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It's rough. General question for the HN crowd: If one is passionate about building dev tools then what's a good path for monetization? The options seem so very

It's rough. General question for the HN crowd: If one is passionate about building dev tools then what's a good path for monetization? The options seem so very limited. Fixed prices are nowhere near enough to cover the costs of supporting a complex app and paying for 50+ subscription services doesn't make sense for developers either. So far all I've seen is what effectively amounts to sponsorships by FAANG type companies to build OSS dev tools.

2019-nCoV 6y ago
The problem is every second developer is also passionate about building dev tools. The market is naturally over-saturated. The world does not need more dev tools. There are bountiful real-world problems out there itching to be solved with software for the developer who can overcome their one-dimensional interests, to stop harbouring in the safe waters of the abstract and embrace the real world. Take up a hobby as distinct from programming as you can tolerate. Instead of that next industry meetup, go give a hand in your local community.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I dunno, I really enjoy building dev tools that scratch my own itch. Others are always missing something that’s important to me.
asnyder 6y ago
That's true, but in my opinion unless there's actually some active on-going service, just charge for new versions and/or maintenance. This whole saturation of everyone charging everyone $10/month is tiring and frustratingly expensive as they know most will not pause or meter their billing in periods of inactivity. There's still examples of software developers charging for software. For example, https://www.just-great-software.com https://www.just-great-software.com only sells their software, they don't even charge for new versions or updates most of the time nowadays. Yes it may not make a fortune, but with some ad-buying maintenance, upgrades, etc. there's likely an okay business.
lemming 6y ago
I make a great living selling Cursive (https://cursive-ide.com https://cursive-ide.com). I use perpetual licensing with a year of updates, $99 for personal and $199 for commercial licences. Renewing for more updates initially costs half that and then goes up linearly to 75% over the first year after update period expiry. I also have a free non-commercial licence for OSS work/student work/personal hacking. I figured that I would sell about the same number of personal and commercial licences since there are still a lot of hobbyists dabbling with Clojure, but in the end the vast majority of my sales and revenue are commercial licences. Most of my revenue is new licence sales, but I see a fair number of renewals too. Short answer: a good path for monetization is just charging for your work. It's kind of old fashioned but it does work, even for dev tools. If your product solves a real problem companies are willing to pay to make the problem go away, especially if your product is more polished than the (presumably OSS) alternatives.
yohannparis 6y ago
If you build a tool, I will buy it. If you keep improving it, then sell the update. Sometimes I like the product and do not have the cashflow to upgrade, so I will do it later. But with subscriptions, it's just a trap.

2019-nCoV 6y ago

The problem is every second developer is also passionate about building dev tools. The market is naturally over-saturated. The world does not need more dev tools. There are bountiful real-world problems out there itching to be solved with software for the developer who can overcome their one-dimensional interests, to stop harbouring in the safe waters of the abstract and embrace the real world. Take up a hobby as distinct from programming as you can tolerate. Instead of that next industry meetup, go give a hand in your local community.

Aeolun 6y ago
I dunno, I really enjoy building dev tools that scratch my own itch. Others are always missing something that’s important to me.

asnyder 6y ago

That's true, but in my opinion unless there's actually some active on-going service, just charge for new versions and/or maintenance. This whole saturation of everyone charging everyone $10/month is tiring and frustratingly expensive as they know most will not pause or meter their billing in periods of inactivity. There's still examples of software developers charging for software. For example, https://www.just-great-software.com https://www.just-great-software.com only sells their software, they don't even charge for new versions or updates most of the time nowadays. Yes it may not make a fortune, but with some ad-buying maintenance, upgrades, etc. there's likely an okay business.

lemming 6y ago

I make a great living selling Cursive (https://cursive-ide.com https://cursive-ide.com). I use perpetual licensing with a year of updates, $99 for personal and $199 for commercial licences. Renewing for more updates initially costs half that and then goes up linearly to 75% over the first year after update period expiry. I also have a free non-commercial licence for OSS work/student work/personal hacking. I figured that I would sell about the same number of personal and commercial licences since there are still a lot of hobbyists dabbling with Clojure, but in the end the vast majority of my sales and revenue are commercial licences. Most of my revenue is new licence sales, but I see a fair number of renewals too. Short answer: a good path for monetization is just charging for your work. It's kind of old fashioned but it does work, even for dev tools. If your product solves a real problem companies are willing to pay to make the problem go away, especially if your product is more polished than the (presumably OSS) alternatives.

yohannparis 6y ago

If you build a tool, I will buy it. If you keep improving it, then sell the update. Sometimes I like the product and do not have the cashflow to upgrade, so I will do it later. But with subscriptions, it's just a trap.