Ask HN: What is the best way to monetize a small side project?
The specific case I had in mind is PbNotify (http://pbnotify.herokuapp.com/), where I currently charge $5/month for unlimited access (though I'm not sure this is the best approach).
The specific case I had in mind is PbNotify (http://pbnotify.herokuapp.com/), where I currently charge $5/month for unlimited access (though I'm not sure this is the best approach).
The only way to be fair to your customers is to make enough money to keep the service they love alive.
You could probably fix that with a $15 ThemeForest theme (to make it look less like an abandoned open source project and more like an actual product) and some A/B tested copy.
You need a lot more copy on the homepage. Figure out what the answers are to the questions I asked above and plaster those on the homepage. Why should I buy this? How much does it cost? If you can take some nice pictures of it in action, that's even better.
If you're selling a service, you need to actually sell the service. It's harder than just saying "Here's this thing, buy it", which is basically what you're doing now.
On the whole, the project is intriguing, and though I'm not a Pebble user, I could see value in being able to speak directly to it. Who is your market? Pebble users? Or sites that want to target Pebble users? I don't know that from the copy on the website.
In terms of my market, my initial goal was Pebble users/developers, but it hadn't occurred to me to look at it from the other end: the sites that could be targeting Pebble users. Perhaps this is something I should consider...