
Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js - jseims
http://www.tristara.com/blog/2012/hacker-news-and-saas/
======
relix
Visitor.js is arguably not very innovative. The only "added value" that I
would consider is having it all in one nice library.

The knowledge necessary to create visitor.js is almost at the level of a
beginner. How many 'hello world' tutorials aren't there on the web that
display how to use cookies in Javascript by showing the last time you visited
the page?

The incentive behind creating something like visitor.js should be community,
exposure and input from other developers. What was John's incentive behind
releasing jQuery for free, a toolkit more useful, and harder, by far? *

I am not arguing against monetizing. I think monetization is most of the times
appropriate, but when any Javascript coder worth his salt can copy your idea
and implement it in 3 hours and you have no competitive edge, then
monetization is not appropriate.

*: Addendum: John's incentive was probably not exposure, although it probably rocketed him towards being know as a Javascript authority.

~~~
rmc
_Visitor.js is arguably not very innovative. The only "added value" that I
would consider is having it all in one nice library._

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

~~~
rmc
This reply is the Slashdot review of the Apple iPod when it was released. It
is a great example of how some people (incl. many geeks) look at a
product/service, and only look at the raw technical specs, and presume that
it's very easy to replicate or not very innovative. Since the iPod was a
massive success, it shows how sometimes raw technology doesn't make or break
something

~~~
gerad
But it is different when your product is for a technical audience. In this
case, people who know how to write JavaScript.

------
mikeocool
A fairly unique aspect of building software products for software developers
is that most of your potential customers could probably build your product if
they really wanted to. And as was illustrated yesterday, if the cost is of
whack with the value created, software developers will just build their own
version of it.

Twillio is a great example of the opposite. I don't think Twillio is actually
so deep that people don't understand what's going on under the hood. Open
source alternatives exist to using Twillio, like Asterisk. But setting them up
and maintaining them is a massive time suck. The value Twillio creates is
being able to make phone calls and send text messages immediately and never
have to worry about that piece of your infrastructure. Additionally their
pricing is set such that using them is over taking the time to setup something
yourself is a no-brainer.

A nice side effect of making software for software developers, is that if you
do open source something simple, someone else will find it when they're
looking to save a few hours, and probably spend a little more time adjusting
it to their needs and making it better. Then everyone is in a better position
to use that code to build something that creates a lot of unique value and
charge for it.

------
elliottcarlson
Original visitor.js discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3433104>

Open Source visitor.js discussion:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3435416>

------
cheez
Meh, not true.

I have a friend that wrote a very uninnovative, very shallow app a few years
ago in a couple of months and barely works on it nowadays. He thinks he will
make $60K this year and there are at least five or six different open source
competitors (read last word as Daniel Plainview please.)

I could write something to replace it in a week or two.

Just make sure you know your audience: if you are selling to developers, you
are probably SOL. If you are selling to managers, they really don't care
whether they pay or not but it solves their problem.

~~~
pkamb
Would you/he be willing to post a link to the app?

~~~
cheez
Haha, no.

------
jasonkester
Value and technical difficulty have no interdependence. The fact that this
thing could be cloned in half a day doesn't in any way indicate that the
original business won't go on to be successful.

I know this because I make a comfortable living on the proceeds of a SaaS
product that anybody here could reproduce in half a day. The fact that several
dozen of my customers are HN readers (and thus capable of the aforementioned
feat) goes to show that even if it's possible to do something, the smart
business decision is sometimes to pay somebody else to do it for you.

I actually give a full set of instructions to build your own version of the
service on the site, and link to several open source packages that you can
install on your server. But still there are plenty of people out there capable
of multiplying [hourly bill rate] * 4 to come up with how much doing that
would cost. Since that'll buy most shops a couple years of my service, the
smart money goes toward the "buy" end of that build vs. buy decision.

------
rsoto
I don't know what's all this about. Yes, someone open sourced a service that
is providing an all-around solution for data that's easily trackable-- but the
user's location.

If you've used free services to convert an IP to location, you know it's not
so reliable. And that's the issue with the open-source version, which tracks
me to the US, while I'm actually in Mexico City and it's quite accurate (12.8
kilometers off).

Yes, there's a geolocation API, but it needs user authorization and when
you're building a service that requires knowing the user's location without
them doing anything, visitor.js appears to be both reliable and at a fair-
enough price.

~~~
spullara
That's ok, the commercial libraries aren't much better. The visitor.js website
I am in Reno instead of San Francisco for example.

------
jrockway
When you write software for programmers, you typically are writing it for
"ego" or "cred" rather than for money. The money will come when you write
software for normal people, either in the form of actual payment, or in the
form of recommendations for jobs (contracting or full-time). Therefore, as an
author, you are compensated. Just not with money. (What's better compensation
for your weekend project: $10 now, or a $10,000 raise tomorrow? That's why
programmers advertise themselves instead of monetize their "products".)

------
thehodge
Cache link :
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ix=heb&sour...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ix=heb&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Awww.tristara.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2Fhacker-
news-and-saas%2F)

------
thehodge
I think Pusher is an excellent example of something which can be quite simple
to setup and use (socket.io) but people are willing to pay if someone maks it
really really easy and just plug and play.

I think if visitor.js came with some nice extra things to do with the data
rather than just displaying it (country list with yours preselected, only
showing social media buttons from the referring website).

I also believe the pricing for visitor.js was a little off-putting to people
but not sure how you would price / rate limit a SaaS like that..

------
jseims
I just wanted to say you guys crashed my site with all your traffic.

Lesson learned: don't send HN to an EC2 micro instance. I upgraded to a medium
instance, let's see how it works...

~~~
sudonim
Consider switching to a statically generated blog using something like Jekyll.
From my experience, an unoptimized wordpress install doesn't take much traffic
to take it down assuming every request is hitting mysql.

~~~
jseims
I was using SuperCache, and that seemed sufficient when I did some load tests.

I think what killed me was the micro instance only has ~617 megs of ram. The
medium instance is holding up fine.

------
tlrobinson
I wonder how peoples' reactions would have been different if the name didn't
end in ".js". That sort of implies it's just a bit of JavaScript.

------
latchkey
People who want the paid version, which probably comes with support as part of
the package, will pay for that service. People who don't can just take
advantage of the 'free' version. Even though the complexity of the code was
low, there is value in offering a paid version, which usually comes in the
form of support. Happens all the time.

------
heliostatic
I had a similar thought ([http://words.bencohen.net/blog/2012/01/06/copy-for-
the-peopl...](http://words.bencohen.net/blog/2012/01/06/copy-for-the-people/))
yesterday, and I wonder if we'll see the same sorts of issues as the
fabrication of physical goods becomes easier for individuals.

------
prawn
If it'd been priced at $18 once off instead of $x/month, would the HN reaction
have been very different?

A few people have talked about it being trivial to create, but it's obviously
not so trivial that people haven't found a free option useful to save them
time.

~~~
andypants
Or it's so trivial that nobody has bothered to find or provide a free option
and instead implemented it themselves.

------
carrotsalad
One of the things we hope <http://TipTheWeb.org/> will be good for is offering
a way for creators of open source tools and useful web services to get money
from the people who use what they've created, especially for things that would
be hard to build a full business around, but which still have significant
value.

Much of what's great about the Web is exactly that: valuable, published for
free access, not the basis of a full-time business, yet definitely worth
supporting.

------
pbreit
tl;dr: making money is hard.

