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I used LAMP to make a SaaS app with $3700/month profit
- asadlionpk 10y agoPlease don't listen to the naysayers here. You saw an opportunity and acted on it. The problem of copyright here is of Facebook itself, they deliberately allow this to happen to increase their engagement numbers. It is well-documented at many places.
- xiaoma 10y agoThe OP was on VK, a Russian platform where full downloads of copyrighted movies and songs were available until very recently (much as was the case in China with Baidu and Youku/Tudou). Actually I think Baidu still offers copyrighted MP3s and PDFs and charges for it. It's true that FB (and previously YouTube) played fast and loose with US copyright laws, but it doesn't even come close to what is standard in Russia or China. I don't think it's any fairer to pile on and attack a person playing within the rules of their local culture that it would be to attack westerners for how most of their meat is produced or how many cars they own. So many things in the world beg for moral outrage—I'd rather save mine for actual suffering rather than Russian social media marketing getting scraped.
- diimdeep 10y agoVK still offers almost any MP3 you can imagine, slightly less than than Movies and PDFs, and much more than that adult video content. At same time 90% of Russia using VK. You don't need to imagine that, it is reality.
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago> The top cause of death for indie startups is failure to delegate the tasks you're not good at and being overtaken by more social players. Lesson learned.
- mskvsk 10y agoIt's too bad that it took me 2 years to learn that one. Oh well, better late than never.
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoI don't know Russian. I'm going by Google Translate, which points me to some inconsistency in the choice of words used for menu div: at the top, they're Register, Log in and at the bottom I see SIGN UP, SIGN IN buttons. Register and SIGN UP are doing the same thing and likewise Log in and SIGN IN. I would rather be consistent with them :)
- mskvsk 10y agoThe difference between them is that it's nouns at the top and verbs in the bottom. But yeah, I think you're right :)
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoLost in translation.
- codesushi42 10y agoKudos to your success. Refreshing to see a SAAS that generates enough revenue for you to live off of instead of an overvalued SV company with no profit.
- mskvsk 10y agoThanks! And I think you're absolutely right, people got a bit tired of all this unicorn nonsense.
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoIt is refreshing and helps keep other SaaS developers from despair.
- jwildeboer 10y agoTL;DR "I scrape content from others and sell them without any credit to or rewards for the original creators" AFAICS.
- mskvsk 10y agoKindly read the article.
- jwildeboer 10y agoI did: "[I] decided to make a little tool to help me scrape the posts of my competitors and publish them to my group on a regular basis." And "I had created a spicy mix of public domain content, some supposedly copyrighted content from unknown authors, [...]" I found this particularly striking: "Usually it was the content of some authors that were difficult to track and attribute to. Sometimes it was blatant plagiarism." So you were/are well aware of the problem. But instead of Doing The Right Thing (find out source, ask for permission) you just declare that to be difficult (and yes. It is. Full ACK).
- mskvsk 10y agoYes, you're right. But my point was that it's not difficult to address this issue. It's impossible in the Russian market. That's why I asked you to reread the article (sorry, I should be more precise on the reason).
- aaron-lebo 10y agoedit: similar thread exists
- gbuk2013 10y ago> Copyright is also a legitimate concern Spoken like someone with no understanding of the local market. ;) Just as an example, until not that long ago VK was used to post music and films without any restrictions. I think this has now been stopped (not a VK user but there was a court case a few years ago about it and the government has since tightened copyright enforcement) but should give you an idea about how little concern people attach to copyright. You should also keep in mind that copyright didn't exist in the Soviet Union as such, so the idea is quite alien to people and they are still getting used to it.
- Existenceblinks 10y agoThis simple story (I know the whole story is not simple especially ones can make profit) gives me some hope. I am building a service by using elixir/phoenix (yeah it seems an opposite direction to the OP's) and is very frustrated from making decision in every module or line of code because my obsession of good practice! Thank you for sharing. I will be relaxing, writing shit and getting the service done.
- mskvsk 10y agoThe responces like yours give me immense satisfaction. That's the reason I wrote it. Thanks a lot.
- 37 10y agoMuch more than LAMP was used. I know LAMP and cannot use it to make $3700/mo.
- mskvsk 10y agoHaha, good point. But I'm sure you will, it's just a matter of time and the number of attempts.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jsumrall 10y agoPlagiarizing and stealing content is immoral and unethical. "This is just how we do things in Russia" is not an excuse. We shouldn't be promoting this behavior. Anyone with half a brain can make money stealing stuff and serving it via an API.
- mskvsk 10y agoThis is very strong words and you're right. I welcome you to come over and fix this country. And the rest of the developing world, while you at it.
- rayalez 10y agoThe issue here is not with your country but with your personal behavior. People in this thread are criticising you for actively contributing to the problem (building a tool for stealing stuff), and you're brushing it off, blaming it on your "market". Instead of warping your mind with a set of rationalizations that excuse your behavior, maybe try to accept the responsibility.
- mskvsk 10y agoFirst, I accept the responsibility to some degree, and I'm open about it. Second, it's not "a tool for stealing stuff". I just somewhat dislike people shouting moral slogans, that's all. Especially people that have little understanding of the ecosystem in general. Sorry.
- mildbow 10y agoYou saw a niche and exploited it. That's a good thing. Morality/ethics/blah blah is always based on local customs. As people were fine with doing this anyway, then there is no need to import/impose "American" morality. Don't let any of these high-horse/armchair quarterbacks tell you any different. Thanks for taking the time to write an article. Hope this doesn't introduce a bunch of competitors into your market!
- jeffehobbs 10y ago"Anyway, I always hated manual labor and decided to make a little tool to help me scrape the posts of my competitors and publish them to my group on a regular basis.” Other things you must hate: morality and ethics.
- humanrebar 10y ago> I’d also removed the posts that were obviously copyrighted. I'm not a lawyer, but in American copyright law, anything published is assumed copyrighted by someone, though it may not be clear exactly who. I'm especially not an international copyright lawyer, so I can't say how typical that is. Point being, you'll get in legal trouble for doing this. You might win a lawsuit if what you are scraping is not copyrightable (raw facts). Anyway, OP might not be in the US, so maybe all this doesn't apply, but it's generally good manners to ask someone before you copy their work, yes.
- ClassyJacket 10y agoSame is true in Australia. Copyrights are not registered. You just automatically own the copyright to anything you write unless there's a specific reason not to. You don't have to go register it, you don't have to put a copyright notice. You own the copyright as soon as you create it.
- jorams 10y agoBecause of the Berne Convention[1], that's how it works in the vast majority of the world. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
- mskvsk 10y ago> it's generally good manners to ask someone before you copy their work, yes This is what I do most of the time, if it's possible, given the environment the service operates in. I encourage people to learn about it first, and only after that to jump into conclusions.
- staticautomatic 10y ago
- imaginenore 10y agoSo you steal content and publish it as your own. You might as well torrent movies, music and books, and sell them on your website. Way more profitable.
- mskvsk 10y agoThanks for the suggestion. It's so on point.
- angry-hacker 10y agoIt is profitable. Go ahead and do it, not all countries have same laws about copyright. All the big companies break laws and are unethical.. Youtube and copyright, Uber and 'disruption' . Some small guy does shady things it's unethical and worth pointing it out so many times in this thread?
- wopwopwop 10y agoOP don't listen to the jelly haters. If you were making $100k/mo each of these hypocrites would get knocked off their high horses and copy you. Well done, congratulations!
- mskvsk 10y agoThank you so much!
- crispyambulance 10y agoTotally lost here. What service is this SaaS actually selling? What are people paying money for?
- mskvsk 10y agoNevermind it doesn't matter anymore. Just pick the side you'd like to fight on. Jk, the service helps people to post relevant content to their groups in the Russian market and charges them on a per post basis. Some of its content is of unknown origin and haven't been attributed to that unknown someone properly. People think that it's plagiarism and rightly so. That's why we have all this mess here.
- adventured 10y agoI'm equally lost. I can't tell what exactly the service is offering for sale or the point of it. Usually when I see these low sales service posts (small side projects), I expect to see something clever or unique, that's the only reason to pay attention to something yielding a small amount of sales. If you're going to tell me all you did was scrape and clone with a routine LAMP setup, I don't get the point of the post.
- brokenmachine 10y agoAFAIK, the point is that you can make money just by scraping and cloning using a routine LAMP setup. I found that interesting just by virtue of the idea that people would pay just to get more useless "content" for their groups. I suppose it's just automating a curated list.
- pharrlax 10y agoMemes, seems like
- anandkulkarni 10y agoInteresting project and a good lesson in why careful data tracking is so valuable. Thanks for sharing and congrats on the traction!
- blubb-fish 10y agoThe title consists of two parts: 1. irrelevant information 2. bragging No way I'm going to read this ...
- mskvsk 10y agoBut how are you supposed to know the full story and hate me afterwards then?
- daveroberts 10y agoHow did you handle user signup / authentication to your service? Did it piggy-back on VK's authentication?
- defrun 10y agoOP, thank you for the story you have shared with us. It inspires me and other idie devs for creating small to medium size SaaS.