Weebly (YC winter 07) scores 1 million users, reaches profitability | Hacker News Reader

Weebly (YC winter 07) scores 1 million users, reaches profitability

venturebeat.com

87 pointslemonysnicket45 comments

There are a handful of companies in YC (aside from my own) that I would love to personally invest in (if I were in the position to invest). Weebly is definitely near the top of the list, and was from the first moment I saw it during Winter '07. They're totally pragmatic, and just get things done...not one information astronaut in the bunch.

And they work in that space where nobody wants to be: technology for newbies. A couple of folks in this thread are criticizing Weebly for the very things that make it so explosively successful. I'd advise anyone who thinks they're smarter than the Weebly folks to pause for a moment, and think about traffic, and what it means for there to be 1 million websites at Weebly. That's one million occasions where someone browsed to the site, filled out the form, and went through the process of creating a website. How many people have signed up for your web application? How many made it to actually using it to do real work? And how much money does your app make if you imagine 1% of those users being willing to pay you a monthly fee? When the number of people committed enough to create something with your site reaches a million, you almost can't not make money with it.

<cough> Facebook </cough>

Facebook could make money. They've just opted to focus on other things...probably to the detriment of their long-term health as a company. But, they've decided that the network effects of having the most users is the most important thing for them, and they've put aside all other considerations. I don't for a second think Facebook is worth $15 billion (but maybe the ~$4 billion internal valuation that people within the company are getting for their shares when they sell privately).

But, Facebook is having to try pretty hard to outspend their incoming cash. They've hired very aggressively and made decisions that are more befitting a much larger/older company. I don't know enough to say if it'll all come crashing down...but it'd be possible to make Facebook make money tomorrow, if they laid off some of those hires and got as smart as Google about infrastructure.

Congrats. On a side note, venturebeat is full of funding announcements today, kind of a counterpoint to all the sky is falling stuff from the last two weeks. Good companies seem to be thriving.

I just spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find out how much Weebly charges for the pro accounts and I still don't know. What is it with websites hiding their pricing? Argh.

I agree, it's not easy to find. I had to log into my account, and was then offered the choice to upgrade.

FYI, its 3.99 a month.

So weebly also uses a deceptive pricing scheme ... exactly how are 3.99 different than 4?

Does anybody have hard data on market consequences of pricing to round numbers?

And why should one price near $4? If it was in Europe, it would be 4 euro instead?

Why 3.99 and not 3.56, since credit card payments don't care anyway?

In any case, congrats to weebly whose profitability enables this discussion.

Stating $3.99 and then charging $3.99 is anything but deceptive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing

Many of these issues are covered in basic marketing 101. As to how the pricing scheme is deceptive is beyond me.

There are multiple different psychological price theories in use. As mentioned in the article, the .99 pricing scheme is fairly prevalent, although some retailers use a .00 pricing scheme to reinforce quality. Walmart has used a somewhat random pricing scheme (.32, .67, .18, etc) to try to have consumers come to the conclusion that the only rationale behind the price is that Walmart shaved every possible penny it could.

Thanks for sharing. The random pricing scheme reads most evil of all. Perhaps a conclusion is that there is no such thing as a naked price--all pricing schemes have psychological load, whether intended or not, because the consumer will add it.

Why is random pricing evil?

Because of the pretension of being real--as in, adjusted to the real price--when they are not.

Sorry, I'm still not following (I could very easily be missing something so I apologize if this is the case). As long as the buyer isn't being forced to buy, how can variable prices be evil?

3.99$ might be deceptive, but it's deceptive in a very standard way that everyone expects and understands.

We've shied away from displaying $$ signs on our front page, as the Weebly service is very much free -- we don't want to create a perception on the user's part that they have to pay to use the service.

On the other hand, most users run into our "upgrade" form organically, when they try to use a Pro feature, and are offered the ability to upgrade -- this is a very logical point for the user, when there is already some form of demand.

Understandable, but perhaps you could include it in your FAQs?

How much, the number one FAQ the world over for the last 5,000 years :)

Thanks, so using napkin calculation...

(1,000,000 users) x ("well over 1% conversion", we'll call it 4% to be generous) = 40,000 customers x $4 = $160,000 in revenue.

They have 6 people in the team, so allowing modest salary of $50,000 each = $300,000.

So, they must make the bulk of thier money by Adwords (11,000,000 uniques will generate $$$) as I assume the others services offered are not generating much cash yet.

Anyway, it is still a good and sustainable model and well done to them for turning a profit, something so many big(ger) name startups have yet to do.

EDIT: $160,000 x 12 months = $1,920,000. Also, allowing conversion rate of 2% rather than generous 4% = $960,000.

That $160,000 would be monthly, as I understand it. But id give 1.5% for "well over 1%" otherwise they might say, almost 5% :)

Doh! For some reason I thought it was $4 per year. Must learn to read properly.

No idea regarding the accuracy of your calculations, but when you're talking conversion rates for a million users, 1.5% or 2% or heck, 1.1%, could be considered "well over" 1%.

I find it annoying too. Websites should realise that users don't mind them making money -- in fact most users want their web hosts to be financially secure, as that means they'll continue to provide the service -- and that users know that websites need to make money, from advertising, or subscription fees or some other method.

Yes, this breaks a deal for me. If I ever consider to subscribe to a service like this, I need to know beforehand which features I get for free, and which I need to pay for and how much.

The model is good, but I really like to know beforehand what each option includes, similarly to choosing webhosting package.

congrats to the weebly crew, this is an awesome product, I recently used it to help my mom setup a simple website and within a few minutes we were adding content and photos, no dumb server to deal with and no constant barrage of new versions to worry about. It was way easier than wordpress and fit the need perfectly. its dope to hear about small startups, building incremental value and reaching key milestones, far more interesting than another huge VC funding round for a company with no business model.

Awesome work. The p word is one of the most beautiful.

That's really great. I've got all my relatives using that now to build their websites. It's good to know Weebly will be around for a while :-)

Me too. My father-in-law needed to create a website for his church. He asked for my help, I showed him Weebly, and that was it. So what I'm saying is, thanks Weebly.

thanks guys, appreciate the support! most of our new users come from word of mouth referals, and every little bit helps.

I guess you can say....

Little weeblys wobble but they don't fall down!

Congrats!! I love Weebly - a few weeks ago I was doing a post about how easy it is to create an online web shop using a local startup, and even after wasting 20 mins trying to fiddle around with a similar site, I was still able to get the site up in under 2 hours. Absolutely the right balance between ease of use for noobs and flexibility for more advanced users. http://tinyurl.com/weeblyrocks

yep congratultions guys. have to say that i love weebly so much i had to pay up for 2 years. im also looking forward for their implementation of new features which are said to include, complete control over the html and css.

Encouraging!

pic http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/120/onemillion.png

Congrats Weeblers

Congrats, guys. Your product is excellent.

wow, I remember Weebly when they were presenting at LeWeb3 2 years ago when they had 6000 users.

You inspire us all.

This is great...

Not to be negative but they have existed for 3 years and that is all they have produced? Maybe I missed something when I tried it a couple of months ago but it seemed more like something that had been around for 3 weeks. I really wanted something like it but for sure there wasn't much to it. Some simple drag and drop features but nothing that let a noob create a cool webpage by just dragging and dropping.

Did I manage to miss the point?

Most people in the world are n00bs.

That answer means you must have misunderstood what I said. Anyway, I was mostly looking for an explanation of what is so great about Weebly because I didn't get it.

Surely we must be able to critisize here right?

Definitely.

It's good for noobs.

It makes something that most people are unable (or unwilling to take the time) to do a simple matter of mouse clicks. And it does so pretty nicely.

Sure, most people on HN can create pretty slick sites that just are not possible with Weebly. But then again, most of society isn't on HN.

So my parents decided to sell their house (without a realtor), and wanted to put a website on their sign in the yard to get the word out on the internet. It took literally 5 minutes for me to get a website up and running for them using Weebly. Why would I waste time making a static website by hand, not to mention an app?

1 million users. Profitable.

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