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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

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.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > 1. Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. Does the cost of subscription pay for the hosting costs? It sounds like this is the only current hard cost, so hopefully it's growing slower than the associated subscription revenue!
- cauthon 4y ago
  > Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. > Workstation - Its fractional, but the workstation I use to build this isn't free. > Dev time I mean, no offense, but it sounds like you don't actually have any costs besides hosting, and you'll break even somewhere between 40 and 80 subscribers. I think what everyone's objecting to is your misrepresentation of the content on the home page as your work. Nothing on the "today's news" or "about" pages credits Wikipedia or its contributors.
- nabakin 4y ago
  Photopea.com was able to keep their hosting costs down to about $50/yr while still serving 7 million people[1]. Their website was hosted statically at a size of 1.8 megabytes. Yours is different of course because you scrape Wikipedia regularly, but there may be a cheaper solution than your current setup out there for you fyi [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i8j5te/i_made_a_free_alternative_to_photoshop_that_is/g18ush0/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i8j5te/i_made_a_free_...
  - muzani 4y ago
    If OP had 7 million people, they wouldn't be losing money, even if it were serving ads.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      I don't think GP was talking about profitability, but about the absolute level of the cost.
- megablast 4y ago
  You are losing money based on the fact you might have to hire staff one day?? What??

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.
gnicholas 4y ago
> 1. Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. Does the cost of subscription pay for the hosting costs? It sounds like this is the only current hard cost, so hopefully it's growing slower than the associated subscription revenue!
cauthon 4y ago
> Hosting - $30-$60/mo depending on traffic levels. The more subscribers, the more this will cost. > Workstation - Its fractional, but the workstation I use to build this isn't free. > Dev time I mean, no offense, but it sounds like you don't actually have any costs besides hosting, and you'll break even somewhere between 40 and 80 subscribers. I think what everyone's objecting to is your misrepresentation of the content on the home page as your work. Nothing on the "today's news" or "about" pages credits Wikipedia or its contributors.
nabakin 4y ago
Photopea.com was able to keep their hosting costs down to about $50/yr while still serving 7 million people[1]. Their website was hosted statically at a size of 1.8 megabytes. Yours is different of course because you scrape Wikipedia regularly, but there may be a cheaper solution than your current setup out there for you fyi [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i8j5te/i_made_a_free_alternative_to_photoshop_that_is/g18ush0/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i8j5te/i_made_a_free_...
- muzani 4y ago
  If OP had 7 million people, they wouldn't be losing money, even if it were serving ads.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    I don't think GP was talking about profitability, but about the absolute level of the cost.
megablast 4y ago
You are losing money based on the fact you might have to hire staff one day?? What??