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Supporting a free language study application?
Wow, all it seems that I do is ask Hacker News for advice. And this is long, so I apologize in advance.
Anyhow, I've written a web-based language study application that will be in beta for the next month or so. The application is a vocabulary-list manager that uses adaptive psychological modeling (similar to SuperMemo) to provide for rapid assimilation of new vocabulary, as well as a bunch of built-in dictionary data and NLP magic to manage individual user’s study lists, all with a dead-simple workflow.
I use it to retain vocabulary from books that I read in Japanese, as I just need to throw the words I’ve had to look up, as well as the occasional example sentence, into a big text box, hit ‘submit’, and the system handles everything for me. I don’t need to look up words in a dictionary, or manage a big pile of flashcards. I don’t even need to add examples if I don’t want to, because there’s a quarter-million of them pre-loaded into the database.
My application also automatically adds new words that appear on language proficiency exams, based on vocabulary that I’ve already added, and the system is smart enough to provide alternate drill methods for things like kanji, grammar, and so on. The system is modular, so it can be used for languages other than Japanese; a friend of mine is writing a Chinese language module, and I’m going to write an English module after I finish with the Japanese-specific bits.
I've been studying with this application for just a few weeks now, after taking nearly a year off from studying Japanese, and the results have been fantastic. A handful of other people have also started using it with similarly positive results, and I can honestly say this is the best study tool I’ve ever used.
So, here's the problem: I don't want to monetize this application and turn this into a 'product'. Most of the magic, including all the NLP tools and language data, have been produced by other researchers, and I think it would be a bit hypocritical to make use of their freely-available work, and not be willing to give back to the community.
Having just graduated from school, however, I am far from wealthy, and so it would be nice if the application paid for its own hosting costs. A lot of data-munching happens on the back-end, so the system will require a dedicated EC2 instance.
I don’t want to use ads, because they would just distract people when they’re trying to study, and relying on donations from college students doesn’t seem like a solid game-plan, either.
So, I was thinking of offering the application on a low-cost subscription basis. People can try the system out for free for a month or so, and if they feel that it is a useful study aid, pay a small fee (around $20) for a yearly subscription.
Does this sound like a sensible plan, or can anybody offer some other good ideas for covering the hosting costs for an otherwise free application?
- mechanical_fish 18y agoAs far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with your plan. So, in the absence of anything to say but "go for it!", let me work on your philosophy a little. When you say: I don't want to monetize this application and turn this into a 'product'. You're wrong. That's exactly what you want to do. That's exactly what you're planning to do. There's nothing wrong with that. There's certainly nothing hypocritical about that. Yes, "most of the magic" was built by other people, but that's true of everything we do in life. Most of my professional tools were built by other people. A lot of them are products, but some are open-source projects. Linus Torvalds is a much smarter programmer than I, and he works a lot harder, and (thank god) I get to use his freely-available work without paying him, and then I get to charge money for doing so. Because Linus gave it to me for that very purpose! (And I'm very grateful.) I'm saying this because you sound like someone who is used to thinking of his time as cheap -- and like you can't quite believe that this thing you've built is a "real" product. (Which it is; it sounds more real than 50% of the products on the web.) And I wouldn't want to see you do something silly, like price your product without considering the cost of (e.g.) your time. [1] You need to be paid for the development time you've put in, and for the maintenance time you're going to put in, and for the opportunity cost of keeping this thing alive instead of devoting all of your time to some other project. Otherwise, you will ultimately abandon this project and go do something else -- something that will make a profit for you, and pay you a living wage, and let you go to conferences and take people out on dates. What I'm trying to say is: Embrace the fact that you're going into business, and take it seriously. [2] Don't undersell yourself or your product, and for god's sake don't price it at cost without paying the system administrator and the management team (i.e. yourself). Remember that it's really easy to lower an asking price and really hard to raise it afterwards. Test the market a little, see what competing products are charging, and go for it! [1] For all I know $20 a year is overpriced for an app like yours. I don't know what your market is like, or your competition. But consider charging by the month instead and asking $9.99. -- or, at the very least, sell 6 month subscriptions at $29 per. (Think: semesters.) Don't make the free trial more than 30 days. Remember the possibility that many of your customers won't be repeat customers: Only a certain number of language students remain language students for years at a time, so it's not as if the cost of acquiring a customer can be amortized over ten years. Speaking of the cost of acquiring customers, don't forget to budget for the Google ads! [2] If all this going-into-business stuff just sounds like too much trouble for you... don't go into business. Upload the code to Sourceforge or github and get on with your life. There's no shame in that, either. It happens all the time.