3 ms·

They aren't charging, it's free. The Patreon is donations. Put up a paywall of $1 a month, and I GUARANTEE you will make more than $41 a month.

prophesi 8y ago
Sure, they may make less money, but your major gripes with free services: "It's a valuable enough service to charge a nominal fee, be it lifetime or whatever to ensure it sticks around, and give the developer incentive to improve upon it." These will all be resolved once the Patreon hits the $100/mo mark, which I GUARANTEE will be reached pretty quickly if it is indeed a valuable enough service.
- overcast 8y ago
  Considering that's not even identified on the front page of f5bot, doubtful. People are more apt to pay for something, when they have no choice.
craftyguy 8y ago
> and I GUARANTEE Only if people think it is worth it. $12/year for notifications is a bit much, IMHO.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Depends. I actually started writing a similar project on the side for HN only, just because I hope getting notifications for a bunch of topics will reduce the amount of time spent refreshing the frontpage here. This translates to life satisfaction and sometimes real money (procrastination is a bitch when you're freelancing). I'm going to test this particular project now, instead of finishing my own, and if it works well enough (over the next couple days/weeks), I am going to pay it $10/month.
  - h-b 8y ago
    Keyword alerts are interesting, and it would be pretty easy and relatively cheap to do. I've already built a little app with a Telegram interface that allows you to subscribe to users' comments and posts. Every x minutes you get a message from the bot with the post titles or comment bodies for the users you follow. I'm curious if it might be useful to expand my tool to be able to track keywords, and if there'd be enough interest for me to make it public-facing on some server. But for now it's proven surprisingly useful. I check HN less and just click on the links that arrive in my (muted) channel (I got here because I followed you, actually!) The biggest annoyance right now is that I regularly get an update that will contain a number of comments by a number of users I follow, but all in the same thread. it's a bit annoying that I have to process a bunch extra requests to get to the root post (at least with the official API?).
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > I got here because I followed you, actually! Huh. I'm flattered :). In a way, I think there's a triad of required features for productive use of discussion groups: following topics that interest you, following people whose comments you like, and getting notifications when someone talks to you. So following users and keywords are two big things missing for me (notifications on replies I get through HN Notify http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ by 'dangrossman). I find that I often miss discussions on exactly the topics that interest me, because for some reason they don't show up on the frontpage at the time I'm looking; I hope a keyword-based search will plug that hole, and decrease the urge to refresh the frontpage so often. A keyword-based system doesn't have to use e-mail - in fact, I think it would be better as a dashboard (the side project was working on was actually going to be a simple webpage with a list of matches). The benefits of such solution would be that a) you can easily de-duplicate matches, solving your biggest annoyance and avoiding spamming someone's inbox, and b) reducing the distraction factor a bit more for people who didn't yet decide to disable notifications on their e-mails. That Telegram tool of yours - any chance I could take it for a test drive?
      - h-b 8y ago
        > > I got here because I followed you, actually! > Huh. I'm flattered :). Well, you're quite prolific and the signal to noise ratio is pretty decent :). Speaking of: it's much more interesting than I thought even just to see the frequency, time, and interactions of users on HN via Telegram updates. For example, I've found that some users seem to be active at the same times, and (as a result?) get into discussions with each other regularly. I would've never noticed just by my (compulsive) regular browsing. > In a way, I think there's a triad of required features for productive use of discussion groups: following topics that interest you, following people whose comments you like, and getting notifications when someone talks to you. So following users and keywords are two big things missing for me (notifications on replies I get through HN Notify http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ by 'dangrossman). I find that I often miss discussions on exactly the topics that interest me, because for some reason they don't show up on the frontpage at the time I'm looking; I hope a keyword-based search will plug that hole, and decrease the urge to refresh the frontpage so often. Yeah, good observation. I've concluded (and experienced) the same. I chose following users as a first itch to scratch because it seemed easiest and most useful at first. notifications when responded/talked to would be a close second (but I also use hnreplies.com for that; thanks Dan!). The keyword one I'm a bit more uncertain about. I use hn.algolia.com quite regularly for a few keyword searches, and I suspect that 1) there's a bit too much 'noise' for many keywords, and 2) it's quite a bit heavier to implement. I think ideally it'd be a bit 'smarter' somehow than just keywords (even if just AND/OR/WITHOUT, but ideally taking into account upvotes or replies). But how much of a problem this is depends on the channel used. For example, having a dedicated Telegram conversation for a keyword would probably be okay. aggregating this stuff in an email less so, at least not without more contextual information. > A keyword-based system doesn't have to use e-mail - in fact, I think it would be better as a dashboard (the side project was working on was actually going to be a simple webpage with a list of matches). The benefits of such solution would be that a) you can easily de-duplicate matches, solving your biggest annoyance and avoiding spamming someone's inbox, and b) reducing the distraction factor a bit more for people who didn't yet decide to disable notifications on their e-mails. Yeah, agreed. The way I see it, the tool I'd like to build or pay for would allow you to pick 1) a source website/page, 2) specify this a bit (elements on page, number of updates for source, whatever is appropriate), 3) specify update frequency, and 4) specify the channel for updates (email, telegram/IM, RSS reader-style interface). Ideally said tool would be able to suggest elements to 'target', or offer to follow the RSS feed instead (when available). > That Telegram tool of yours - any chance I could take it for a test drive? It's an unholy mess of Elixir code right now, and I've never put any of my stuff on github yet, so that's a bit of a barrier, but I'd be happy to let you know if I've got it in some kind of shape that I'd be comfortable sharing :). I'm of half a mind to expand it anyways. That said, it's pretty simple. Checking for new user posts is trivial, as is sending a Telegram message (just a GET request). most of the effort would be to make this work for multiple consumers.
- edoceo 8y ago
  Couldn't build it yourself for less than $100. $12/yr is a good deal
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
Patreon is nominally about donations, but depending on your level of support, you get different "rewards" for your money. I believe that they were originally for just providing swag - Send a creator a few bucks, and they'll send you a few stickers, send them a bunch and they'll send you an autographed piece. But many Patreon pages offer real features at certain tiers: real products as rewards, exclusive access to materials, or, in this case, exclusive functions from the service. > Power User > $7 or more per month ∙ 0 of 25 patrons > As a Power User, you'll get access to exclusive features such as the ability to monitor for common keywords and a higher daily hit limit. I'm actively working on adding new features too. It's like a subscription, but with slightly less of a service guarantee. It's just a convenient way to get paid. The page does say "The service is completely free. There is no artificially low usage limit, and there is no up-sell." and he could do a better job of monetizing it by, say, limiting each account to 50 free notifications and requiring registration of a new account after that or offering an up-sell to a $1 paid tier. If you want to let some people use it casually for free, it's really hard to charge others who would be willing to pay more.

prophesi 8y ago

Sure, they may make less money, but your major gripes with free services: "It's a valuable enough service to charge a nominal fee, be it lifetime or whatever to ensure it sticks around, and give the developer incentive to improve upon it." These will all be resolved once the Patreon hits the $100/mo mark, which I GUARANTEE will be reached pretty quickly if it is indeed a valuable enough service.

overcast 8y ago
Considering that's not even identified on the front page of f5bot, doubtful. People are more apt to pay for something, when they have no choice.

craftyguy 8y ago

> and I GUARANTEE Only if people think it is worth it. $12/year for notifications is a bit much, IMHO.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Depends. I actually started writing a similar project on the side for HN only, just because I hope getting notifications for a bunch of topics will reduce the amount of time spent refreshing the frontpage here. This translates to life satisfaction and sometimes real money (procrastination is a bitch when you're freelancing). I'm going to test this particular project now, instead of finishing my own, and if it works well enough (over the next couple days/weeks), I am going to pay it $10/month.
- h-b 8y ago
  Keyword alerts are interesting, and it would be pretty easy and relatively cheap to do. I've already built a little app with a Telegram interface that allows you to subscribe to users' comments and posts. Every x minutes you get a message from the bot with the post titles or comment bodies for the users you follow. I'm curious if it might be useful to expand my tool to be able to track keywords, and if there'd be enough interest for me to make it public-facing on some server. But for now it's proven surprisingly useful. I check HN less and just click on the links that arrive in my (muted) channel (I got here because I followed you, actually!) The biggest annoyance right now is that I regularly get an update that will contain a number of comments by a number of users I follow, but all in the same thread. it's a bit annoying that I have to process a bunch extra requests to get to the root post (at least with the official API?).
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > I got here because I followed you, actually! Huh. I'm flattered :). In a way, I think there's a triad of required features for productive use of discussion groups: following topics that interest you, following people whose comments you like, and getting notifications when someone talks to you. So following users and keywords are two big things missing for me (notifications on replies I get through HN Notify http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ by 'dangrossman). I find that I often miss discussions on exactly the topics that interest me, because for some reason they don't show up on the frontpage at the time I'm looking; I hope a keyword-based search will plug that hole, and decrease the urge to refresh the frontpage so often. A keyword-based system doesn't have to use e-mail - in fact, I think it would be better as a dashboard (the side project was working on was actually going to be a simple webpage with a list of matches). The benefits of such solution would be that a) you can easily de-duplicate matches, solving your biggest annoyance and avoiding spamming someone's inbox, and b) reducing the distraction factor a bit more for people who didn't yet decide to disable notifications on their e-mails. That Telegram tool of yours - any chance I could take it for a test drive?
    - h-b 8y ago
      > > I got here because I followed you, actually! > Huh. I'm flattered :). Well, you're quite prolific and the signal to noise ratio is pretty decent :). Speaking of: it's much more interesting than I thought even just to see the frequency, time, and interactions of users on HN via Telegram updates. For example, I've found that some users seem to be active at the same times, and (as a result?) get into discussions with each other regularly. I would've never noticed just by my (compulsive) regular browsing. > In a way, I think there's a triad of required features for productive use of discussion groups: following topics that interest you, following people whose comments you like, and getting notifications when someone talks to you. So following users and keywords are two big things missing for me (notifications on replies I get through HN Notify http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ by 'dangrossman). I find that I often miss discussions on exactly the topics that interest me, because for some reason they don't show up on the frontpage at the time I'm looking; I hope a keyword-based search will plug that hole, and decrease the urge to refresh the frontpage so often. Yeah, good observation. I've concluded (and experienced) the same. I chose following users as a first itch to scratch because it seemed easiest and most useful at first. notifications when responded/talked to would be a close second (but I also use hnreplies.com for that; thanks Dan!). The keyword one I'm a bit more uncertain about. I use hn.algolia.com quite regularly for a few keyword searches, and I suspect that 1) there's a bit too much 'noise' for many keywords, and 2) it's quite a bit heavier to implement. I think ideally it'd be a bit 'smarter' somehow than just keywords (even if just AND/OR/WITHOUT, but ideally taking into account upvotes or replies). But how much of a problem this is depends on the channel used. For example, having a dedicated Telegram conversation for a keyword would probably be okay. aggregating this stuff in an email less so, at least not without more contextual information. > A keyword-based system doesn't have to use e-mail - in fact, I think it would be better as a dashboard (the side project was working on was actually going to be a simple webpage with a list of matches). The benefits of such solution would be that a) you can easily de-duplicate matches, solving your biggest annoyance and avoiding spamming someone's inbox, and b) reducing the distraction factor a bit more for people who didn't yet decide to disable notifications on their e-mails. Yeah, agreed. The way I see it, the tool I'd like to build or pay for would allow you to pick 1) a source website/page, 2) specify this a bit (elements on page, number of updates for source, whatever is appropriate), 3) specify update frequency, and 4) specify the channel for updates (email, telegram/IM, RSS reader-style interface). Ideally said tool would be able to suggest elements to 'target', or offer to follow the RSS feed instead (when available). > That Telegram tool of yours - any chance I could take it for a test drive? It's an unholy mess of Elixir code right now, and I've never put any of my stuff on github yet, so that's a bit of a barrier, but I'd be happy to let you know if I've got it in some kind of shape that I'd be comfortable sharing :). I'm of half a mind to expand it anyways. That said, it's pretty simple. Checking for new user posts is trivial, as is sending a Telegram message (just a GET request). most of the effort would be to make this work for multiple consumers.
edoceo 8y ago
Couldn't build it yourself for less than $100. $12/yr is a good deal

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

Patreon is nominally about donations, but depending on your level of support, you get different "rewards" for your money. I believe that they were originally for just providing swag - Send a creator a few bucks, and they'll send you a few stickers, send them a bunch and they'll send you an autographed piece. But many Patreon pages offer real features at certain tiers: real products as rewards, exclusive access to materials, or, in this case, exclusive functions from the service. > Power User > $7 or more per month ∙ 0 of 25 patrons > As a Power User, you'll get access to exclusive features such as the ability to monitor for common keywords and a higher daily hit limit. I'm actively working on adding new features too. It's like a subscription, but with slightly less of a service guarantee. It's just a convenient way to get paid. The page does say "The service is completely free. There is no artificially low usage limit, and there is no up-sell." and he could do a better job of monetizing it by, say, limiting each account to 50 free notifications and requiring registration of a new account after that or offering an up-sell to a $1 paid tier. If you want to let some people use it casually for free, it's really hard to charge others who would be willing to pay more.