
Three Years as a One-Man Startup - steveridout
https://medium.com/@SteveRidout/3-years-as-a-one-man-startup-489db6e48f2a#.5x1jua8ac
======
randomsearch
Hey Man, just my thoughts on this.

Looks like a great product. I may use it later this year as I'm learning
Spanish.

However, your business model is weak, because people are fickle and don't
stick with language learning (I should know; I've been learning Spanish for 6
years on and off). Plus, the more you use your product, the less you need it.

However, there is a much better target market: businesses. I know a whole
bunch of foreign nationals in the UK who have earned money working on rather
basic translation tasks for web businesses. I can imagine a tool like this
would be hugely useful for those businesses. Sure, I can go use Google
translate, but having a polished user experience in-browser looks a lot nicer
and more professional if a customer is watching me use it.

So, I say this year focus on selling to SMEs. If you get just a few major
business contracts, it will dwarf your income from regular users. You're
looking for companies that work a lot on the web and interact with
organisations overseas, possibly speak a little of the relevant foreign
language but can't afford to pay for bilingual speakers.

Random thoughts:

\- the travel industry - travel agents, companies that organise tours, tourist
visitor centres, accommodation agents, etc. Anyone who might want to quickly
check a foreign website. \- government, particularly anything interacting
abroad or with non-native speakers. \- SME exporters \- journalists \-
researchers

Final point - I'm not so keen on your branding. Learning a language is an
exciting, potentially life-changing experience! It can increase your
employability and open your eyes to entire new cultures. This is an amazing
thing. "Readlang" does not say that to me. _However_ , it's a good name for a
business interacting with the corporate market I suggested above, so it may
not need changing...

Good luck, I think what you're doing is awesome and you should definitely
stick with it!

~~~
steveridout
You may be correct. But I'm not ready to focus on businesses right now
because:

1\. Businesses would want features that individuals don't care about. More
importantly, they would want features that __I don 't care about __. I made
Readlang to serve my own needs as a self motivated learner. I feel like I have
a reasonable barometer for what 's useful and what will appeal to individuals.
Creating something for business would be more difficult and less fun for me
personally.

2\. There's still a hell of a lot of room to grow with individual language
learners.

3\. Even if the profit is lower, I can probably reach a larger user base with
a freemium consumer product. I think that the quantity of feedback and data
that this provides helps me create a better product. (On the other hand - I'm
sure the revenue that may come from a B2B product would also help!)

4\. I can always try selling to businesses later. And with a proven, popular
consumer product this should be an easier sell.

Regarding the name & branding. I'm sure it's not optimal but I'm not an expert
in this and it was the best I came up with. I'm going to run with it in the
short term at least.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement!

~~~
haggy
> More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about.

> I feel like I have a reasonable barometer for what's useful

Those two statements right there are holding you back. 1) You should ALWAYS be
considering features that users want if you're trying to become profitable. If
this was a charity app then sure, do whatever you want. BUT this is not,
according to your blog. Put the user's needs before your own. 2) You may have
a decent feel of what it takes to learn a language but I bet you a day of true
market research would open your eyes to features/enhancements that you would
have never even considered.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I think the app is really cool!

~~~
steveridout
Just to clarify. I certainly listen to my users. I may even err too much on
the side of adding everything they ask for, leading to a more complicated
product. (e.g. here are the completed items on Readlang's uservoice page:
[https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/...](https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/894711),
and more suggestions come in via private channels too)

The thing is choosing which users to listen to. For now, I've decided to make
an awesome tool for individual learners. So I'm listening more to them, as
well as my own gut feeling.

~~~
dimgl
You should listen to haggy. He's correct about considering features that your
users want. In this case, if you're looking to make the big bucks then
expanding to businesses is a great route (the businesses would be your users).
I understand that you made this for yourself but you don't have to sacrifice
the freemium feel while still offering commercial services to businesses.

~~~
webmasterraj
Oh HN and unsolicited startup advice. A blog post and 2 minutes and you've
pattern matched your way to a solution. Bravo.

Dear OP, please ignore all this sage advice from people in cushy tech jobs
telling you what you should do with your baby. Life is hard. We never know if
we're making the right decisions. But it sounds like you have a clear vision
that is driving you - that is priceless. Don't sell it away for the smart
"business" move, when you already know what you should be doing.

~~~
true_religion
It's interesting that you use the phrase 'sell it away'. That's exactly what
one should be doing as a business.

I stumbled my way into product-market fit by designing something that was
useful to me personally, and finding that actual profitability was in the
mainstream--- people who were my exact opposites in terms of tastes but still
strained to use my product for themselves because it was the only thing
serving a similar need.

Right now they are 98% of my client base and I struggle with the fact that I
don't intuitively understand their needs. I don't have a clear vision, and
instead have to do user research on a constant basis.

It took me seven years to reach that point. For the first 7 years, I was ramen
profitable--certainly nothing to quit a day job about. On year 7, I made a
single switch and within 1 year earned 3x the previous years revenue. The 2nd
year, I earned 10x the pre-pivot revenue.

I went from being able to feed myself (barely), to being able to buy a house
and support a family. Is that a fair trade off, I think it is... but your
mileage may vary.

I see the 'don't sell out' motivation from a lot of small business owners in
my community. For another example, there is... well was... a small greek
chicken joint that operated for 15 years nearby. The owner was 1st generation
american, and all he wanted to do was cook his family recipes and share them
with the community. Problem is the community changed in the past decade, going
from being mostly European-heritage to N. African nationals. His customer base
dwindled, and he never changed his stance of doing what he loved.

A month after his restaurant closed, it was replaced with one which served all
halal chicken and is now jam packed with more customers than any other
business sees. It's success has convinced the owner to expand leftwards into
another collapsing business.

Point is... the path to profitability is finding a customer base willing to
pay you. It's not important to have a clear vision, if that vision only
involves a small number of people.

~~~
jkestner

      It's not important to have a clear vision, if that vision only involves a small number of people.
    

Absolutely. A clear vision that's wrong does you no good. I know people who
work too hard on their idea without testing it. No battle plan ever survives
contact with the marketplace.

------
ChicagoBoy11
Amazing work - This is a very inspiring story, and I hope things continue to
look up for you.

Just my $.02 as a user who came to your site: The landing page is still
unfortunately very confusing - what I wanted to do most is to just try it out
really quickly to see how it looked.

But, it took me a while (after I had scrolled through to the bottom of the
site) to understand that I had to click the start learning. Then, thre was the
sign-up modal that showed up on the other page; From how it came up, it felt
to me like I had no option but to sign-up, and I would've turned away at that
point. BUT, because I had read a couple of your posts, I knew it was possible.
So I tried clicking outside of it and then it worked. Then, I picked a
language and then I had this list of items which were not clear to me what
they were, exactly (from the blogs I knew this was the library). So, I clicked
on one.

And then it was beautiful. Like, no joke, the actual reading experience was...
perfect. It worked... flawlessly.

Your core product is very, very good! It is definitely your strongest asset.
Don't hide it behind the splash page, then sign-up-modal-you-have-to-dismiss,
then the library UI... get users to experience your core product as quickly as
possible... that'll get 'em hooked!!!

~~~
Vivtek
I have to agree with this. I'm a language junky myself - I live in Budapest,
have lived in Germany and Puerto Rico, and last year I discovered and fell in
love with Duolingo (why yes I _do_ want to be practicing and learning six
languages at once), so I'm basically 100% your target demographic.

I also followed the link to the site - the "try it right now" on the Spanish
email quote is a truly fantastic idea, and well-executed - but for the low-
information user (i.e. me) your UI was a tad confusing. Requiring me to sign
in to look at phrase translations was also off-putting, even though I can only
assume this is some kind of research usage restriction.

~~~
steveridout
Sign-in for phrase translations is because that's one of the limits of the
free plan, you get 10 / day for free and you can upgrade to premium for
unlimited.

I could try to make it more seamless by imposing this limit based on cookie or
IP address if they aren't signed in yet.

Would love to know what else you found confusing about the UI?

~~~
bpicolo
I got the popup about translating phrases every-other word I clicked. That bit
was pretty frustrating : (

~~~
draven
Same here, I got around it by first clicking the translated word a second time
(to deselect it) before clicking on the next word.

------
dennybritz
Great job, I admire you for sticking with for so long despite the (slower than
expected?) growth. You must be really passionate about what you're building,
which is what counts most. I'm an avid language learner myself.

Here are a few things I'm thinking. You probably have thought about these
yourself, but anyway:

\- Have you ever thought about increasing the price? I find $5/month to be at
the very low-end for something that a language learner may be using regularly.
If I find the product useful I'd be happy to pay $25/month or more for it.
Increasing the price also has the side effect the you'll get "serious"
language learners to sign up, which is probably what you want.

\- Have you thought about recommending appropriate texts your users based on
their difficulty? I don't know anything about Chrome plugins, but I assume
that you can collect data about which pages and texts users are browsing, how
often they're clicking on stuff, and so on. That sounds like very valuable
data that you could use to add more value and data network effects to your
product.

\- Have you thought about selling to organizations (schools, classes, meetup
groups) instead of individuals?

~~~
steveridout
Thanks very much.

\- Increasing price. Yes, it started at only $10/year, and I've gradually
increased it as the product has improved. It's very difficult to know the
optimal price. I use split testing for some things but it feels wrong to do
this for price, and with current conversion rate it would take ages to get
meaningful results anyway. I'm hesitant to push price too high because
lowering it back down would be tricky. Existing users paying a higher price
would be annoyed. Also, at this stage I think increasing the user base would
be more valuable long term compared to milking the current users for more
money. I've been wondering if I could add a higher priced tier in future for
more advanced features.

\- Yes! I definitely want to recommend texts to people based not only on
difficulty, but also on interest. This is something that will become more
valuable with more users and a larger, higher quality library of texts. It
isn't highest priority right now, but hopefully in future.

\- Yes. I developed some features to target at teachers managing a class of
students: [http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-
teachers.ht...](http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-
teachers.html). I got a bunch of teachers using it with real classes but
decided to abandon the idea because: 1. The response was positive but usage
wasn't what I'd hoped. 2. Focus. As one guy I've got enough on my plate making
an awesome product for self motivated individuals. Diluting my focus and the
focus of the product seems like a very bad idea.

~~~
benlambt
Why not grandfather current users in at the current price and only increase
the price for new users?

If you need to drop the price back down then drop the price for all existing
users too. If you're charging monthly this is easy.

~~~
steveridout
I always grandfather users. And it's easy when raising prices. The old users
get to keep the old cheaper price and are happy.

I was referring to the difficulty when I:

1\. Raise prices too high

2\. Conversion rate and revenue is harmed, so I then revert to the lower price

3\. I now have a bunch of old users paying a higher price, and they might be
annoyed when they see the price has gone down. At a minimum I'd need to alter
their payment plans to give them the new cheaper price in future

I guess it wouldn't be that difficult. Still, it wasn't long ago since the
last price rise and for now I'd rather focus on growing and retaining the
customer base.

~~~
benlambt
Yes, alter the payment plan. Old users find out their subscription price has
dropped -- that's a happy surprise not an annoyance. Assuming monthly billing.
Yearly might be more complicated; perhaps extend the subscription length.

------
math
"I wonder if I’m hurting my chances of future employment by working so long on
my own."

Based on my recent experience getting back in the game after 5 years of self
directed projects (not all of them software related) I would say definitely
don't worry about this... you have something good to show for your time (i.e.
readlang) and the skills required to make it are sought after. Most other job
candidates will not be able to show this degree of self determination /
initiative. Just come across as hyper enthusiastic and you'd be set.

~~~
daraosn
I can confirm, worked on my projects after college, didn't work as expected,
but with all the gained experience I found jobs as full stack consultant very
easily, and for the last 3 years I saved some bucks. Now from this year I'm
working back again on my projects. Carry on Steve, the reward can be big!

Just one concern: are you working with more people? That's the only thing I
regret from my ventures back then, I was also solo-preneur, now starting to
make teams and delegate more and more, and I think that's the way to go...

~~~
hanniabu
Can you recommend any books or articles in particular on how to scale
operations from solo to a small group? I've been thinking about this for a
while and I can't get my head around it in seeing a way to do it without
forgoing pay in order to pay the new employee and hoping to acquire more
clients to give us both work and repeat with another employee and so on. This
just doesn't seem efficient though.

~~~
apapli
I don't have any book recommendations but it really is just management skills,
so look up some business books.

The main temptation you need to avoid is "micro managing", and instead you
just need to have faith that people will do what you ask them to do, albeit
via a different path than you may have taken.

In terms of justifying the cost of labour versus DIY - it's just an
"opportunity cost" argument. If you can get better returns from your time by
doing something else (eg not programming, and just dedicating a bit of time
for coaching your people) then it will be worth employing others. If not, then
stick with what you are doing.

Hope that helps :)

------
birken
The raw numbers of sign-ups and revenue are interesting as a broad health
check, but they don't really provide enough context to give you meaningful
feedback of what your chances of continued growth are like.

The stuff I'd be more interesting is data points like: Of the people who sign-
up, how many of them are still active in a month? How many of the people who
are active in a month become paid users? How many of the paid users are still
paying after 6 months? How important is this product to the paid users? Do
they regularly refer their friends? How many people would sign up for your
premium membership at $10/month? $20/month?

If people are churning left and right, then I'd be less excited than if all
the paying customers loved it, but it just hasn't been marketed broadly
enough.

~~~
steveridout
Thanks for the advice. Churn is higher than I'd like and that's going to be a
big focus for me this year. There's a lot to do to make the product more
sticky.

Rough figures at the moment are:

Monthly churn of monthly subscribers is about 20%.

Yearly churn of yearly subscribers is about 50%.

When I ask why people leave, virtually everyone has the same story - they
really liked the product, but they didn't have the time to devote to their
language studies right now.

I'll dig into some of the other metrics you suggested in a future post.

~~~
jakobegger
Sounds like your product is a poor fit for a subscription. If the majority of
your revenue is from new customers, why not switch to a paid-up-front product?
With a 20% churn rate, your average revenue per user should be around 25$, so
why not just charge $25 up front?

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
learning languages is one of those things where people will come back to it
again over their lifetimes when they perceive they have time or when they
create some sort of new year resolution or something. If you have the current
pricing they will sign up again, if you have an up-front pricing they can come
back for free forever, which in the long run I don't think is as profitable.

If at all I would do something like, if you have been a previous paid
subscriber, and your subscription has lapsed, you can come back at 50% of the
subscription for 50% of the time you were subscribed for (so if you were there
for 6 months you would have 3 months at 50% off), this way you would encourage
people to come back without completely losing out on additional income

------
gamerDude
Just some quick feedback. When clicking on the link in medium to translate the
spanish text, it went to the readlang library page and I could click around on
the words to get translation.

This wasn't immediately obvious to me because I accidently clicked a phrase
first and it told me I had to sign up. I considered leaving at that moment,
but pushed through and got the one word translation so I understood what it
did. I liked that a lot. But reading through the comments, I realized I missed
out on the core product. That it is a browser extension and I could do this
anywhere on the web.

Without HN comments, I would've never gotten that from the example because I
thought it was a bit cool, but didn't see the use case and thus didn't visit
the splash page.

I'm not your target market, but now that I know what it does I will probably
tell people I know who would be interested. My recommendation would be to make
it super easy to understand what is going on in any of your demo's. Especially
if you plan on going that route in the future.

Best of luck!

~~~
steveridout
One problem is that there's no one "core" reading experience. The distraction
free e-book style reader in the web-app and the extension both have similar
usage.

The small quote I linked to isn't at all representative of the kind of text
people typically read. So not the ideal introduction to the product I agree,
but it did was a neat way to get a lot of people to click through into the app
to see it working.

Thanks for your encouragement!

------
NumberCruncher
Awesome product!

10 years ago when I moved to Germany I had a similar learning system. I read
books, I highlited the words I wanted to learn and once or twice a week I
wrote them up in a small book. After a while a wrote a small VBA flashcard app
for tracking my progress and randomizing the words. And that took a hell lot
of time. With an app like yours I could have saved 30-60 minutes every week
(2-4 hours every month) which is worth of 20-40€ a month (on minimum wage).
That´s why a recommend you to spend way much more time marketing your app and
finding the right customers, which means:

\- already learning languages (don´t get fooled by "If I had enough time, I
would use it")

\- learning languages because they have to (living abroad or working
international)

\- saving 2-4 (or more) hours a month is worth them at least 10€ (no students
spending more money on boose than on books)

IMHO you can find a lot of young professionals on forums like the "new in
wahetever city" groups or expat groups in facebook.

Good Luck!

~~~
steveridout
Thanks very much!

I've had many responses from people who had an idea to create something like
Readlang, but only a handful who actually built their own app like you did :-)

I agree I need to get better at finding those ideal customers, for whom
Readlang should be a very easy sell.

~~~
NumberCruncher
Actually I was yesterday thinking about rebuilding my old app for the web, but
if your app works fine I'm gonna pick me an other pet project. :)

Anyhow, I signed up for a premium account.

I couldn't figure it out how I can terminate the account if I take the monthly
payment plan. You should make this clear at the beginning of the sign up
process and not at the end:

[http://imgur.com/XFm13o9](http://imgur.com/XFm13o9)

and should also put it here:

[http://readlang.com/termsOfService](http://readlang.com/termsOfService)

I anticipatied some trust but I generally don't sign contracts without knowing
how I can get out of them. This may scare the customers off.

If I were you I would do this:

\- instead of building new features I would make the site look professional,
this means all the boring stuff which makes you money, like easy sign up,
better landing page (for that part you already have tons of advices here), a
proper terms of servie, privacy policy, etc. and after that I would go hunting
customers until I doubled the revenue

\- or I would find somebody who has experince with the business side of this,
I would share the profit with him (the 50% of something is better than 100% of
nothing)

It is up to you, but if you want to stay a one man show you have to learn how
to make online business. Otherwise you have to find a business guy.

Good Luck!

------
simonswords82
Hey Steve, great product and as a fellow bootstrapper and somebody who wants
to learn a language (Spanish) you've got my attention.

I was looking around your site and checking some bits and couldn't help but
notice that there's not a lot of SEO specific marketing activity on the site.
I couldn't help but feel that there must surely be some very common phrases in
various languages that people naturally tend to search for online when they
have an interest in a language. If your site could provide this information,
you might rank well and people would naturally progress to try your app?

I also thought there there must be LOTS of content on your site that people
have curated for their own learning that you might (without breaking privacy
of course) be able to capitalise on for search engine ranking. I'm thinking
something along the lines of the music lyric websites where people tend to
submit their content and it's publicly visible? You would need to curate it,
but it just seems like madness that there's so much well organised translated
content that is currently locked away from Google's view.

Tell me to shut up if this isn't an area of marketing you're interested in,
but maybe something in the above will spark an idea. Regardless, all the best
with this, it's lovely to see another semi-UK based bootstrapper on he HN
homepage :)

------
dhoe
Thanks for making Readlang. I love it - one day I thought, I'd really like a
product that does x, y, and z, and Readlang does exactly it and more, so I'm
happy.

I have a premium subscription, but the only reason I got it was that I wanted
the product to not disappear :) The features you get with the premium
subscription would not have been a reason to upgrade for me at all. I don't
know if this is a problem (I used to feel that way about Evernote as well),
but maybe something to consider.

~~~
steveridout
I've had this feedback a few times. Others have said they paid more to support
the app rather than for the extra features.

One question - do you translate many multi-word phrases? If you do then you
would find the free plan restrictive. If you mainly translate single words
then the free plan is probably fine.

May consider restricting the free plan a bit more in future. For now I'm happy
to have a lot of free users to help spread the word and grow.

~~~
dhoe
Almost never, it's almost all single words for me.

------
wheels
Being a little pedantic, but I think the usage is important:

Profit is not counted _before_ wages. Wages are the primary expense in a
software company. This means that the company is sort of break-even, but only
when paying below market rate wages. Perhaps a little confusing is that the
term "ramen profitable" is mostly a euphemism, not actual profitability.

~~~
jakobegger
The owner of a business is not an employee (at least in Austria). Therefore a
one man company doesn't pay any wages. The owner just gets the profit that the
company makes.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
AFAICT he's in Madrid, Spain?

Anyway, it's different in the UK, a company needs a minimum of 2 officers, you
can be a sole-trader though. A sole-trader takes drawings from their business
account, but it's not necessarily the whole revenue less costs - you might be
saving for capital investments and you wouldn't want to pay income tax and
Nat.Ins. on that money.

In the UK the owners of a company can be employees too, you can then get money
as wages as well as getting dividends as an owner.

[Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, check this detail before relying on
it.]

~~~
srgseg
In the UK you can have a one person limited liability company, where the same
person acts as the sole director and the company secretary. That sole director
can either be an employee and a director or just a director. The difference is
that their portion of income from being a director will be in the form of
dividends, and the income from being an employee will be salary.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That must have changed (in the Companies Act 2006?)? I'm director and
secretary of a ltd co but when we formed our company I'm almost certain we
needed two officers at minimum? [[http://www.companybug.com/how-many-officers-
must-a-limited-c...](http://www.companybug.com/how-many-officers-must-a-
limited-company-have/) \- suggests I haven't dreamt it up!]

You're quite right though, see Ch.2 at
[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/418150/GP1_Incorporation_names_v5_4-ver0.29-4.pdf).

or see [https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/appoint-
directo...](https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/appoint-directors-
and-company-secretaries).

Unfortunately I can't add an errata above as editing that post is no longer
allowed.

------
zongitsrinzler
I am in a similar position myself. Me and a friend have been developing a SaaS
for 3 years while also working full time. Lately things have started looking
up though!

Having a steady 400% yearly growth is awesome, this could really turn into
something big in a few years.

Btw, how much time do you spend on developing vs marketing?

~~~
steveridout
Must be very tough to start something like this while still holding down a
full time job.

Hard to say how much time is spent developing vs marketing. Probably something
like 90% design, development, user support, and 10% marketing. Where marketing
means writing blog posts and engaging on social media (mainly reddit,
facebook, twitter).

I tried some paid advertising experiments a couple of years ago but they
didn't work well at all. May try another experiment this year now that the
product is more polished and has a higher value.

~~~
zongitsrinzler
Having a full time job is a timesink, thankfully I find it easy working
abnormal hours. Plus on the other end it gives me a good salary + whatever I
make on my own.

Regarding marketing we are in a similar spot. Only 10% of time goes to
marketing and paid advertising doesn't work. I recommend reading Traction
([http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)), it gives you a good
model on how to go about growing your company.

~~~
jryan49
Do you have a life outside of working though?

------
austinjp
Kudos to the author for being open and honest about ReadLang's turnover and
his projections. As he says, people usually play these cards very close to
their chests. Personally I find it very encouraging to know that I'm not the
only person who's grappling with the question of how long to stick with a
minimally profitable project.

------
maximgsaini
Hey Steve, This is really inspiring, man!! I know what its like. I would
suggest that you keep going at it. Especially since things are finally working
out.

I see you mention user support as a potential time suck in one of your
comments. I founded a startup which essentially provides user support on
behalf of busy founders. I'd be willing to offer free support credits to you
(in addition to a helpdesk software which is free for all) if it would make
life easier for you. I'm hoping it might save you some time. We love people
who bootstrap and let me know if we can help in any way. My email is in my
profile. You can check us at: busibud.com

I know how hard it is for a solo founder to take care of everything himself
and what it feels like to put 15 hours a day without an end in sight.

------
bsoni
Good on you Steve!

Reading something like this is quite encouraging. I too left my day job and
one of the things that I am focusing on is my own projects. I make apps and in
the last few months I haven't made more than 20$.

Anyway, working on my apps gives me more time for contributing to open-source
and writing blog posts explaining how I solve problems, which can be rewarding
on it's own.

Cheers for sharing your story and good luck! Bhuman

------
alco
I tried to use the Chrome extension to read a Spanish website but it doesn't
work unless I enable 3rd party cookies. That's quite rude. I cannot allow a
single extension to compromise my browsing experience by letting anyone set
3rd party cookies.

Could you please add a field on the site where I could paste the URL of a
webpage? That would work for me as a workaround to using the extension.

~~~
steveridout
I understand where you're coming from, but it's for purely technical reasons.
The extension just plain wouldn't work without this enabled.

I avoided the "paste a URL" solution because that would mean that my server
would need to fetch the content from other websites instead of each user's
browser doing the work.

Until I have a better solution, for now you could resort to copying and
pasting articles you'd like to read into the upload page:
[http://readlang.com/upload](http://readlang.com/upload) \- it's not ideal
perhaps, but should get the job done.

------
eloisant
Does it really take you fulltime to maintain it now that it's developed?

Couldn't you keep it alive by working a few hours a week, and take on
contracting jobs in addition to get additional income?

~~~
steveridout
I could certainly do that. But even though it's a very useful app right now I
don't consider it fully developed. I have a huge list of improvements I'd like
to make. And I don't expect the current growth to continue if I just put it
into maintenance mode.

~~~
orky56
Based on opportunity cost alone, do you think you could work part-
time/contract work and have some additional development resources to work on
your backlog? Have you been able to assess whether the new improvements will
increase retention/monetization/user acquisition and ultimately the top line?
As someone who also did a one-man show these questions helped me prioritize
and create the appropriate leverage.

------
rloc
Thanks for sharing this and keep trying !

I've been also working alone on a project for 3 years in my spare time (SaaS).
I'll soon switch full time on it.

News are usually full of startup stories funded with millions. As readers
we're blinded with only the tip of the iceberg when the real hard work and
pain is rarely mentioned.

It's great to read a true story like this and for people like me it gives a
invaluable point of comparison both in terms of personal experience and
business success. It's also a source of encouragement.

------
wiradikusuma
Related, could someone shed some light for my dilemma:

If you're making a freemium (upgrade using in-app) mobile app that, every time
you spend $5 in FB, you _consistently_ get ~100 new users, but _none_ of them
ever upgrade (let say you're targeting people who apparently can't afford to
pay), what would you do?

It's like a "good problem to have" (predictable user acquisition), but it's
still a problem (no money coming).

~~~
peteretep
You split test your upgrade CTA until you find something that works. If you
can't find anything that works, you find a source for "higher quality" users,
unless there's an inherent benefit for you in having users.

~~~
wiradikusuma
thanks, but what's CTA?

~~~
peteretep
Call To Action

------
hobo_mark
Hi Steve, always love your posts but I have a question, are working on this
full-time? Do you have major features planned? Have you ever thought about
focusing on maintenance on i.e. weekends while working a "regular" job?

~~~
steveridout
I did put it into maintenance mode for about 4 months in 2014 while I did a
freelance gig. During that time I did no new development, just fixing the odd
bug and user support.

I wouldn't consider a full time job at the moment. I'm not sure how people
manage to hold down a full time job and build a startup on the side. I can
imagine doing it while working a job which wasn't mentally demanding. But
people working as full time programmers, I can only guess that they don't give
100% at work, or perhaps they have more energy than I do!

I've considered taking on the occasional short contract. But I'm not actively
looking, I've got enough to keep me occupied with Readlang right now. (Plus,
I've got a 1.5 month old baby, and they tend to reduce your free time!)

~~~
Alan01252
I'm assuming you get a lot of support financially from your partner / have a
big runway? I can't imagine living on £9k a year without such? How do you
survive?

edit: I Worry this comment comes across the wrong way. I've been desperate to
do a startup for years, but the financial aspect of it has always scared me. I
was told at a Hacker News meetup that I probably don't have the
entrepreneurial spirit, which the more I think about it, the more I agree
with. I'm curious as to how your mindset works :)

~~~
steveridout
We both contribute equally, and we live in Madrid where cost of living is
relatively low. Two people living together can live on £9K / year here no
problem (that's about 1000 euros / month each). That said, I do have savings
that I've been eating into.

I've never felt the need for lots of money to be happy. What I really value is
being able to do interesting work that I'm proud of. So I'm very motivated to
make money to the extent that it provides freedom to work on interesting
things. And perhaps even to contract people to help out. I guess that's a
philosophy shared by many of the people here.

~~~
smhg
> _What I really value is being able to do interesting work that I 'm proud
> of. So I'm very motivated to make money to the extent that it provides
> freedom to work on interesting things._

I couldn't agree more. I'm in the same ramen profitable situation (very
similar amount). I love the challenges the product throws at me. Money is
indeed just a means to be able to work on those.

For those who don't agree: the average person has about 60-ish years in
his/her life where he/she is able to decide what they do with their time? Why
postpone doing things that interest you?

~~~
hobo_mark
When you decide to have a kid it's not just about you anymore.

------
Fede_V
Did you consider adding an option for a one time purchase? I really don't like
re-occuring subscriptions if I can at all avoid them, but I'd happily buy
something like this (like I payed for sublime, etc).

~~~
steveridout
For a short time I had a lifetime membership option for $100 and then later at
$150. It even had a few takers. But I removed it mainly because:

1\. It feels strange to promise to provide an ongoing service for a one-off
payment (I'm guessing Sublime Text doesn't have a server component, there's a
big difference there). It sounds risky from my point of view. Am I still
obliged to keep providing you the service in 20 years even though you only
paid once?

2\. The people willing to pay up-front are probably the ones most likely to
stick around for the long term and provide a lot of recurring revenue.
(Hypothesis - may not be true.)

3\. More one-off payments makes my revenue graph much spiker and less
predictable.

That said - perhaps you're right. If people are much more willing to pay up
front I should trade some of the predictability of SaaS for the lucrative but
volatile one-off payments. Something to consider when I revisit pricing.

------
kamaal
>>I wonder if I’m hurting my chances of future employment by working so long
on my own.

You built a business, designed and built a product grounds up, you made
profits, you have users. You did this all alone.

You are in the top 1% of the product/engineering managers out there.

Believe me, those who do not hire you have more to lose. Any sensible company
would want to hire a person like you.

------
cristal
Keep up the good work. Already referred it out to a bunch of people. Think it
will work great overseas where people actually need to learn another language
for work. I have referred it to the people who live in Italy and work for me
to help them learn english faster.

------
ThomPete
Well done!

I have a profitable sidebusiness and so I feel I can relate.

You have proven a need for your product and you've done it the best way you
can. You built it for yourself and it turns out other people like it too.

If your growth trajectory continues you can be doing 6 figures in a couple of
years. If you have the patience and can support yourself I would recommend you
do that.

Now here comes the tricky part.

To grow your company into those 6 figures and beyond, you probably now have to
stop building for yourself and start building it for other people too.

But good luck it's great to see others out there doing things from scratch.

~~~
steveridout
Thanks for the advice. I encourage feedback all the time and always take user
suggestions into account. Sometimes I feel it's best NOT to act on too many
suggestions since it leads to too much complexity and bloat. Like most things
it's about getting the right balance.

------
polemic
Hey this is great - something I've been looking for.

A small thing: could you please support https, especially for logins?

~~~
steveridout
I would _love_ to switch the whole site to https, but it's not that easy.

The login request is always sent via https, even when you are using the site
over plain http. So your password should always be encrypted.

The site does work over https (try it -
[https://readlang.com](https://readlang.com)), and at one point I redirected
all http traffic to https, but there was a big problem. I use external
dictionaries in an iframe to provide additional definitions and these are
almost always only available over http:
[https://readlang.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/279539...](https://readlang.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/279539-changing-
the-dictionary)

It worked OK for a short while, but then Chrome and Firefox both refused to
display http content within a https page. Chrome displays a very subtle shield
icon that the user must click on to reload the page allowing mixed content.
This is far too unfriendly to expect my users to do, so I had to resort to
using http again :-(

Of course, the ideal solution would be for me to have access to dictionary
definitions so I could integrate them properly instead of using an ugly
iframe, but with 50+ languages supported, that's a tall order!

~~~
amatix
> The login request is always sent via https, even when you are using the site
> over plain http. So your password should always be encrypted.

Though it doesn't stop someone (eg. malicious software on a wifi router)
altering the _login form itself_ to submit passwords to a different URL...

~~~
VeilEm
If a router can change the HTML it can load JavaScript and so it's already
game over.

------
going_to_800
The story is nice and congrats for not giving up. However, I think you are on
a level where you need to take a decision, would this become a real business
or you'll keep it like it's now.

As a side project it's awesome, as a business not so much. IF you want to make
a business from this you need to start thinking on how to market, price and
develop new features for clients that will pay more or at least to find ways
to get power users.

I saw on a reply of yours that you don't want to add some business requested
features because individuals don't want them or you don't want them. Well, do
you want higher revenues, higher growth or do you want to keep it like it's
now(not saying that current state is bad)? Saying also that you know what's
more useful is quite wrong, it's a mindset you need to change, once you target
someone that is not you, you must at least assume that they have different
needs.

Even though individuals don't want those features, they are not the ones
who'll bring the most money and if you really wanted you could create a
business version like many other SaaS do, and you know this.

From your replies I sense that you want to focus on individuals, that's great.
In this case, forget about pricing, revenue, etc focus on building the user
base, more likely a good stream of word-of-mouth sign ups. That's what most
B2C apps do.

------
aboodman
Neat use of an extension!

(Long ago, I led the design of the Chrome extensions platform)

------
KTamasEnty
This is really cool. The free demo and the $5 price was just enough to convert
me to a paid user for at least for a month. Seriously, this is exactly what I
was trying to get to work in a desktop ebook reader or on my Kindle, but
unsuccessfully.

Any chance for integrating the Yandex Translate API? (I am learning Russian.
The MT quality between Google and Yandex for Russian is sort of a toss; I
would say 70% of the time Google is better, but 30% of the time Yandex is.)

~~~
steveridout
Interesting. I've been thinking of incorporating extra translation services
for premium users. Microsoft Bing would be another one. It would be nice to
show alternative translations although not sure how the UI would work yet. No
promises at the moment but I like the idea!

------
hellameta
your main page would seriously benefit from several 1 line phrases in various
languages that you can translate right there on the page.

so basically what you show in (#2 Click to Translate) should be an embedded
within the page itself. you obviously don't need the extension if it's on your
own page.

you won't know until you try but I'm going to call it out now that it will
increase your conversion rates

------
beat
Oh man, I feel your pain!

I'm three years into bootstrapping a company - still pre-revenue. Most of it
has been done while dayjobbing in the enterprise.

On the positive side, things are changing rapidly. I've recently picked up two
valuable co-founders, so I'm not alone and have more bandwidth. The current
revision is strong and on its way to production-ready (the last revision I
thought was a beta, but it turned out to be an alpha and a learning
experience, sigh). The product is really targeted at the enterprise space, and
between the three of us, we have over 50 years of enterprise computing
experience. My co-founders are with me because they've directly experienced
the pain that drove me to writing it.

Hopefully, in a year, we can all make a living at it. But it's going to suck
for a while, because we're also all three used to the incomes of enterprise
contracting, and we all have kids in college. This is why older founders are
so rare - it's really a huge financial risk in a way that startups aren't when
you're in your 20s.

------
erroneousfunk
I love the product and am still trying it out while learning Russian (very
tempted to purchase a subscription, and it's sitting in my toolbar, which is a
good reminder). A couple feedback things about the website because you seem to
be receptive to it, after reading some of your comments in this thread:

The "loading" page was a bad first impression for me. It was super fast, and I
wouldn't have minded at all if the page were loading "normally" during that
time, but the fact that you put up a loading page reminded me of Flash sites
and over-developed crap in the mid 2000's. It was odd, and not in a good way.

The site design, as another person pointed out, needs a little work. I know
that you like serif fonts, and want it to feel "warm" and inviting and non-
threatening, but you have to be really careful about piling too much on at
once, especially when you're trying to promote how fantastic and slick the
extension is :) The rabbit logo was a little childish. Rabbits connote "speed"
books connote "learning" but the logo design itself didn't really make me say
"Oh, super fast, slick, easy learning in a browser extension I should
definitely download and trust with my personal data!" I put together an
example of what might be improved (note: the logo here is just something
random I found on Google images. Probably super duper copyrighted!)
[http://i.imgur.com/Ix7ubvR.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ix7ubvR.png) Getting rid
of some of the border-shadow/rounded corner stuff might help, as well. It
looks a little out-of-date with modern design trends. Not saying you need a
trendy site, but you probably want something a little more timeless :)

Also, adding a little more variations on the "green" theme could probably
help. I really like this website for color palette inspirations:
[https://color.adobe.com/create/color-
wheel/](https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/)

Loved the About page, the testimonials, and the obvious care that you had in
the product. After exploring the site and installing the extension, it felt
like a really cared-about (if that makes sense) well-maintained company and
product. The fact that you had your personal address and mobile number there
was awesome!

Not a designer, I'm a software engineer, so take my advice with a grain of
salt!

------
galfarragem
I wouldn't be worried about it: your app is useful to a lot of people and I
can't see that changing soon. It's one of the few extensions that I keep
instaled even without using it right now. And again, "it's only because the
lack of time/motivation". It's for sure something I'll come back to in the
future.

------
consta
Congrats man! This is the first time I stumbled upon your extension and I have
to admit, it is pretty neat and useful. I too have created one vocabulary
trainer extension, but haven't released it as it way too unpolished and I am
using a paid dictionary.

However, do you mind sharing some of your stats? Which language pairs are
mostly used on Readlang?

~~~
steveridout
From the entire user base (mostly free and not active users right now), here
are the top 6 languages people are learning:

\- English - 16,037

\- Spanish - 13,840

\- French - 5,857

\- German - 5,187

\- Russian - 1,776

\- Italian - 1,760

The first language is almost always English, except for those learning
English, whose first languages are:

\- Russian - 3,799

\- Spanish - 2,263

\- English - 1,440 (haha - this shouldn't be allowed and the users will get a
notification when they try to translate something)

\- Italian - 1,220

\- Chinese - 713

And of the paying subscribers, here are the top 6 languages:

\- Spanish - 174

\- French - 105

\- English - 89

\- German - 86

\- Russian - 47

\- Italian - 24

------
sail
This is inspiring Steve.

Did you try different price points? Do you have data to share about this?

Did you have a full-time job while you were building it?

~~~
steveridout
I've increased prices gradually from $10 / year to the current $48 / year or
$5 / month.

It's really hard to give you good data since the numbers of conversions are
relatively low. The conversion rate from signup to paid has stayed at roughly
1.5% the whole time. But the product has been improving too. If I charged the
current price 2 years ago when the product wasn't as polished, the conversion
rate would probably have been lower. But I can't know for sure.

Didn't have a full time job. I saved up and have lived fairly frugally. I did
take a break to do contract work in 2014.

------
5ersi
Your extension is similar to many other instant-translation extensions on
Chrome store. I.e. Google Translate extension (which I use and am quite happy
with) is free and has 5M+ users.

IMHO your real problem is that Readlang do es not offer enough features that
would differentiate it from other free offerings.

~~~
steveridout
Do the other extensions:

\- Store all your translations, along with their contexts, to your account?

and have a accompanying web-apps which let you:

\- review those translations with flashcards, prioritizing the most frequent
words in the language, and utilizing a spaced repetition algorithm so that you
spend more time on the words and phrases you find difficult?

\- export of those flashcards for use in other apps such as Anki

\- upload novels to read in a distraction free, paginated reading interface
which works well on mobile devices?

\- watch videos with sync'd transcriptions?

\- share and vote on native texts and videos with a community of language
learners?

If so, please let me know!

And if you didn't realize any of the above - I take the blame for not
communicating it better on the landing page. The problem is that overwhelming
users with info usually isn't a great idea either. Hard to strike the right
balance.

I don't expect everyone who installs the Google Translate extension to install
Readlang - since mine is targeted mainly at intermediate and advanced language
learners.

~~~
erroneousfunk
The flashcard feature caught me by surprise, and I loved it! I just started
playing around with the in-page translations, went back to the site, and was
very pleasantly surprised! Much better than any of the language learning
browser extensions I've used before!

------
moron4hire
> I regularly question my decision to continue pouring so much time into
> Readlang. I wonder about the lucrative life of a contractor, or the cushy
> job of software developer at a large tech company. I wonder if I’m hurting
> my chances of future employment by working so long on my own.

This has been on near constant loop in my head for the last year. It's really,
really hard to be productive when you're worrying about the future. I don't
know if I could do this if I wasn't married. I mean, I'd probably be living in
a rural hell-hole somewhere and getting by financially, but that would ruin me
emotionally.

------
ensiferum
You're doing a good job. I've spent 10 years building a product in a very very
saturated domain and I've made about $400 out of it. But that doesn't really
matter, since I primarly wrote the application for myself.

------
radarsat1
Oh wow, this is _exactly_ what I've been looking for lately. You might want to
work on your advertising, because I've literally been looking for exactly
this, because I'm currently learning Spanish, and never came across your app.
I thought about asking Instapaper or someone to implement clickable word
translation, or even considered writing my own web app.. I'm stupid enough
that I never even thought about turning it into a business. But I'm happy that
now I don't have to! I'll test it on my Android e-paper tablet for you and
post a review.

~~~
steveridout
Cool! I've been thinking of getting an Android eink tablet to try Readlang on.

I'd love to hear how it goes! If you don't mind, after giving it a whirl, let
me which model you have and how well it works :-)

The word is getting out about Readlang. There's no paid advertising and I'm a
n00b at marketing but slowly learning. It seems to be growing, but please lend
a hand by telling your friends :-)

------
overcast
As someone currently working their ass of on a new project launch, this is
inspiring. I think what you've made is pretty impressive, and the I dig the
name. However, three years in, is it really consuming that much of your time
that you can't use this as a very big supplemental income? 16,000 pounds is
nothing to scoff at for extra income. Especially if your day job can be
consulting. I think once you nail down the marketing(which I think you're
lacking), this can easily become your primary source. Well done, and stick
with it!

------
DrNuke
Many solopreneurs develop slightly underachieving or barely profitable IT
businesses. It is often a problem of time or committment or strategy or
resources but, more often than not, it is not a fully viable business. That
said, it may still come good for some passive income and, if a cat can't bark,
three or four cats may still make a dog. He knows how to make a cat already,
so the implied value of his current barely profitable business is higher than
the nude money it is making just now.

------
personomas
Listening is another great way to learn a foreign language. I recommend adding
the ability to hear a passage. Create functionality for people to read a
transcript and input it.

~~~
steveridout
People can share YouTube videos with sync'd transcriptions which are great for
this. Check out this selection for German:

[http://readlang.com/shelf/5649d1fe60a4e5ef42f258ad](http://readlang.com/shelf/5649d1fe60a4e5ef42f258ad)

Songs tend to be popular, here are a couple of good ones:

[http://readlang.com/library/551261a4573e272265223327](http://readlang.com/library/551261a4573e272265223327)
\- Je Veux, by Zaz - French

[http://readlang.com/library/55da3bacfe102b520f05d9ba](http://readlang.com/library/55da3bacfe102b520f05d9ba)
\- Lento, by Julieta Venegas - Spanish

~~~
personomas
It seems you're only uploading free content that's already been spoken.
Instead, I think you should have a button on every text [1] with something
like: "[count] listen now" (where count is the amount of uploaded natively
spoken texts read by native/proficient speakers of the language.) But if
nobody has uploaded a "listen now", then it's a button that says "0 listen
now".

Of course then, have a button right next to that one, that says "read text?"
with a picture of a microphone. Which can be used for people to upload the
spoken text.

Written translations

Do the same thing, but with written translations. Therefore, people can
translate the text to their native language and upload it to the community for
other people to read.

Finish/next button

Next, I think you should add a finish/next button to the top of the text OR to
(one of the) the sidebar(s). I know there's one at the bottom. Add one to the
top/sidebar.

Clicking the finish/next button should go straight to the next text. Instead,
you seem to hound people with 3 straight pop-ups! Then return them to the list
of text. Wrong, in my opinion. Take them immediately to the next unfinished
text that they haven't read yet.

Sharing via social media

Move the share on social media dialog to each text page, just always present.
Don't make the user click past it everytime they read a text.

Congratulations

Stop congratulating people when they did something, or keep it to a minimum
don't make them click past it.

In general, I just think you're not utilizing the community enough. Use them
to upload free and quality content. That way, they become more engaged, and
you get free content.

[1] by text, I mean the foreign language text that they're trying to learn,
for example:
[http://readlang.com/library/568a5501ddb6ae5b165d2c33/from/0](http://readlang.com/library/568a5501ddb6ae5b165d2c33/from/0)

------
omahane
This is an incredible product, which I of course just now heard about. I have
shared it with my family. But I was wondering if there's a way to get a family
rate.

~~~
steveridout
Good idea!

If you want to a discount right now for upgrading two accounts, do the
following:

1\. On the checkout page, there's an "I'm feeling generous" button which
increases the yearly price from $48 to $60 (idea borrowed from NewsBlur) 2\.
After upgrading, email steve@readlang.com letting me know the email address of
the other person, and I'll upgrade their account manually.

This'll work out at $30 each instead of $48. If you have an odd number of
people, email me and we'll work something else out.

------
mokkol
I love it to read honest reviews of products I use and love!

Nice work Steve!

------
knocte
How does it feel to know that your product, some day, may become obsolete? I
mean, you cannot deny the fact that real-time translation tools are improving
a hell of a lot (you can watch some video about a demo from Microsoft already
doing this through Skype). So there will be one day in which everybody will be
able to communicate with everybody without learning languages at all :)

------
oneeyedpigeon
As someone whose dream is to do something similar, is it too rude to ask how
much money you started off with and what other income you have, if any?

~~~
steveridout
Yes, society generally deems it rude, but I don't :-)

I'd managed to save about £40,000 GBP by the end of 2012. Then in 2014 I took
some months off from Readlang and earned roughly £30,000 GBP doing some
contract work. No other sources of income. I've never been close to running
out of money, if I did I would certainly ease back on Readlang and look for
more freelance work.

BTW: The freelance work I did wasn't using technology I enjoy or want to focus
on in future, and was offered to me without having to look for it. I did it
because of the money and because I liked the people. I've never actually had
to actively look for freelance gigs myself. So I'm still not sure how easy it
is to find good clients with interesting work.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Thanks for the info! I have, coincidentally, almost exactly the same amount in
savings, although I don't have one single idea I'd like to pursue - yet.

I currently work for a small start-up also working in the education sector
(albeit more directly). The general story isn't too dissimilar to yours,
though, in that it's been a bit of a slog for not a huge amount of profit,
although things are slowly looking more and more promising.

I wish you continued success with Readlang.

------
placeybordeaux
Huh, I had a very rough prototype of a similar project, but never actually
moved much past that. Congrats on bringing readlang to the world!

------
AndrewMBliss
I have just tried the Web-App. I find it is a really good app. It has high
accuracy in translating from Chinese to English. It is a really big surprise
since even Google Translate cannot perform this well. Maybe the developer need
more cooperation with the NGO learning organizations. He can get more support
and fund in this way.

Keep on and I think people will love it!

------
nautical
Thanks for sharing .. Its a great inspiration !

------
iraphael
When I first saw the article I was excited for it, because I thought Readlang
had an "immersion"-type feature, where it translates every page I visit to
french and un-translates on demand.

Not saying that would work _better_ , but it's something I thought would be
cool.

~~~
steveridout
There was another Chrome extension that did what you're describing:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-
immersion...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-immersion-
for-ch/bedbecnakfcpmkpddjfnfihogkaggkhl/reviews)

Was covered in Lifehacker here: [http://lifehacker.com/5907432/language-
immersion-for-chrome-...](http://lifehacker.com/5907432/language-immersion-
for-chrome-teaches-you-a-new-language-while-you-browse-the-web)

Seems like it's broken now though. I have a hunch he was trying to use Google
Translate without paying for their API. Either that, or he really was paying
for the API which is unsustainable for a free extension.

I don't think it's a great idea anyway. If you want to learn French, you
should read French written by a native speaker, not a machine translation of
English into French. Readlang uses machine translation as an aid to
understanding native texts, which is far more acceptable IMO.

~~~
iraphael
I understand the limitations, but I was excited to be able to read sites I
usually visit while still immersing myself in the language.

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mcnamaratw
Wow. You've built a business with real cash revenue that's been increasing
300% per year, and approaching the threshold where it could support you.
That's a very impressive achievement that very few people have ever matched.

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fasteo
>> En primeras palabras quiero decir, que me gusta muchísimo tu pagina. Es de
verdad grande trabajo.

Don't know who wrote this; these are Spanish words, but as a sentence, it is
barely understandable.

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jkaunisv1
This is really cool! I'm starting to practice my Japanese again and on the
lookout for different tools to help.

Thanks for sharing your numbers and story. Super helpful as somebody trying to
bootstrap my own thing.

~~~
steveridout
Good luck. Small warning that the experience learning Japanese may not be as
good as with other languages since it can't detect word boundaries, doesn't
offer Furigana transliteration which I'm told is pretty important, and doesn't
have word frequency lists. Still, please try it out and let me know what you
think!

~~~
jkaunisv1
Yeah, I expected to find it in the beta section given all the difficulties it
presents as opposed to say, Spanish. I have a ways to go learning Kanji before
I'll be able to properly use it but I'll definitely be in touch with feedback
when I do.

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devspaper
This is a great app,some time I really want to quite my job and do my own
project like him,but I don't really know what is stoping me to do it,maybe I
just don't have the courage.

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kriro
Would you mind sharing your technology choices (languages, libraries,
frameworks) and maybe why you picked the technology and if you'd do something
differently now? Seems pretty cool, congrats.

~~~
steveridout
## back end

\- Servers running Ubuntu hosted at Linode (outages recently have been
worrying)

\- NGINX

\- NodeJS & express framework

\- MongoDB replica set with primary, secondary & arbiter

## front end

\- BackboneJS

\- JQuery

\- gulp for build & deploy script

\- RequireJS for modules

It's been going fairly well on the whole. This is my first web-site with a
back end, so I don't have experience with Python, PHP, MySQL, etc... to
compare it to. Given that, it's hard to say whether I'd choose differently if
I started again. I would probably play around with PostgreSQL since a
relational DB may suit my needs better. Also, MongoDB can be worrying. I added
a replicaset member running the latest stable version 3 with the WiredTiger
storage engine to try it out but it kept crashing - not what you want from a
database! I'm still using the older, very disk-space hungry version 2.6.x for
now.

------
asfandyaar
Oh wow! This is something I always wanted, but I never knew it existed!

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timwaagh
how did you survive? or are you already rich and just doing this for fun? i
mean you got to pay rent/mortgage&stuff...

only if i lived with my parents could i survive on so little money. lots of
people including myself would do this if they were able. I'll do this some day
when my landlording project earns enough (now its just enough to live for free
but i still need my salary) & I dont have any chick.

in any case congratulations on your succes :) . its a great achievement.

------
timrpeterson
I admire your commitment.

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SeoxyS
For what it's worth; really cool product! I wonder if you could get hooked up
with some language schools or teachers so that they'd use it for homework
assignments.

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fabrigm
I don't think that spanish quote is real...

~~~
steveridout
I assure you it's from a real user, and one who says that Spanish is easier
for her than English. Then again, looking at her name I would guess she's
Polish rather than Spanish. I found it perfectly understandable but my Spanish
obviously isn't advanced enough for it to set off alarm bells. I just ran it
past my girlfriend who says that it indeed doesn't sound native. I should have
checked that before using this quote. Oh well.

~~~
daraosn
I'm native Spanish speaker, the problem is at: "grande trabajo"... should be
"un gran trabajo", then it would sound legit.

~~~
Kurtz79
I would say that the fact that is not grammatically correct makes it more
legit, since if it were fabricated any decent translator would have it done
perfectly :)

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goqu
Thanks for sharing your story. Fingers crossed your product takes off
seriously and you achieve your goals.

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philliphaydon
I just tried to create a trial account and sign in with Google isn't working
:(

~~~
philliphaydon
Ahh it seems to be broken on a couple of pages. Selecting to view all
languages seems to always break login from that page for me. But going to the
phrase from his blog post it works fine. Strange.

~~~
steveridout
By "selecting to view all languages" do you mean clicking on the "I'm
learning" selector at the top of
[http://readlang.com/dashboard](http://readlang.com/dashboard) ?

I'm trying to reproduce this but I can't, although I do have error logs that
show some users are getting google sign in related errors - if you could give
me instructions to reproduce this bug I'd be really grateful!

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pkofod
Great story, good luck!

