3 ms·

so. if website does not lead to customers - why do any of that? actually why have website? Once you say yes to website you imply having one is somehow valuable,

so. if website does not lead to customers - why do any of that? actually why have website? Once you say yes to website you imply having one is somehow valuable, so in that case why not spend 20 dollars.

bayindirh 1mo ago
Just because websites can exist. Sometimes things are done for fun, or just for the sake of it. This perspective declares all the personal websites of people worthless, however, they are priceless. Because people's curiosity and creativity is priceless as well. Similarly, why create art and share it around if it doesn't bring in customers? Why make music, take photos, dance? Do we live to serve customers, or do customers' existence serve us to live a better life? Questions, questions...
- Wowfunhappy 1mo ago
  Of course, those are all great reasons to make a website. But this website was for a woman's psychology practice. I don't imagine she made it for fun or to express her creativity. The purpose of a psychology practice's website is to tell people about your psychology practice, so they will either sign up ($) or find information they need more easily (higher satisfaction → $). If OP's mother runs a donation-funded pro-bono psychology practice then you can translate the dollar signs to units of happiness or whatever (which I would imagine is her real goal regardless). This person is spending her time to create the website (with ChatGPT's help). How much is that time worth? Of course when it's your business hourly pay is tricky, but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much of it.
  - bayindirh 1mo ago
    I know an accountant, who has a respectable amount of customers and enough income to live comfortably. Their company has a website which only provides a logo, address and contact information, in a 23 line HTML file, complete with all the white space. If their company can do well with this website, her psychology practice can do as well. Some of the best services I got was from professionals with no or mundane online presence. Instead, their abilities and expertise moved them to the top in their respective fields, and the whole community knows how and when to reach them. So, maybe a shiny website is not a hard-requirement for a good psychology practice, IDK. So, the thing is, maybe this was her way to explore new things and decompress while doing some mundane thing from her perspective for free. Sometimes it's not that $20 which you can pay without any negative side-effects, but the desire to see how far the thing goes without the token, or just because you don't feel any urgency to do the task, so that $20 looks like an unnecessary waste. I have been in both places.
    - Wowfunhappy 1mo ago
      Yes, presumably that's why she did not update the website for 20 years! If once she's decided to update the website—surely it's worth more then $20 at that point? Otherwise, she probably shouldn't be spending any time on it herself either, given the opportunity cost. Obviously she decided otherwise, I just find it kind of surprising. Like, in general, I'm always kind of surprised at what people are and aren't willing to pay for. People will suffer through horrible full screen ads in mobile games instead of paying $5 one time to turn them off. And they'll do this on a phone that costs $1,000+. I don't know their financial situation, but I would buy a cheaper phone and get rid of the ads...
      - bayindirh 1mo ago
        From what I have seen, people's perspective on value lies on a very wide spectrum. My mom won't buy a YouTube premium subscription, because she said she likes the ads. It's a kind of discovery platform for her. It's not that I share the same perspective, but I respect her about that. I know people who won't subscribe to a service, but go through great pains to get the thing the service offers (another brand, similar yet inferior service, etc.). For example, if an application I use has ads (i.e. a game), and it needs a subscription to remove these ads, I'll simply won't install it, or get the paid version of it from the start. For me, playing a game with no end and paying monthly to "hide" advertisements doesn't worth it.
        card_zero 1mo ago
        These things are very subtle and are sometimes about ethos, and not about value at all. For instance: * You propose I buy your ¤4 overhyped toothbrush. If I spend 10 minutes digging around, I could find a sub-¤1 toothbrush. Effectively I'm doing 10 minutes of work at less than minimum wage in order to avoid owning the premium toothbrush. Do I do this? I might! The reason is that I want no part in your hype. * You offer me a loyalty scheme that will genuinely save me money if I participate. I only have to pay attention to your offers and routinely identify myself and I might get 10% savings, all the time. I decline this because you don't get to use my brain cycles for your profit, even if I profit too. * You offer me a free thing that happens to track me and funnels data to data brokers. I decline it even though it does me no actual harm at all, because I don't want you to make money from personal facts about me, even when the facts are robotically aggregated and anonymised. Ethics are at stake: ethically speaking, you can just piss off. That is worth more than a free gadget, and it's not even an equation.
  - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
    > but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much Did you notice that this is completely unrelated to the idea that the $20 would turn a profit for the business? It's just the argument "$20 isn't very much money, so why not spend it?".
    - jonathanlydall 1mo ago
      In this case, because spending it was more hassle than any time she would have saved by doing so. If she had no choice, then spending it would not have been an issue.
  - jonathanlydall 1mo ago
    You're pretty much right about the reasons. But as for the "value of her time", despite having to wait due to the rate limits for free users, this was probably still less time consuming for her than paying someone else to make the website. She basically just did maybe half a dozen (probably less) sessions of less than 15 minutes each. This was a very a low-priority thing for her and did it between other things and after hours, so it didn't really use up time she was likely to use productively anyway. If she had dealt with a web designer, she would probably have used up more of her time with several back-and-forth interactions with them, which also probably would have had to be done during business hours. Chances are that ChatGPT was better at intuiting what she wanted in a case like this and gave her quicker feedback loops despite the waiting for more "free tokens". Would $20 have been worth spending on this? Absolutely. But the scope and priority were so minimal that the hassle of doing the once-off sub was more for her than just doing little bits between other stuff. If it wasn't available for free we would have used my Claude sub or she would have just paid.
- jonathanlydall 1mo ago
  If anything, it was a bit of a chore while keeping in mind that chores aren't necessarily a bad thing, e.g. tidying your kitchen after a meal is a chore, but it's satisfying to complete the chore as the alternative is not only a messy looking kitchen, but the hygiene issues which come with it. It's just something which needed to be done. The once off nature, scope and priority were so minor that it wasn't worth the hassle of actually paying, but if free wasn't an option we would have either used my Claude sub or she would have just paid, no big deal.
jonathanlydall 1mo ago
After 20 years, her new business is mostly word of mouth, but website was very dated and potentially a minor liability. Scope of work and urgency were so minimal that it was simply not worth the hassle to actually subscribe and then have to unsubscribe later. If there was no free option we could have done it on my Claude sub or she would have just paid.
- netdevphoenix 1mo ago
  Arguably, if the website does not have a positive value and only negative, the logical thing is to shut it down and keep the Google Business profile imo. I assume she has been paying for the domain name all this years too or is it a subdomain?
  - jonathanlydall 1mo ago
    I think the new version is a net positive value as creates a better "vibe" to prospective patients than just a Google Business listing would, and I expect will age well. The domain's used for email anyway and is on a very cheap local hosting plan, probably all-in-all like ZAR 84 per month and ZAR 200 per year for the domain, so ZAR ~1200 (USD ~75) per year. Old website was built in a different era, Google Business didn't exist, "HTML5" wouldn't be a thing for another 5 years, web design styles were completely different and was before iPhone meaning that modern day "mobile friendly" was not even a thought. When my father started running guest suites over 10 years-ago I made a single page website with essentially the same goals but using a Hugo template. The website still feels "modern" today, so I expect this new one of my mother's will age well too.

bayindirh 1mo ago

Just because websites can exist. Sometimes things are done for fun, or just for the sake of it. This perspective declares all the personal websites of people worthless, however, they are priceless. Because people's curiosity and creativity is priceless as well. Similarly, why create art and share it around if it doesn't bring in customers? Why make music, take photos, dance? Do we live to serve customers, or do customers' existence serve us to live a better life? Questions, questions...

Wowfunhappy 1mo ago
Of course, those are all great reasons to make a website. But this website was for a woman's psychology practice. I don't imagine she made it for fun or to express her creativity. The purpose of a psychology practice's website is to tell people about your psychology practice, so they will either sign up ($) or find information they need more easily (higher satisfaction → $). If OP's mother runs a donation-funded pro-bono psychology practice then you can translate the dollar signs to units of happiness or whatever (which I would imagine is her real goal regardless). This person is spending her time to create the website (with ChatGPT's help). How much is that time worth? Of course when it's your business hourly pay is tricky, but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much of it.
- bayindirh 1mo ago
  I know an accountant, who has a respectable amount of customers and enough income to live comfortably. Their company has a website which only provides a logo, address and contact information, in a 23 line HTML file, complete with all the white space. If their company can do well with this website, her psychology practice can do as well. Some of the best services I got was from professionals with no or mundane online presence. Instead, their abilities and expertise moved them to the top in their respective fields, and the whole community knows how and when to reach them. So, maybe a shiny website is not a hard-requirement for a good psychology practice, IDK. So, the thing is, maybe this was her way to explore new things and decompress while doing some mundane thing from her perspective for free. Sometimes it's not that $20 which you can pay without any negative side-effects, but the desire to see how far the thing goes without the token, or just because you don't feel any urgency to do the task, so that $20 looks like an unnecessary waste. I have been in both places.
  - Wowfunhappy 1mo ago
    Yes, presumably that's why she did not update the website for 20 years! If once she's decided to update the website—surely it's worth more then $20 at that point? Otherwise, she probably shouldn't be spending any time on it herself either, given the opportunity cost. Obviously she decided otherwise, I just find it kind of surprising. Like, in general, I'm always kind of surprised at what people are and aren't willing to pay for. People will suffer through horrible full screen ads in mobile games instead of paying $5 one time to turn them off. And they'll do this on a phone that costs $1,000+. I don't know their financial situation, but I would buy a cheaper phone and get rid of the ads...
    - bayindirh 1mo ago
      From what I have seen, people's perspective on value lies on a very wide spectrum. My mom won't buy a YouTube premium subscription, because she said she likes the ads. It's a kind of discovery platform for her. It's not that I share the same perspective, but I respect her about that. I know people who won't subscribe to a service, but go through great pains to get the thing the service offers (another brand, similar yet inferior service, etc.). For example, if an application I use has ads (i.e. a game), and it needs a subscription to remove these ads, I'll simply won't install it, or get the paid version of it from the start. For me, playing a game with no end and paying monthly to "hide" advertisements doesn't worth it.
      - card_zero 1mo ago
        These things are very subtle and are sometimes about ethos, and not about value at all. For instance: * You propose I buy your ¤4 overhyped toothbrush. If I spend 10 minutes digging around, I could find a sub-¤1 toothbrush. Effectively I'm doing 10 minutes of work at less than minimum wage in order to avoid owning the premium toothbrush. Do I do this? I might! The reason is that I want no part in your hype. * You offer me a loyalty scheme that will genuinely save me money if I participate. I only have to pay attention to your offers and routinely identify myself and I might get 10% savings, all the time. I decline this because you don't get to use my brain cycles for your profit, even if I profit too. * You offer me a free thing that happens to track me and funnels data to data brokers. I decline it even though it does me no actual harm at all, because I don't want you to make money from personal facts about me, even when the facts are robotically aggregated and anonymised. Ethics are at stake: ethically speaking, you can just piss off. That is worth more than a free gadget, and it's not even an equation.
- thaumasiotes 1mo ago
  > but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much Did you notice that this is completely unrelated to the idea that the $20 would turn a profit for the business? It's just the argument "$20 isn't very much money, so why not spend it?".
  - jonathanlydall 1mo ago
    In this case, because spending it was more hassle than any time she would have saved by doing so. If she had no choice, then spending it would not have been an issue.
- jonathanlydall 1mo ago
  You're pretty much right about the reasons. But as for the "value of her time", despite having to wait due to the rate limits for free users, this was probably still less time consuming for her than paying someone else to make the website. She basically just did maybe half a dozen (probably less) sessions of less than 15 minutes each. This was a very a low-priority thing for her and did it between other things and after hours, so it didn't really use up time she was likely to use productively anyway. If she had dealt with a web designer, she would probably have used up more of her time with several back-and-forth interactions with them, which also probably would have had to be done during business hours. Chances are that ChatGPT was better at intuiting what she wanted in a case like this and gave her quicker feedback loops despite the waiting for more "free tokens". Would $20 have been worth spending on this? Absolutely. But the scope and priority were so minimal that the hassle of doing the once-off sub was more for her than just doing little bits between other stuff. If it wasn't available for free we would have used my Claude sub or she would have just paid.
jonathanlydall 1mo ago
If anything, it was a bit of a chore while keeping in mind that chores aren't necessarily a bad thing, e.g. tidying your kitchen after a meal is a chore, but it's satisfying to complete the chore as the alternative is not only a messy looking kitchen, but the hygiene issues which come with it. It's just something which needed to be done. The once off nature, scope and priority were so minor that it wasn't worth the hassle of actually paying, but if free wasn't an option we would have either used my Claude sub or she would have just paid, no big deal.

jonathanlydall 1mo ago

After 20 years, her new business is mostly word of mouth, but website was very dated and potentially a minor liability. Scope of work and urgency were so minimal that it was simply not worth the hassle to actually subscribe and then have to unsubscribe later. If there was no free option we could have done it on my Claude sub or she would have just paid.

netdevphoenix 1mo ago
Arguably, if the website does not have a positive value and only negative, the logical thing is to shut it down and keep the Google Business profile imo. I assume she has been paying for the domain name all this years too or is it a subdomain?
- jonathanlydall 1mo ago
  I think the new version is a net positive value as creates a better "vibe" to prospective patients than just a Google Business listing would, and I expect will age well. The domain's used for email anyway and is on a very cheap local hosting plan, probably all-in-all like ZAR 84 per month and ZAR 200 per year for the domain, so ZAR ~1200 (USD ~75) per year. Old website was built in a different era, Google Business didn't exist, "HTML5" wouldn't be a thing for another 5 years, web design styles were completely different and was before iPhone meaning that modern day "mobile friendly" was not even a thought. When my father started running guest suites over 10 years-ago I made a single page website with essentially the same goals but using a Hugo template. The website still feels "modern" today, so I expect this new one of my mother's will age well too.