Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubymamis | Hacker News Reader

I'm the founder of the open-source and cross-platform note-taking app https://www.get-notes.com (written in Qt C++).

I earn about $2000 a month from ads on the landing page (organic SEO), but very soon plan to add a subscription for pro features (while people could still compile it from source and get the full experience without paying, if they wish).

I started the project 8 years ago to create a slick looking note-taking app for myself on Linux. Then I open-sourced and published it, and it just took off and got popular (more than 1.2 Million downloads).

Took around 2 years to get a high rank on Google. Then it was just a matter of putting ads (which I don't like but my income relies on) and ever since it's been quite stable.

View on HN

Props to you for allowing compilation for the pro version, I'd probably support you just for doing that

Wuut.. Never heard of this! It looks very slick, I searched and searched for a nice note taking app on Linux and eventually landed with NoteKit, but this looks better.

Thanks! Even more awesome features and improvements are coming soon (:

We're on Github here btw: https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes

Do you plan to add syncing of notes between devices?

The main goal is to support working with arbitrary folder (currently, we store notes in a local databse), so it will be easier to sync using your existing cloud provider (eg, Dropbox, etc..)

But maybe in the future will create our own paid syncing service, is that something you'll want?

Earlier today I was looking for an Evernote replacement. Basically the ability to get my notes or info from any device is a core need for any note taking program in my opinion. (I mean you write things down in a paper note book to have with you when you need then, right? You don't just leave the note pad on a shelf.)

I wouldn't be keen to pay a monthly storage fee but I would pay a one time fee to unlock the ability to connect the data to my own storage like Dropbox, Mega, Google drive, etc.

Obsidian seems to have all the features of that note taking app + many more and even has plugin support.

Obsidian is not:

1. A native app (it's an Electron app).

2. Open source.

What’s your RPM? That much income for a software download page seems impressive

$25.8

Wow! Freaking monster!

That's quite high isn't it? Where does one get $25.80 per thousand impressions?

By placing an ad with a green "Start Now" button that goes to a spammy browser extension download page? Users probably think that's the button to download the desktop application.

At least that's the ad I get on that page.

Congrats on your accomplishments. I did not see any ads on your landing page. Am I missing something?

In the early 00's when I was debating if I should pursue software dev (again) I wrote a couple of Win32 native apps in C and absolutely loved writing them. One of the apps was a workout timer which I submitted to Freewarefiles.com. It peaked around 48K downloads. Unfortunately freewarefiles is no more so I can't show off my one and only "successful" native app.

Sometimes I feel I want to delve back into native apps instead of web based.

There is a small one on the landing page, but most of the revenue comes from the ones on the download page, actually.

Awesome story! Come back to the light (literally) side.

What are your opinions about QT? Do you use the open source version or the paid version? (I like it myself but mostly because I like their wysiwyg and the debugger support is intuitive relative to other ides)

Overall, I love Qt. I started studying QML 2 weeks ago to implement a Kanban view based on the underlined Markdown styled todo items in the text editor, and it's been really great so far. Property bindings, signals & slots, integration with C++, it all makes so much sense, much more than other declarative languages/frameworks (looking at you, React) imo.

Qt has been around for years, the documentation is extensive and the community is large and supportive. With QML I faced many problems, especially half-assed examples/documentation, Qt Creator's intellisense doesn't work well with QML sometimes, etc... But the tradeoff is worth it. I'm getting things done in a much faster pace with QML.

A problem that is common both in Qt and other cross-platform frameworks is that you end up writing some custom code for each operating system to make the look and feel more native. But I think it's getting better with awesome open-source projects taking care of beautiful native window decorations[1].

[1] https://github.com/wangwenx190/framelesshelper

I was able to build things with Qt and Qt3D I wasn't sure would even be possible before starting (a very narrow-scoped robotics automation planner/simulator). It was remarkably easy to get moving with.

Ironically the first version was mocked in Unity, thinking the tooling and ecosystem would make the MVP easy to build. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't particularly easy either. The end result was extremely heavyweight and gave terrible performance. Qt on the other hand yielded fairly snappy and lightweight results, and the development experience wasn't bad at all.

I wonder why more people don't use it, but then, that's my only exposure. Maybe it's not so great for other things, and I suppose there's the whole matter of having to pay for certain tooling and support. Us developers are sometimes super-hesitant to pay for the tools we use, haha.

I haven't got my hands on Qt3D, so that's nice to know. I agree, Qt is underrated.

There are some really good courses for beginners by Voidrealms - Bryan Cairns[1] on Youtube, if anyone is interested.

I think QML definitely deserve a better reputation. I even saw it being used for websites[2] although I'm still sticking with React for that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@VoidRealms/playlists

[2] https://pureqml.com/

Woah i never heard of this. I’m the type of person who loves trying out different notes app

This looks incredible I’m definitely going to use it

Thanks! More cool features coming soon.

Is this a fork of (open source but paid-value-add) Standard Notes?

Nope, I started it by myself 8 years ago. Now the project is getting many wonderful contributors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com