4 ms·

Yes! The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia, which is why I donate a portion of revenue to them. The value I'm delivering is speed and focus, g

Yes! The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia, which is why I donate a portion of revenue to them. The value I'm delivering is speed and focus, going further than Wikipedia, hence your observations from the page speed score. The design of their pages is quite busy and some articles actually take a really long time to load when they're re-built from scratch and not served up from a cache. Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today. If Legible News reaches a large enough scale I'll consider switching from the current donation model to a Wikimedia enterprise subscription (https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/ https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/) or hiring my own editorial staff to put together the days headlines. --- Edit: Oops, there's a bug on the news articles that are not displaying the license. If you want to see what this should look like, check out https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle and scroll to the bottom and click on "License". Fixing this now for news articles. --- Update: Licenses are now working for news pages. You can see today's at https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license. This broke navigation at the bottom, which I'm now fixing.

samwillis 4y ago
So I actually love the idea, even using Wikipedia! Their news/current affairs section is amazing, but not accessible or readable in a "new site" like way. If I were you I would be championing that aspect, making it a key feature, talk about how it is making this amazing resource accessible. But part of that would be to donate a larger portion to them. Just charge $20/year and give Wikipedia half...
- em500 4y ago
  The mobile version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is less busy and arguably better readable/accessible than the desktop version.
- bradgessler 4y ago
  I'm not committing to that specific price change and donation reallocation, but I will raise prices in the future (if you subscribe now you'll be grandfathered in) and changing the donation allocation with Wikipedia. The problem now is that fixed costs are barely covered. Once that hump is achieved I can start playing around with donation allocations more. It will take some time to get there as the cost structures aren't that well established yet.
gnicholas 4y ago
> I'm currently losing money on Legible News > The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia How are you losing money if all of your content is from Wikipedia, and presumably free?
- runnerup 4y ago
  Close to zero income plus hosting fees most likely. If I built something like this I’d expect to lose money on it for awhile as well. I’d also expect to have to deliver a bit more “product” but I feel this guy is having a ton of fun with this project. I’d love to see it grow and develop into something amazing. In fairness, it doesn’t seem to be offering much at the moment, but I’m genuinely curious about the directions the owner imagines taking the project.
  - bradgessler 4y ago
    This is accurate. Current costs are: 1. Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. 2. Workstation - Its fractional, but the workstation I use to build this isn't free. 3. Dev time - This is the big one. If this is to become sustainable, I'd need to build up subscription fees to pay for a team. $200k/engineer, administrative staff, and whatever an editorial staff costs if I go down that route. Saying "it costs nothing" would be a recipe for eventually shutting down this website since I'd be working towards none of the infrastructure above that's needed for this thing to continue on without me. I also want to build out a mobile application, which also costs money in the form of App Store fees and dev time. Keep in mind: I'm not targeting the HN crowd with this, who know how to find CurrentEvents, throw it in their RSS feed, find the optimized mobile version, etc. This was built for people who don't have the time or knowledge to do the digging needed to find and format this content. What HN found interesting was the relative rankings of news website speed, which I hope brings awareness and results in faster websites for us all.
    - onion2k 4y ago
      Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels Stick it on Netlify and that cost will drop to $0.
cypress66 4y ago
When you say losing money, do you mean opportunity costs from your time developing it? Because running a website like that should cost basically nothing.
ysavir 4y ago
> Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today. This feels in very bad taste to me. As another user pointed out, these articles are being authored and maintained by volunteers, who are donating their time and effort to make information accessible to people. Instead of joining them in that pro-bono effort, you're trying to leverage their work to your own profits. Yes, it requires some up-front work from you to format the articles, but it's a one time cost while the authors are continuously working. And sure, you have to pay for hosting costs, but then you could still run it as a non-profit that only recoups costs and donates the rest to Wikipedia. If you want to make a business out of this, I'd suggest investing in having people author some original articles. But taking someone else's volunteer work for your own gain is not something I will support. Not wanting to invest your own time and money to make your project work long-term doesn't justify using other people's time and efforts to make your project work long term. If there's any part of your data pipeline that I misunderstand and rectifies the situation, I'd be happy to have my understanding fixed.
- bradgessler 4y ago
  I occasionally make edits to the structure of the original content, but given my limited resources, which is a fraction of my personal time, that's all I can do. In the future if this brings in more revenue I will consider donating more to Wikimedia, hiring editorial staff to contribute back to CurrentEvents, or purchasing a Wikimedia Enterprise subscription. I do want to acknowledge and be upfront that I won't be able to satisfy everybody's level of fairness, taste, etc, but this is currently what is sustainable for me given the amount of time and resources I have available to put into this project. Some will think this is done in very bad taste, like yourself, and others won't. That's fine! I accept constructive or thoughtful critiques and will reflect on them in the future as things change.
  - frakkingcylons 4y ago
    The ease at which you gloss over the fact that your site is simply accepting money for the time and effort of volunter Wikipedia editors is truly innovative, good job.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
moneywoes 4y ago
Why are your costs so high?
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Multiple edge servers for extra speed?
5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV 4y ago
How the hell are you losing money on this?

samwillis 4y ago

So I actually love the idea, even using Wikipedia! Their news/current affairs section is amazing, but not accessible or readable in a "new site" like way. If I were you I would be championing that aspect, making it a key feature, talk about how it is making this amazing resource accessible. But part of that would be to donate a larger portion to them. Just charge $20/year and give Wikipedia half...

em500 4y ago
The mobile version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is less busy and arguably better readable/accessible than the desktop version.
bradgessler 4y ago
I'm not committing to that specific price change and donation reallocation, but I will raise prices in the future (if you subscribe now you'll be grandfathered in) and changing the donation allocation with Wikipedia. The problem now is that fixed costs are barely covered. Once that hump is achieved I can start playing around with donation allocations more. It will take some time to get there as the cost structures aren't that well established yet.

gnicholas 4y ago

> I'm currently losing money on Legible News > The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia How are you losing money if all of your content is from Wikipedia, and presumably free?

runnerup 4y ago
Close to zero income plus hosting fees most likely. If I built something like this I’d expect to lose money on it for awhile as well. I’d also expect to have to deliver a bit more “product” but I feel this guy is having a ton of fun with this project. I’d love to see it grow and develop into something amazing. In fairness, it doesn’t seem to be offering much at the moment, but I’m genuinely curious about the directions the owner imagines taking the project.
- bradgessler 4y ago
  This is accurate. Current costs are: 1. Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. 2. Workstation - Its fractional, but the workstation I use to build this isn't free. 3. Dev time - This is the big one. If this is to become sustainable, I'd need to build up subscription fees to pay for a team. $200k/engineer, administrative staff, and whatever an editorial staff costs if I go down that route. Saying "it costs nothing" would be a recipe for eventually shutting down this website since I'd be working towards none of the infrastructure above that's needed for this thing to continue on without me. I also want to build out a mobile application, which also costs money in the form of App Store fees and dev time. Keep in mind: I'm not targeting the HN crowd with this, who know how to find CurrentEvents, throw it in their RSS feed, find the optimized mobile version, etc. This was built for people who don't have the time or knowledge to do the digging needed to find and format this content. What HN found interesting was the relative rankings of news website speed, which I hope brings awareness and results in faster websites for us all.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels Stick it on Netlify and that cost will drop to $0.

cypress66 4y ago

When you say losing money, do you mean opportunity costs from your time developing it? Because running a website like that should cost basically nothing.

ysavir 4y ago

> Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today. This feels in very bad taste to me. As another user pointed out, these articles are being authored and maintained by volunteers, who are donating their time and effort to make information accessible to people. Instead of joining them in that pro-bono effort, you're trying to leverage their work to your own profits. Yes, it requires some up-front work from you to format the articles, but it's a one time cost while the authors are continuously working. And sure, you have to pay for hosting costs, but then you could still run it as a non-profit that only recoups costs and donates the rest to Wikipedia. If you want to make a business out of this, I'd suggest investing in having people author some original articles. But taking someone else's volunteer work for your own gain is not something I will support. Not wanting to invest your own time and money to make your project work long-term doesn't justify using other people's time and efforts to make your project work long term. If there's any part of your data pipeline that I misunderstand and rectifies the situation, I'd be happy to have my understanding fixed.

bradgessler 4y ago
I occasionally make edits to the structure of the original content, but given my limited resources, which is a fraction of my personal time, that's all I can do. In the future if this brings in more revenue I will consider donating more to Wikimedia, hiring editorial staff to contribute back to CurrentEvents, or purchasing a Wikimedia Enterprise subscription. I do want to acknowledge and be upfront that I won't be able to satisfy everybody's level of fairness, taste, etc, but this is currently what is sustainable for me given the amount of time and resources I have available to put into this project. Some will think this is done in very bad taste, like yourself, and others won't. That's fine! I accept constructive or thoughtful critiques and will reflect on them in the future as things change.
- frakkingcylons 4y ago
  The ease at which you gloss over the fact that your site is simply accepting money for the time and effort of volunter Wikipedia editors is truly innovative, good job.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

moneywoes 4y ago

Why are your costs so high?

Aeolun 4y ago
Multiple edge servers for extra speed?

5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV 4y ago

How the hell are you losing money on this?