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Currently https://www.photographer.io https://www.photographer.io is costing me about £100 a month to run, as its income is only via referrals to Digital Ocean

Currently https://www.photographer.io https://www.photographer.io is costing me about £100 a month to run, as its income is only via referrals to Digital Ocean until I add a subscription model. I've been holding off for a few months as I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete; at what point do other people feel happy charging users for their products? I'm thinking of offering early adopters a significant discount for helping pay for the costs whilst the site develops, as it's nowhere near the point where I'd be happy charging a similar amount to Flickr/500px yet. However the popularity of the project has helped me out personally; I've been offered a number of jobs due to my increased visibility as a developer.

benjamincburns 13y ago
> I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete If you're like me, you'll never feel like it's complete. But, is it useful? I'd suggest charging now or very soon. Early adopters who are willing to use an incomplete service want that service to grow and be around. Charging them a nominal fee increases the changes of that happening.
- robotmay 13y ago
  I hope it's useful! It seems to have a small number of dedicated users right now, a number of whom have said they'd like to support the site. I think I'm going to aim to get subscriptions in within the next month. I must admit that one reason why I've been putting it off is having to finish setting up the business side of things. I probably can't put off figuring out my accounting much longer :D
  - w0rd-driven 13y ago
    It feels like I've seen photographer.io for a while now. It isn't my bag but I'm honestly surprised you aren't making anything yet. It seems long overdue, honestly. I think the other advice is perfect and to some users, they may not see value until you put a price on it you can live with.
    - robotmay 13y ago
      I must admit that it has mostly been my laziness, mixed with a variety of real-life situations (girlfriend finishing her PhD, me having a tonsillectomy etc), which have delayed me adding paid account support. I'm finally back into the swing of updating it now and I'm aiming to get paid accounts in within the next couple of months at the latest. I'd be happy if the site just made enough to keep itself running, to be honest. Thanks for the advice!
scoot 13y ago
> I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete It's not so much a question of what you feel happy charging for, as what your customers are happy paying for. The only way to find out is to add paid tiers and see what happens. You can always round out the feature set by adding additional 'premium' features to the paid tiers - free upgrades for paying customers!
- robotmay 13y ago
  Aye I have a number of features planned which will need subscriptions. One of them is the ability to host your own portfolio site on the platform, which I'm planning to add fairly soon as I need it for my brother's and father's websites :D
  - yourmailman 13y ago
    Always charge and set your price high unless your running a freemium model. Its much easier to lower your price than raise it. And if your customers pay and are upset you can always refund them.
amjd 13y ago
The product looks pretty good imo. You should start charging soon. Btw, which one of DigitalOcean's cloud servers are you using? Did you find it reliable for a startup? Also, do you mind telling how many users you have?
- robotmay 13y ago
  Thanks! The current server setup is: 2x2GB servers (web+workers), 2x1GB servers (DB & replicated backup), 2x512MB servers (one HAProxy loadbalancer, one running redis & memcached). All running a fairly recent version of Ubuntu, based in the Netherlands datacentre. I could run it on fewer servers but I like to separate out the roles so a failure in one place doesn't take everything down. For the first month reliability was a bit spotty but for the past 3/4 months it has been really reliable. The only problems I had at first were network latency which they seem to have resolved now. I'm happy to answer pretty much any questions about my projects! There are currently 1687 users. Signups go in bursts when I promote the site; once I've got a number of improvements done over the next month or so I'm going to try to promote it again. I'm also really excited by what other people are doing with the codebase. There's a chap in Japan who's managed to get it running for his figurine fan website, which is impressive mostly because my documentation is so shockingly bad :D
  - amjd 13y ago
    Thanks for the detailed answer. ;) That's a good number of users. You shouldn't have any trouble at all getting your first paying customers. All the best. :)

benjamincburns 13y ago

> I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete If you're like me, you'll never feel like it's complete. But, is it useful? I'd suggest charging now or very soon. Early adopters who are willing to use an incomplete service want that service to grow and be around. Charging them a nominal fee increases the changes of that happening.

robotmay 13y ago
I hope it's useful! It seems to have a small number of dedicated users right now, a number of whom have said they'd like to support the site. I think I'm going to aim to get subscriptions in within the next month. I must admit that one reason why I've been putting it off is having to finish setting up the business side of things. I probably can't put off figuring out my accounting much longer :D
- w0rd-driven 13y ago
  It feels like I've seen photographer.io for a while now. It isn't my bag but I'm honestly surprised you aren't making anything yet. It seems long overdue, honestly. I think the other advice is perfect and to some users, they may not see value until you put a price on it you can live with.
  - robotmay 13y ago
    I must admit that it has mostly been my laziness, mixed with a variety of real-life situations (girlfriend finishing her PhD, me having a tonsillectomy etc), which have delayed me adding paid account support. I'm finally back into the swing of updating it now and I'm aiming to get paid accounts in within the next couple of months at the latest. I'd be happy if the site just made enough to keep itself running, to be honest. Thanks for the advice!

scoot 13y ago

> I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete It's not so much a question of what you feel happy charging for, as what your customers are happy paying for. The only way to find out is to add paid tiers and see what happens. You can always round out the feature set by adding additional 'premium' features to the paid tiers - free upgrades for paying customers!

robotmay 13y ago
Aye I have a number of features planned which will need subscriptions. One of them is the ability to host your own portfolio site on the platform, which I'm planning to add fairly soon as I need it for my brother's and father's websites :D
- yourmailman 13y ago
  Always charge and set your price high unless your running a freemium model. Its much easier to lower your price than raise it. And if your customers pay and are upset you can always refund them.

amjd 13y ago

The product looks pretty good imo. You should start charging soon. Btw, which one of DigitalOcean's cloud servers are you using? Did you find it reliable for a startup? Also, do you mind telling how many users you have?

robotmay 13y ago
Thanks! The current server setup is: 2x2GB servers (web+workers), 2x1GB servers (DB & replicated backup), 2x512MB servers (one HAProxy loadbalancer, one running redis & memcached). All running a fairly recent version of Ubuntu, based in the Netherlands datacentre. I could run it on fewer servers but I like to separate out the roles so a failure in one place doesn't take everything down. For the first month reliability was a bit spotty but for the past 3/4 months it has been really reliable. The only problems I had at first were network latency which they seem to have resolved now. I'm happy to answer pretty much any questions about my projects! There are currently 1687 users. Signups go in bursts when I promote the site; once I've got a number of improvements done over the next month or so I'm going to try to promote it again. I'm also really excited by what other people are doing with the codebase. There's a chap in Japan who's managed to get it running for his figurine fan website, which is impressive mostly because my documentation is so shockingly bad :D
- amjd 13y ago
  Thanks for the detailed answer. ;) That's a good number of users. You shouldn't have any trouble at all getting your first paying customers. All the best. :)