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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

That's a great story and congrats to him on building something like that under those conditions.

There's a good reason why "we are all chasing the billions doled out by Apple on the App Store and the newest, sexiest SaaS app idea": money. He's making no money and it will be very hard to monetize. How do you get someone on another contentent, who earns very little money, using old technology, to pay you and pay enough to turn a profit?

It's great that he's helping people but if it has no business model it's not sustainable unless he can turn it into a non-profit with donors.

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That is really a sad state of affairs. You can create something that helps and is used by millions of people in the world, but unless those people have disposable income, you're likely screwed as far as earning enough to keep doing it. Better do something that a much smaller number of rich white people will pay you for instead.

Don't get me wrong, he is doing it as a for-profit venture. We just haven't figured out how to turn it into 'for profit'.

But there are other guys that are doing it and making money. The first step is to keep it online.

The poor people in this case are white/Asian.

If people don't have money, it means this should be a financially backed non-profit, or the underlying issues should be fixed first. It's not sad that you can't make money where there is none.

You would be surprised how much aggregate purchasing power "poor people" have.

As someone that lives in a third world country, the biggest companies are those that sell lots of products to the masses - not the boutique shops that sell to "middle & upper classes". i.e. the "bottom of the pyramid". In fact, Carlos Slim (the richest man in the world) has a ton of companies that sell to the bottom of the pyramid, and he is doing fine ;)

The businesses, here, that target the middle-to-upper classes tend to struggle.

So I am fairly certain there is a way to monetize this.

In fact, some users do want to pay to keep their site alive. So we just need to balance the amount that is paid and make sure resources are effectively allocated.

Carlos Slim has a govt-enforced monopoly. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57369357-93/telecom-monopol...

So do many other companies in many other countries - including utilities in the US - but the owners are not the richest people in the world. In fact, they probably don't come in the top 10.

I say that to say that having a monopoly is not a guarantee of maximum success.

In the case of a true monopoly it pretty much is.

Well tell that to the local oil monopoly in Venezuela....whose coffers are being raided to feed populist urges.

How is it a "sad state of affairs?" How can anyone dedicate their time to building something that doesn't even pay for itself?

If he can make money from it that's fantastic. If he can't he'll have to move on. No one is saying the only market that exists is rich white people.

very little money / person is fine as long as you have enough scale to back it up.

@parentcomment. I see that you seem to have a lot of traffic from India. You might want to check out http://vserv.mobi/ IIRC, they do have this payment processor which can pull money from your mobile prepaid balance. I don't think a lot of people here use credit cards.

Thanks for the tip.

Will definitely check it out.

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