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Pinboard has a slowly increasing price as more users join. It was only $4.21 the day I signed up, and is now up to $9.25. I'm really glad I joined before the o

Pinboard has a slowly increasing price as more users join. It was only $4.21 the day I signed up, and is now up to $9.25. I'm really glad I joined before the onslaught. :-)

mkinsella 16y ago
With the signup fee currently at $9.25 and a pricing scheme of fee = (number of users * $0.001) that means there are currently approximately 9250 registered users. Who remembers calculus and can calculate how much revenue they have generated, assuming their signup fee started at $0.01?
- idlewords 16y ago
  The pricing scheme is (number of users * $0.001 * C) where C is a multiplier that has changed with time. On top of that a significant portion of total revenue comes from archival accounts. This urge to reverse-engineer our total number of users when I actually share that information in the post baffles me.
  - mkinsella 16y ago
    Reverse-engineering is much more fun
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    "where C is a multiplier that has changed with time" Well, there's your bug :D
- sam 16y ago
  Assuming the fee as a function of users is linear and started at zero, the average user is paying 1/2 of the current price. So if the current price is $9.25, the average user is paying $4.625 per month. So they have made 9250*$4.625 = $42,781.25.
  - mkinsella 16y ago
    It isn't per month -- it's a one-time signup fee.
    - Macha 16y ago
      Archiving is annual.
    - eapen 16y ago
      I didn’t realize it was a one-time signup fee. Thanks for pointing that out.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - idlewords 16y ago
    Some small corrections: - Pricing didn't start at 0.01 - We don't have 9250 users (hint: see the linked article!) - The price doesn't go up by $0.001 per user Other than that, you're dead on.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Stormbringer 16y ago
      Let U = Users Let Price = U / (1000 x (LOG(U) - 2.44)) Disclaimer: $fuzzy_math_fudge_factor = TRUE
- kyteland 16y ago
  You don't exactly need calculus for that one, just n*(n+1)/2. That works out to $47,785.875. Assuming they round up to the nearest penny on each transaction you get $42,827.50.
- schwabacher 16y ago
  You don't need calculus. The mean price per user is $9.25 / 2, so they have taken in about 9250 * $9.25 / 2 = $42,781.25. Not bad!
- gavingmiller 16y ago
  maciej has stated previously[1] that his revenue is greater than the $42K-$47K being approximated: > Right now it's 18k users, with 11k active. The signup fee has brought in just over $120k, most of that coming in December (thanks, Yahoo!). [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2205417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2205417
pnathan 16y ago
That's a really interesting pricing model. I should rummage around and see if he's mentioned why he chose that.
- idlewords 16y ago
  I got the idea from joshu. I wanted a gatekeeping fee for spam prevention but had trouble figuring out what to charge. He suggested a monotonically increasing signup fee.
  - isnotchicago 16y ago
    Are you increasing the rates for Archival accounts, too, or just the Basic?
    - idlewords 16y ago
      Archiving has always cost $25/year, and will stay that way. Only the signup fee goes up. The practical result is that the upgrade becomes progressively cheaper (since the signup fee is deductible from the first year's subscription)
      - reeses 16y ago
        Archiving is the best deal around. $25 and I have 1.25GB of my past ten years of bookmarks saved. (Minus a few hundred dead links from the early days of del.icio.us.) I bookmark so I can look at something later, and the unpredictable perishability of the web defeats that purpose. Archiving snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. :-) I would like to see tag hierarchies à la del.icio.us, if you were bored and wanted to implement them.
  - ohashi 16y ago
    At some point you're losing more potential users than you're gaining because the price has gone too high. Do you think about that? How will you handle it?

Pinboard has a slowly increasing price as more users join. It was only $4.21 the day I signed up, and is now up to $9.25. I'm really glad I joined before the onslaught. :-)

mkinsella 16y ago

With the signup fee currently at $9.25 and a pricing scheme of fee = (number of users * $0.001) that means there are currently approximately 9250 registered users. Who remembers calculus and can calculate how much revenue they have generated, assuming their signup fee started at $0.01?

idlewords 16y ago
The pricing scheme is (number of users * $0.001 * C) where C is a multiplier that has changed with time. On top of that a significant portion of total revenue comes from archival accounts. This urge to reverse-engineer our total number of users when I actually share that information in the post baffles me.
- mkinsella 16y ago
  Reverse-engineering is much more fun
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  "where C is a multiplier that has changed with time" Well, there's your bug :D
sam 16y ago
Assuming the fee as a function of users is linear and started at zero, the average user is paying 1/2 of the current price. So if the current price is $9.25, the average user is paying $4.625 per month. So they have made 9250*$4.625 = $42,781.25.
- mkinsella 16y ago
  It isn't per month -- it's a one-time signup fee.
  - Macha 16y ago
    Archiving is annual.
  - eapen 16y ago
    I didn’t realize it was a one-time signup fee. Thanks for pointing that out.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- idlewords 16y ago
  Some small corrections: - Pricing didn't start at 0.01 - We don't have 9250 users (hint: see the linked article!) - The price doesn't go up by $0.001 per user Other than that, you're dead on.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    Let U = Users Let Price = U / (1000 x (LOG(U) - 2.44)) Disclaimer: $fuzzy_math_fudge_factor = TRUE
kyteland 16y ago
You don't exactly need calculus for that one, just n*(n+1)/2. That works out to $47,785.875. Assuming they round up to the nearest penny on each transaction you get $42,827.50.
schwabacher 16y ago
You don't need calculus. The mean price per user is $9.25 / 2, so they have taken in about 9250 * $9.25 / 2 = $42,781.25. Not bad!
gavingmiller 16y ago
maciej has stated previously[1] that his revenue is greater than the $42K-$47K being approximated: > Right now it's 18k users, with 11k active. The signup fee has brought in just over $120k, most of that coming in December (thanks, Yahoo!). [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2205417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2205417

pnathan 16y ago

That's a really interesting pricing model. I should rummage around and see if he's mentioned why he chose that.

idlewords 16y ago
I got the idea from joshu. I wanted a gatekeeping fee for spam prevention but had trouble figuring out what to charge. He suggested a monotonically increasing signup fee.
- isnotchicago 16y ago
  Are you increasing the rates for Archival accounts, too, or just the Basic?
  - idlewords 16y ago
    Archiving has always cost $25/year, and will stay that way. Only the signup fee goes up. The practical result is that the upgrade becomes progressively cheaper (since the signup fee is deductible from the first year's subscription)
    - reeses 16y ago
      Archiving is the best deal around. $25 and I have 1.25GB of my past ten years of bookmarks saved. (Minus a few hundred dead links from the early days of del.icio.us.) I bookmark so I can look at something later, and the unpredictable perishability of the web defeats that purpose. Archiving snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. :-) I would like to see tag hierarchies à la del.icio.us, if you were bored and wanted to implement them.
- ohashi 16y ago
  At some point you're losing more potential users than you're gaining because the price has gone too high. Do you think about that? How will you handle it?