that imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going to significantly affect anyone's chances of this happening to them.
You think people don't do things that are illegal?
> no one seems to actually have thought through their position
Can you explain that better?
> I guess I can only conclude that my base values differ in this area.
I think that much is clear.
- it is also illegal to steal from homes. Do you lock your front door?
That’s hypothetical but big publishers already make financial calculations about your profile based on your page visits. So the rest is extrapolation.
We have no control over the correctness of information and no way to correct it.
Jokes apart, great to see a fun project like this giving profit. Well done.