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40k visits and only 1 donation. Not that I complain or that I think he deserves more or less, just interesting to see the ratio.

by kuu 6y ago

Aachen 6y ago
Well, from the post: > Last month (Mar'21), I made a simple project It's not like anyone's been using the product long-term or as if individual users incur a significant cost, and the author hasn't been asking to help with hosting costs or anything. I don't usually donate right upon finding a random fun project, unless I incurred costs (by doing a significant computation or if it sent a number of SMSes or so) for the person who hosts it. I donate to things like the Internet Archive or OpenStreetMap because they have real hosting costs, or the K9 mail client because there's a lot of coding that needs doing, I would like it to be done, and someone's offering to do it for crowdfunded money. Or sci-hub, because the owner gave up a lot to make it happen and I think it has had a net positive effect in the world. There are other projects I've donated to and more reasons I'd donate, but generally I don't find this weirdly low for this kind of project and also not representative of what you could expect if you do create something that'll require donations, provided it 'goes viral' to the same extent as this project.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago
  Anecdotal, but I have a niche calculator SPA that fluctuates between 1k-10k visitors per month. Most visitors are frequent fliers. My donation button (top center of page) has only been used once over the span of 5 years, even though it gets praised across various forums and communities within the niche.
atxbcp 6y ago
Zero hosting cost, zero added value, why would you donate anything for a project like this ?
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Someone put their time into creating it? Also perhaps because it is useful to people and if we ever hope to keep good content coming, without having to suffer through endless ads, we should support, what we deem to be good content.
  - atxbcp 6y ago
    The "clones" listed in this project is what I deem to be good content, i.e actual creative work that took much more time and effort than putting together yet another "awesome-whatever" list. That is what I would support.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    > Someone put their time into creating it? That's not an intrinsically valuable act.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - WJW 6y ago
    > Someone put their time into creating it? This is not in itself a reason to pay for stuff. > Also perhaps because it is useful to people and if we ever hope to keep good content coming, without having to suffer through endless ads, we should support, what we deem to be good content. This sentence seems self-contradicting in relation to the article existing. Assuming we think that the project from the article is in fact good, it follows that good content is already coming even if we don't pay for it. A small case could be made that perhaps this was an experiment by the author and we want to reward this to create positive reinforcement, but an equally valid argument could be made that paying for this type of aggregator content will create a mass of buzzfeed style "list of awesome X" aggregation websites. Monetization tends to create perverse incentives, after all.
    - zelphirkalt 6y ago
      OK, point taken, that only because anyone puts time into something, does not mean it is a reason to pay for it. I disagree with the second point though. In the end people need to put food on the table and I for one am glad, if people can do so by doing things they enjoy and that add value to society. If I like some project and I see, that it was only enabled by people putting forward effort, even though they are not paid to do so initially, then I often think about supporting them. My idea of a good future is, that more people can add value to society not in the jobs they do not like to do, but instead in the projects they would like to do and can live from that. I don't think it is a small case. In fact I think this is what should happen more often, so that we get away from a model, where everything is measured in how much it costs and towards a model, in which people show how much value things brought them, by supporting creators. I think this would help reducing gaps in society. Someone who can not afford to give a lot can still make use of things, while someone who can give a lot is able to support more people. It reaches into every area of our lives. Currently we have social media networks, where the users are the product sold. Instead we could have social media, where users, who can afford to support, give in order to keep the service alive and running. There are already people, who crowd-finance their Mastodon instances and work (time working on) those and similar projects. Maybe this is something that is quite far from our reality right now, but at least I am seeing some cases of it in projects, that I support.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  How does curating a list, a list that at least 7500 people found worthy of visiting and starring and 550 people forked, count as "zero added value"? What exactly would qualify as "added value" in your mind?
  - taytus 6y ago
    Something you’d donate to.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      The problem is that you assume that services/projects that contribute more value gets more donations (or vice-versa) while the donations mostly come in based on how well you market the service/project instead.
- blunte 6y ago
  Aggregation and curation lists have implicit value. You are reading these posts on such a thing right now.
zelphirkalt 6y ago
Not disagreeing with you at all. There are many many projects, that run on time and dedication of their creators and which deserve more.
asicsp 6y ago
I had a similar experience with one of my GitHub repos [0] that is currently 9k+ stars. I added donation link when it was about 5k stars (after it went viral courtesy HN). But this was before GitHub sponsors. I removed donation links after I got only a single donation in about a year. I had much better results when I started converting my tutorials into ebooks and sold them. Obviously having a paid product is different, but I'm referring to the paid sales I got whenever I put up 'pay what you want' offer. [0] https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processing https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processi...
kakkan 6y ago
I got 100k visits for my project https://reallyconfused.co/ https://reallyconfused.co/ and 0 donations because my donation link was broken and I noticed it too late...
- resurge 6y ago
  Hey, I think some other stuff might be broken too. When I open this link I get a bunch of errors in the console: https://reallyconfused.co/roadmap/from-c#-to-asp.net-developer--242 https://reallyconfused.co/roadmap/from-c#-to-asp.net-develop... This was also the first course in the list, so not exactly a good first impression. The console lists this: https://pastebin.com/KQqjdCc8 https://pastebin.com/KQqjdCc8
  - kakkan 6y ago
    Thanks for pointing them out! I'm taking the site through some changes so these bugs are very recent. When I released it, it was pretty much bug-free.
- dvt 5y ago
  Honestly, you should charge actual money for this. Not a bad idea at all, plus the templates you already have are pretty neat. I could see applications w.r.t. professional development or even marketing to product people with the purpose of simplifying product roadmaps (and sharing with C-levels, etc.). You have something here, screw donations. Free users suck anyway; my free project[1] has ~1500 MAU and I kind of want to stop working on it because the entitlement is unreal. [1] https://www.lofi.rocks/ https://www.lofi.rocks/
  - kakkan 5y ago
    That's what I'm intending on doing next! I'm trying to find distribution channels to reach out first and to validate some ideas I have in mind. Would you like to hop on a quick call to brainstorm stuff?
toolz 6y ago
the way I see it is that anyone who contributes to open source likely utilizes open source. Think of the market value for some of the open tools you use and how much they would cost you that you instead get for free. To me, that's the payment you get even before you contribute.
pjc50 6y ago
That's roughly what I'd expect? An easy way to estimate this: think of how many websites you visit a year, then divide the number of donations you make per year by that. If this number isn't zero, you're a statistical outlier.
mihaifm 6y ago
People star these lists because it's a way of bookmarking them for later reference. If I had only 5$ to spare I'd rather donate them to one of the authors of the actual projects.
nicbou 6y ago
This roughly matches my experience. Donations amount to around 50€ per 100k visitors on my website. The donation button is next to the "ask a question" button, which yields about 30 emails per month (and 60+ emails to other experts). The average time on page exceeds 5 minutes for some guides. Donations just aren't that common.
ahepp 6y ago
It's such a lame hustle to market your free widget, then complain that nobody paid for it. It's literally a con to pull on tourists Not saying you are personally doing this, since you specifically said you're not complaining, just my feelings on the matter.

40k visits and only 1 donation. Not that I complain or that I think he deserves more or less, just interesting to see the ratio.

by kuu 6y ago

40k visits and only 1 donation. Not that I complain or that I think he deserves more or less, just interesting to see the ratio.

Aachen 6y ago

Well, from the post: > Last month (Mar'21), I made a simple project It's not like anyone's been using the product long-term or as if individual users incur a significant cost, and the author hasn't been asking to help with hosting costs or anything. I don't usually donate right upon finding a random fun project, unless I incurred costs (by doing a significant computation or if it sent a number of SMSes or so) for the person who hosts it. I donate to things like the Internet Archive or OpenStreetMap because they have real hosting costs, or the K9 mail client because there's a lot of coding that needs doing, I would like it to be done, and someone's offering to do it for crowdfunded money. Or sci-hub, because the owner gave up a lot to make it happen and I think it has had a net positive effect in the world. There are other projects I've donated to and more reasons I'd donate, but generally I don't find this weirdly low for this kind of project and also not representative of what you could expect if you do create something that'll require donations, provided it 'goes viral' to the same extent as this project.

SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago
Anecdotal, but I have a niche calculator SPA that fluctuates between 1k-10k visitors per month. Most visitors are frequent fliers. My donation button (top center of page) has only been used once over the span of 5 years, even though it gets praised across various forums and communities within the niche.

atxbcp 6y ago

Zero hosting cost, zero added value, why would you donate anything for a project like this ?

zelphirkalt 6y ago
Someone put their time into creating it? Also perhaps because it is useful to people and if we ever hope to keep good content coming, without having to suffer through endless ads, we should support, what we deem to be good content.
- atxbcp 6y ago
  The "clones" listed in this project is what I deem to be good content, i.e actual creative work that took much more time and effort than putting together yet another "awesome-whatever" list. That is what I would support.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > Someone put their time into creating it? That's not an intrinsically valuable act.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- WJW 6y ago
  > Someone put their time into creating it? This is not in itself a reason to pay for stuff. > Also perhaps because it is useful to people and if we ever hope to keep good content coming, without having to suffer through endless ads, we should support, what we deem to be good content. This sentence seems self-contradicting in relation to the article existing. Assuming we think that the project from the article is in fact good, it follows that good content is already coming even if we don't pay for it. A small case could be made that perhaps this was an experiment by the author and we want to reward this to create positive reinforcement, but an equally valid argument could be made that paying for this type of aggregator content will create a mass of buzzfeed style "list of awesome X" aggregation websites. Monetization tends to create perverse incentives, after all.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    OK, point taken, that only because anyone puts time into something, does not mean it is a reason to pay for it. I disagree with the second point though. In the end people need to put food on the table and I for one am glad, if people can do so by doing things they enjoy and that add value to society. If I like some project and I see, that it was only enabled by people putting forward effort, even though they are not paid to do so initially, then I often think about supporting them. My idea of a good future is, that more people can add value to society not in the jobs they do not like to do, but instead in the projects they would like to do and can live from that. I don't think it is a small case. In fact I think this is what should happen more often, so that we get away from a model, where everything is measured in how much it costs and towards a model, in which people show how much value things brought them, by supporting creators. I think this would help reducing gaps in society. Someone who can not afford to give a lot can still make use of things, while someone who can give a lot is able to support more people. It reaches into every area of our lives. Currently we have social media networks, where the users are the product sold. Instead we could have social media, where users, who can afford to support, give in order to keep the service alive and running. There are already people, who crowd-finance their Mastodon instances and work (time working on) those and similar projects. Maybe this is something that is quite far from our reality right now, but at least I am seeing some cases of it in projects, that I support.
Ensorceled 6y ago
How does curating a list, a list that at least 7500 people found worthy of visiting and starring and 550 people forked, count as "zero added value"? What exactly would qualify as "added value" in your mind?
- taytus 6y ago
  Something you’d donate to.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    The problem is that you assume that services/projects that contribute more value gets more donations (or vice-versa) while the donations mostly come in based on how well you market the service/project instead.
blunte 6y ago
Aggregation and curation lists have implicit value. You are reading these posts on such a thing right now.

zelphirkalt 6y ago

Not disagreeing with you at all. There are many many projects, that run on time and dedication of their creators and which deserve more.

asicsp 6y ago

I had a similar experience with one of my GitHub repos [0] that is currently 9k+ stars. I added donation link when it was about 5k stars (after it went viral courtesy HN). But this was before GitHub sponsors. I removed donation links after I got only a single donation in about a year. I had much better results when I started converting my tutorials into ebooks and sold them. Obviously having a paid product is different, but I'm referring to the paid sales I got whenever I put up 'pay what you want' offer. [0] https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processing https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processi...

kakkan 6y ago

I got 100k visits for my project https://reallyconfused.co/ https://reallyconfused.co/ and 0 donations because my donation link was broken and I noticed it too late...

resurge 6y ago
Hey, I think some other stuff might be broken too. When I open this link I get a bunch of errors in the console: https://reallyconfused.co/roadmap/from-c#-to-asp.net-developer--242 https://reallyconfused.co/roadmap/from-c#-to-asp.net-develop... This was also the first course in the list, so not exactly a good first impression. The console lists this: https://pastebin.com/KQqjdCc8 https://pastebin.com/KQqjdCc8
- kakkan 6y ago
  Thanks for pointing them out! I'm taking the site through some changes so these bugs are very recent. When I released it, it was pretty much bug-free.
dvt 5y ago
Honestly, you should charge actual money for this. Not a bad idea at all, plus the templates you already have are pretty neat. I could see applications w.r.t. professional development or even marketing to product people with the purpose of simplifying product roadmaps (and sharing with C-levels, etc.). You have something here, screw donations. Free users suck anyway; my free project[1] has ~1500 MAU and I kind of want to stop working on it because the entitlement is unreal. [1] https://www.lofi.rocks/ https://www.lofi.rocks/
- kakkan 5y ago
  That's what I'm intending on doing next! I'm trying to find distribution channels to reach out first and to validate some ideas I have in mind. Would you like to hop on a quick call to brainstorm stuff?

toolz 6y ago

the way I see it is that anyone who contributes to open source likely utilizes open source. Think of the market value for some of the open tools you use and how much they would cost you that you instead get for free. To me, that's the payment you get even before you contribute.

pjc50 6y ago

That's roughly what I'd expect? An easy way to estimate this: think of how many websites you visit a year, then divide the number of donations you make per year by that. If this number isn't zero, you're a statistical outlier.

mihaifm 6y ago

People star these lists because it's a way of bookmarking them for later reference. If I had only 5$ to spare I'd rather donate them to one of the authors of the actual projects.

nicbou 6y ago

This roughly matches my experience. Donations amount to around 50€ per 100k visitors on my website. The donation button is next to the "ask a question" button, which yields about 30 emails per month (and 60+ emails to other experts). The average time on page exceeds 5 minutes for some guides. Donations just aren't that common.

ahepp 6y ago

It's such a lame hustle to market your free widget, then complain that nobody paid for it. It's literally a con to pull on tourists Not saying you are personally doing this, since you specifically said you're not complaining, just my feelings on the matter.