5 ms·

Pinboard is my secret weapon for those obnoxious lists of citations I sometimes get to spackle onto the end of comments on the internet. I've been on there sinc

Pinboard is my secret weapon for those obnoxious lists of citations I sometimes get to spackle onto the end of comments on the internet. I've been on there since December 27, 2010 (Merry Christmas to me), and currently have 8,698 bookmarks across 1,544 different tags. I'd have a few hundred more if I could hurry up and transfer all the open tabs from ios safari. ...so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers. I've dabbled with the API enough that I could pull everything down on fairly short notice, but I sure hope I won't need to anytime soon.

dna_polymerase 6y ago
I can recommend PushPin on iOS for that, it's another ten bucks (once) but well worth it if you are constantly on iOS devices and need Pinboard.
- thaumaturgy 6y ago
  Nice! Thank you.
zimpenfish 6y ago
December 2009, 64179 bookmarks (2298 dead!), 2998 tags. Almost all of those are automatic, though, from Twitter/Instagram/Pocket/RSS favouriting thanks to their own account linking and IFTTT.
bachmeier 6y ago
> ...so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers My story might be relevant. I only recently learned about Pinboard. $22/year isn't terrible, but it's just a bookmarking service. Free trial? Nope - you need to pull out your credit card and fork over $22. You get seven days to request a refund. (Will I actually get it? No idea who's holding my money.) He's happy to boast about competitors disappearing, but I use OneNote, and Microsoft isn't going anywhere. Yes, Microsoft is horrible, but they're also spectacularly wealthy. Ultimately I didn't subscribe. Businesses need to ask from time to time if their business model is the right one for the current year. Expecting people that don't know you to give you $22 for a bookmarking service, without a trial period, might be wishful thinking in 2020.
- cpach 6y ago
  To me it’s definitely worth the price. Dunno why he doesn’t do trials though. Maybe it’s not worth the hassle? Those interested in the service can get a good feeling for it by looking at the product tour and recent bookmarks. And if you sign up and don’t like it then $22 is not that much money[1]. (No idea if he does refunds or not.) [1] In a Western country that is. I know $22 can be a lot of money depending on the circumstances.
  - AJRF 6y ago
    He does refunds, I got one from him, after a very short delay. I got the feeling it was a pain in the ass for him to do it, but he did it anyway. I later resubscribed at a higher price (I am fickle and decided I did actually want to use the service) - which I wouldn't have done had the customer service been poor when I asked for the refund first time.
    - idlewords 6y ago
      It's not a pain in the ass at all; for Stripe it's a single click operation for me. With PayPal it requires a brief trip to their site. Glad you decided to come back!
      - AJRF 6y ago
        Great to hear I didn't put you into too much difficulty! On reading my comment back it seemed a bit snarky - just want to be clear to all it was nothing Maciej said in his emails around the refund that made me think it was a pain to do - he was perfectly accommodating - I just personally assumed that it would have been annoying admin to issue the refund. Thanks for making Pinboard Maciej.
  - bachmeier 6y ago
    > And if you sign up and don’t like it then $22 is not that much money[1]. ?? I'm not giving $22 to someone I don't know and then saying, "Well the service sucks, but it's not much money." He claims to give refunds, but the time cost for me - assuming I actually get it - would be far more than $22. Again, this is 2020, the world has moved on from this type of business model.
mcherm 6y ago
> currently have 8,698 bookmarks across 1,544 different tags I'm at 17,614 bookmarks 2,530 tags. And it's incredibly valuable to be able to go back and find things, even things I bookmarked and categorized a long time ago. > so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers. I agree. In fact, that was the second thing I noticed, right after the declining revenue numbers. Earlier this year I went ahead and paid for 5 years of archiving service (my account predates the switch away from a one-time payment so basic bookmarking is free) partly because I trust maciej to still be around in 5 years but mostly because I wanted to be sure I'm supporting the site. I STRONGLY want this to be profitable and successful because it is such a valuable service.
- truculent 6y ago
  If you read his 10 year post he mentions the drop in subscribers is due to his neglecting much needed maintainence and feature additions while working on other commitments (such as The Great Slate). Having made the requisite upgrades and so on, he is now, presumably, able to devote more time to these issues.
floatingatoll 6y ago
You're worrying about a business with a estimated minimum profit margin of 79%, using the most pessimistic assumptions I could think of. I wouldn't be worrying yet. In 2017^: revenue was $259k, costs were estimated $17k, archives 31.8TBy, 126M URLs. In 2020: revenue was $212k, costs were not specified, archives 82TBy, 192M URLs. Archives are 2.58x higher, URLs are 1.52x higher. So taking the higher of the two multiples and pessimistically multiplying the 2017 costs of $17k (the cloud has gotten cheaper but let's ignore that), we get $44k in costs (this is probably too high by 2x), leaving a profit of $168k. Users dropped from 29K to 19K, so you should start worrying when users reaches 5K, assuming that costs scale linearly with data (which they definitely do not). In all likelihood, you probably don't need to worry until users reaches 2K. At current rate, that's probably about a decade, assuming ten more years of no changes to the site (such as mobile support) and etc. ^ https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/07/pinboard_turns_seven/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/07/pinboard_turns_seven/
- idlewords 6y ago
  Thanks for reassuring these message board Aristotles that my business is solvent! A couple of data points to help you calculate: * active users is not the same as paying users, it's people who did something in the last month * costs in 2020 will be something like $17,000 for hosting plus $8,000 for hardware and a few thousand bucks in travel/hotel costs to the colo. So say $30K. * the reason hardware costs are high in 2020 is... massive expansion, so maybe people in this thread are missing something
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    I am momentarily saddened that my estimate of overestimate was overestimated. Thank you for the actual data, hello LTNS, and congratulations on 11 years :)

dna_polymerase 6y ago

I can recommend PushPin on iOS for that, it's another ten bucks (once) but well worth it if you are constantly on iOS devices and need Pinboard.

thaumaturgy 6y ago
Nice! Thank you.

zimpenfish 6y ago

December 2009, 64179 bookmarks (2298 dead!), 2998 tags. Almost all of those are automatic, though, from Twitter/Instagram/Pocket/RSS favouriting thanks to their own account linking and IFTTT.

bachmeier 6y ago

> ...so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers My story might be relevant. I only recently learned about Pinboard. $22/year isn't terrible, but it's just a bookmarking service. Free trial? Nope - you need to pull out your credit card and fork over $22. You get seven days to request a refund. (Will I actually get it? No idea who's holding my money.) He's happy to boast about competitors disappearing, but I use OneNote, and Microsoft isn't going anywhere. Yes, Microsoft is horrible, but they're also spectacularly wealthy. Ultimately I didn't subscribe. Businesses need to ask from time to time if their business model is the right one for the current year. Expecting people that don't know you to give you $22 for a bookmarking service, without a trial period, might be wishful thinking in 2020.

cpach 6y ago
To me it’s definitely worth the price. Dunno why he doesn’t do trials though. Maybe it’s not worth the hassle? Those interested in the service can get a good feeling for it by looking at the product tour and recent bookmarks. And if you sign up and don’t like it then $22 is not that much money[1]. (No idea if he does refunds or not.) [1] In a Western country that is. I know $22 can be a lot of money depending on the circumstances.
- AJRF 6y ago
  He does refunds, I got one from him, after a very short delay. I got the feeling it was a pain in the ass for him to do it, but he did it anyway. I later resubscribed at a higher price (I am fickle and decided I did actually want to use the service) - which I wouldn't have done had the customer service been poor when I asked for the refund first time.
  - idlewords 6y ago
    It's not a pain in the ass at all; for Stripe it's a single click operation for me. With PayPal it requires a brief trip to their site. Glad you decided to come back!
    - AJRF 6y ago
      Great to hear I didn't put you into too much difficulty! On reading my comment back it seemed a bit snarky - just want to be clear to all it was nothing Maciej said in his emails around the refund that made me think it was a pain to do - he was perfectly accommodating - I just personally assumed that it would have been annoying admin to issue the refund. Thanks for making Pinboard Maciej.
- bachmeier 6y ago
  > And if you sign up and don’t like it then $22 is not that much money[1]. ?? I'm not giving $22 to someone I don't know and then saying, "Well the service sucks, but it's not much money." He claims to give refunds, but the time cost for me - assuming I actually get it - would be far more than $22. Again, this is 2020, the world has moved on from this type of business model.

mcherm 6y ago

> currently have 8,698 bookmarks across 1,544 different tags I'm at 17,614 bookmarks 2,530 tags. And it's incredibly valuable to be able to go back and find things, even things I bookmarked and categorized a long time ago. > so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers. I agree. In fact, that was the second thing I noticed, right after the declining revenue numbers. Earlier this year I went ahead and paid for 5 years of archiving service (my account predates the switch away from a one-time payment so basic bookmarking is free) partly because I trust maciej to still be around in 5 years but mostly because I wanted to be sure I'm supporting the site. I STRONGLY want this to be profitable and successful because it is such a valuable service.

truculent 6y ago
If you read his 10 year post he mentions the drop in subscribers is due to his neglecting much needed maintainence and feature additions while working on other commitments (such as The Great Slate). Having made the requisite upgrades and so on, he is now, presumably, able to devote more time to these issues.

floatingatoll 6y ago

You're worrying about a business with a estimated minimum profit margin of 79%, using the most pessimistic assumptions I could think of. I wouldn't be worrying yet. In 2017^: revenue was $259k, costs were estimated $17k, archives 31.8TBy, 126M URLs. In 2020: revenue was $212k, costs were not specified, archives 82TBy, 192M URLs. Archives are 2.58x higher, URLs are 1.52x higher. So taking the higher of the two multiples and pessimistically multiplying the 2017 costs of $17k (the cloud has gotten cheaper but let's ignore that), we get $44k in costs (this is probably too high by 2x), leaving a profit of $168k. Users dropped from 29K to 19K, so you should start worrying when users reaches 5K, assuming that costs scale linearly with data (which they definitely do not). In all likelihood, you probably don't need to worry until users reaches 2K. At current rate, that's probably about a decade, assuming ten more years of no changes to the site (such as mobile support) and etc. ^ https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/07/pinboard_turns_seven/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/07/pinboard_turns_seven/

idlewords 6y ago
Thanks for reassuring these message board Aristotles that my business is solvent! A couple of data points to help you calculate: * active users is not the same as paying users, it's people who did something in the last month * costs in 2020 will be something like $17,000 for hosting plus $8,000 for hardware and a few thousand bucks in travel/hotel costs to the colo. So say $30K. * the reason hardware costs are high in 2020 is... massive expansion, so maybe people in this thread are missing something
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  I am momentarily saddened that my estimate of overestimate was overestimated. Thank you for the actual data, hello LTNS, and congratulations on 11 years :)