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Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars
- NeutronBoy 10y agoEDIT: Well that will teach me to read more closely! Continue below if you want to see me make an idiot of myself. Turns out I missed the point So as I type this the votes are charging up the ranks (about 10 votes since I started typing this comment), so let me start off: I can't possibly see how this is Amazon's fault. You're arguing that you offer a service for free (for a little while anyway), and that more people are taking you up on that because they have logs lying around, because Amazon has prompted them in the past to save these logs? I mean, shouldn't this help your service? a) now people can try it out because they already have logs and don't have to wait (which you've already identified was an issue), and b) now people will end up with a bucket full of logs, think 'how can I analyse and use these logs', and go looking for a product like yours!
- whiskers 10y agoI think you may not have read the whole post in detail. It's a positive post about an unexpected bonus from Amazons' change in default behaviour!
- NeutronBoy 10y agoWell shit. I read the whole thing, not close enough apparently!
- koolba 10y ago> I can't possibly see how this is Amazon's fault. You're arguing that you offer a service for free (for a little while anyway), and that more people are taking you up on that because they have logs lying around, because Amazon has prompted them in the past to save these logs? You've got it backwards. The OP is saying that due to AWS UI changes, it's more likely that user's will have logging enabled, thus showing more value for s3stat. This leads to more subscriptions. It's a positive piece, not a negative!
- m-app 10y agoAlthough I mostly skimmed the article, I have to say that the feeling I got from the article changed a couple of times between positive v. negative. This left me confused and because of that I guess I missed the point as well.
- vertex-four 10y agoIt was written in a format I'm used to seeing as "grumpy rant", mostly, and much of the language used was overwhelmingly neutral.
- sealjam 10y agoI don't know whether the title has changed since your comment but I fail to see how "Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of Dollars" could ever be a negative story.
- nicky0 10y agoFor me, the words "amazon made me thousands of dollars" in the title rather set the tone.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoIt's easy to be an idiot. Everybody does that sometimes. Kudos for your graceful reaction to being called on it. I think I'll borrow your approach next time I'm in a similar situation.
- erikb 10y agoIt's not your fault though. The way the article is written it sounds(!) like exactly what you are saying.
- nbevans 10y agoSuch a shame that Azure Blob Storage doesn't support "default pages" i.e. index.html Then it could be used for static web site hosting just like S3 :( See also: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217298-storage/suggestions/1180039-support-a-default-blob-for-blob-storage-containers https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217298-storage/suggestions...
- jsingleton 10y agoWouldn't it be easier to use GitHub or GitLab pages for a static site?
- nbevans 10y agoDepends on the scenario really. If you want it version controlled, yeah sure. But there are other use cases that don't need that. You just want a "publishing target" that is low cost and minimal complexity. Plus GitHub/GitLab don't have the same number of availability-9's that Azure Blob Storage or AWS S3 can have.
- jsingleton 10y agoTrue but if you don't have a billing account set up then SCM can be easier. I usually stick CloudFlare in front of it for availability (with multiple entries for the origin in the DNS). You can even add a page rule to cache the HTML in case the server does go down.
- nbevans 10y agoYeah I've done the Cloudflare + GitHub pattern as well for a couple things. But not everything is suited to that, nor needs that. Cloudflare also isn't going to cache large static content for very long or at all. Or just having any cache in between at all might be the wrong solution entirely. Anyway... :) S3 supports this and AzStorage doesn't - this needs fixing!
- jdormit 10y agoHave you heard of Surge (https://surge.sh https://surge.sh)? Pretty nails the 'low cost and minimal complexity' target for static hosting, although I don't know how well it scales.
- markwillis82 10y agoAs a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx
- masklinn 10y agoIt's a hilarious page, but I wouldn't call it "informatively" good, you can't easily eyeball the difference between the plans in the way the good ol' pricing grid would show.
- jasonkester 10y agoThere's a pretty 3-column pricing grid sitting unused on the server, after a day of painstaking pixel nudging then 30 days of pummeling in an A/B test against that ugly wall of text you see today. I'm as surprised as you. But I'm not arguing against math.
- ArcticCelt 10y agoI love how you repeatedly shame the cheap bastards who "cannot" afford a $10 service into taking the paying plan while still giving them the option to take the cheap bastard plan. :)
- desireco42 10y agoBecause science! I love your response and creativity in making that page. It resonates with your audience.
- seanwilson 10y ago> There's a pretty 3-column pricing grid sitting unused on the server, after a day of painstaking pixel nudging then 30 days of pummeling in an A/B test against that ugly wall of text you see today. That's really interesting; how big was the difference and what do you think the source of the difference was?
- eriknstr 10y ago
- HiroshiSan 10y agoVery antifragile of you
- andrewvijay 10y agoFelt good after reading the story. That's a proper happy ending!
- daddykotex 10y agoI really enjoyed the writing style :)
- pmontra 10y agoOff topic but about that blog: please make the text darker. I had to zoom it at 1 cm per line before being able to read it comfortably (some 400 dpi screen). My tablet is laying over a magazine and I can read its darker text at less than half the size.
- jasonkester 10y agoExcellent timing. I was getting a bit grey-texted out while proofreading it this morning, and actually made the code change on the dev side. But the blog started seeing a dozen requests per second before I could push the change live, and I've been in "nobody touch nothin'!" mode ever since. But I snuck that CSS change in just now.
- kristianp 10y agoI think the problem is the font-weight. I wasn't really able to read the page until I changed it from 300 to 400. I don't think anyone should reduce the font-weight of their body text, it just looks too greyed-out.
- pmontra 10y agoSome fonts work well only with some specific values of font-weight. Maybe this is the case.
- eganist 10y agoTangent: > I’d much prefer to keep those minutes for things like blowing off work for the day to go rock climbing because it’s sunny and I can do that because I run my own company. The less time I have to spend dealing with these customers, the better. This doesn't really instill confidence in the level of post-purchase support I'd get if I were to buy in. I can easily empathize with the mentality and can even appreciate it if it's intended as humor, but all I see here is "I just want you to pay me."
- adontz 10y agoNot telling you are wrong, but do you really need support if product just works?
- cmdrfred 10y agoI feel the opposite. When I hear things like "Customer service is number one at Comcast" it sounds like a hollow platitude, mainly beacuse it is.
- cyanbane 10y agoI like the honesty. I look at it as that he has automated the most frequent stuff and that his allotment of time can go to further unique cases of customer service. Automated surface breadth allows deepness with finite time.
- jasonkester 10y agoAh, but consider the support lag you get for most products, and the person from whom you receive a reply to your email (and their ability to actually do anything about your issue). So yeah, you might have to wait until the next day for a reply. But that reply will be to say that your issue has been fixed (by the guy who built the product) and that no further action is required on your part. People seem to like that. (And a guy can only really climb hard a couple days a week without injury, so it's entirely possible you'll find me in front of the keyboard.)
- NietTim 10y agoWell, turns out your tool is exactly what we were looking for a few days ago.
- anshargal 10y agoI really hope that Amazon will provide at least basic per-bucket monthly statistics for free or a small price. It is unintuitive that you need to parse logs or pay $10 month to find out how much you are paying for each bucket.
- theantonym 10y agoSounds a lot like https://qloudstat.com/ https://qloudstat.com/ which I've been using for a while.
- erikb 10y agoThe way everything is formulated it sounds like successfully exploiting people, but actually it's the good side of capitalism: Someone providing a valuabe service and getting paid well for it.
- leoalves 10y agoHey Jason congrats on your product. Really liked your writing style. Very funny and informative. Nice job. Do you worry about amazon releasing something to analyse the logs and killing your business? They just released Amazon QuickSight in beta and I think you will probably be able to import logs from their services. Of course the user will have to create the reports themselves but I guess your audience is tech savvy.
- jasonkester 10y agoAbsolutely. But it's been 10 years now, and the best they've come up with is a sort of stripped down Cloudwatch-style request count graph for Cloudfront usage. That did actually cause a bit of a dip in signups when it came out, but I think there's still a need for more detailed reports. But yeah, the expectation is that they'll squash it dead any minute now. I'm hoping that the next thing I'm building will have replaced S3stat as an income stream by the time that happens.
- rocky1138 10y agoCare to enlighten us on just what that is?
- whizzkid 10y agoHere are my 2 cents about the pricing page you have @jasonkester "Cheap Bastard Plan" is both little too much slang, and unpleasant to look at if you are in a demo to show this service to upper management. I am not saying that you should have a boring, enterprisey pricing page with formal words, in fact I really like what you did there with free plan. Just saying that you can rephrase it with little more easy-going words. :) Great product, congrats!
- oldmanjay 10y agoI would like to encourage you to rename it the "Cheap Fucking Bastard Plan" because discomfort amongst the corporate set is good for America.
- enraged_camel 10y agoThe "I Embezzled the Entire Department Budget and Spent It On Hookers and Cocaine" plan
- jrs235 10y agoTouche. Perhaps "Cheap Side Project Plan" would work. Most upper managers wouldn't want their project(s) to be considered mere side projects...
- devopsproject 10y agoNot everything needs to be sanitized to protect the delicate sensibilities of America's boardroom.
- mhawkins 10y agoThe cheap bastard plan is excellent!
- NikolaeVarius 10y agoI'm actually quite amazed that a more fleshed out solution to AWS logging doesn't exist. I've worked on a small side project to pipe AWS logs to arbitrary locations for work purposes so that they could be visualized in whatever tool of your choosing Mind if you could cover some broad details about how things are handled in the back end?
- jasonkester 10y agoI've been meaning to write that blog post for a long time. In broad terms, EC2 is the perfect fit for a service like this, that needs to run something like 100 hours of computing each day, but needs that all to happen during a 3 hour window before Europe wakes up in the morning. It's even more fun when something breaks and I get to spin up 200 machines in one go. For like ten dollars. I use something like 8 different AWS services for various bits of the thing. Everything from computing to storage to queueing & mail. I even used them for payment at one point. I'll try to get that writeup out the door.
- strictfp 10y agoFunny to see the americans in here torn between loving or hating the blatantly capitalistic OP ;)
- eastbayjake 10y agoJason's other blog posts are really great -- reminds me of patio11's writing style. It's a shame he's only blogging "semi-annually"!
- sairamkunala 10y agoIsn't a similar thing possible through ELK stack for those who are already maintaining one, the logs should be sent to Elastic Search for indexing. It might not be as customisable as this product.
- mindingdata 10y agoDefinitely possible but as is the case with most Saas products, It's much easier and convenient to just pay someone $10 a month to do it for you rather than hosting an entire ELK stack somewhere (And having to upskill to get it all working efficiently).
- sairamkunala 10y agoI agree. it works if companies are not already using an ELK stack. Looks like a great product!
- epse 10y agoPlease please make that site responsive. I do a lot of checking and things on my phone and if I can't read your site I will assume I can't use your project on my phone and go on with my life.
- hbhakhra 10y agoThe cheap bastard plan seems like it would be great for SEO, any stats you can share with us jasonkester on how well it worked out?
- wkoszek 10y agoJust came back here from this other HN thread (How many lines is Candy Japan code base) and your S3 stats seems like it'd be cool to learn about too. Have you ever published anything like this with some $$$ numbers?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tantalor 10y ago@jasonkester Aren't you worried about attracting unwanted attention from Amazon's lawyers for using their trademark in the name of your business? https://aws.amazon.com/trademark-guidelines/ https://aws.amazon.com/trademark-guidelines/
- flipp3r 10y agoWhy should he be? Where in the document does it say Amazon has "S3" as a trademark? His service isn't called "Amazon S3stat"
- ge96 10y agoWhat a guy. Way to be an entrepreneur or businessman.