
  Weebly (YC winter 07) scores 1 million users, reaches profitability - lemonysnicket
http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/03/weebly-scores-1-million-users-reaches-profitability/
======
SwellJoe
There are a handful of companies in YC (aside from my own) that I would love
to personally invest in (if I were in the position to invest). Weebly is
definitely near the top of the list, and was from the first moment I saw it
during Winter '07. They're totally pragmatic, and just get things done...not
one information astronaut in the bunch.

And they work in that space where nobody wants to be: technology for newbies.
A couple of folks in this thread are criticizing Weebly for the very things
that make it so explosively successful. I'd advise anyone who thinks they're
smarter than the Weebly folks to pause for a moment, and think about traffic,
and what it means for there to be 1 _million_ websites at Weebly. That's one
million occasions where someone browsed to the site, filled out the form, and
went through the process of creating a website. How many people have signed up
for your web application? How many made it to actually using it to do real
work? And how much money does your app make if you imagine 1% of those users
being willing to pay you a monthly fee? When the number of people committed
enough to create something with your site reaches a million, you almost can't
_not_ make money with it.

~~~
marcus
<cough> Facebook </cough>

~~~
SwellJoe
Facebook _could_ make money. They've just opted to focus on other
things...probably to the detriment of their long-term health as a company.
But, they've decided that the network effects of having the most users is the
most important thing for them, and they've put aside all other considerations.
I don't for a second think Facebook is worth $15 billion (but _maybe_ the ~$4
billion internal valuation that people within the company are getting for
their shares when they sell privately).

But, Facebook is having to try pretty hard to outspend their incoming cash.
They've hired very aggressively and made decisions that are more befitting a
much larger/older company. I don't know enough to say if it'll all come
crashing down...but it'd be possible to make Facebook make money tomorrow, if
they laid off some of those hires and got as smart as Google about
infrastructure.

------
ojbyrne
Congrats. On a side note, venturebeat is full of funding announcements today,
kind of a counterpoint to all the sky is falling stuff from the last two
weeks. Good companies seem to be thriving.

------
blurry
I just spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find out how much Weebly charges
for the pro accounts and I still don't know. What is it with websites hiding
their pricing? Argh.

~~~
shafqat
I agree, it's not easy to find. I had to log into my account, and was then
offered the choice to upgrade.

FYI, its 3.99 a month.

~~~
albertcardona
So weebly also uses a deceptive pricing scheme ... exactly how are 3.99
different than 4?

Does anybody have hard data on market consequences of pricing to round
numbers?

And why should one price near $4? If it was in Europe, it would be 4 euro
instead?

Why 3.99 and not 3.56, since credit card payments don't care anyway?

In any case, congrats to weebly whose profitability enables this discussion.

~~~
drusenko
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing>

Many of these issues are covered in basic marketing 101. As to how the pricing
scheme is deceptive is beyond me.

There are multiple different psychological price theories in use. As mentioned
in the article, the .99 pricing scheme is fairly prevalent, although some
retailers use a .00 pricing scheme to reinforce quality. Walmart has used a
somewhat random pricing scheme (.32, .67, .18, etc) to try to have consumers
come to the conclusion that the only rationale behind the price is that
Walmart shaved every possible penny it could.

~~~
albertcardona
Thanks for sharing. The random pricing scheme reads most evil of all. Perhaps
a conclusion is that there is no such thing as a naked price--all pricing
schemes have psychological load, whether intended or not, because the consumer
will add it.

~~~
fallentimes
Why is random pricing evil?

~~~
albertcardona
Because of the pretension of being real--as in, adjusted to the real price--
when they are not.

~~~
fallentimes
Sorry, I'm still not following (I could very easily be missing something so I
apologize if this is the case). As long as the buyer isn't being forced to
buy, how can variable prices be evil?

------
Mistone
congrats to the weebly crew, this is an awesome product, I recently used it to
help my mom setup a simple website and within a few minutes we were adding
content and photos, no dumb server to deal with and no constant barrage of new
versions to worry about. It was way easier than wordpress and fit the need
perfectly. its dope to hear about small startups, building incremental value
and reaching key milestones, far more interesting than another huge VC funding
round for a company with no business model.

------
fallentimes
Awesome work. The p word is one of the most beautiful.

------
tocomment
That's really great. I've got all my relatives using that now to build their
websites. It's good to know Weebly will be around for a while :-)

~~~
jbenz
Me too. My father-in-law needed to create a website for his church. He asked
for my help, I showed him Weebly, and that was it. So what I'm saying is,
thanks Weebly.

~~~
drusenko
thanks guys, appreciate the support! most of our new users come from word of
mouth referals, and every little bit helps.

------
LogicHoleFlaw
I guess you can say....

Little weeblys wobble but they don't fall down!

------
kleneway
Congrats!! I love Weebly - a few weeks ago I was doing a post about how easy
it is to create an online web shop using a local startup, and even after
wasting 20 mins trying to fiddle around with a similar site, I was still able
to get the site up in under 2 hours. Absolutely the right balance between ease
of use for noobs and flexibility for more advanced users.
<http://tinyurl.com/weeblyrocks>

------
dc2k08
yep congratultions guys. have to say that i love weebly so much i had to pay
up for 2 years. im also looking forward for their implementation of new
features which are said to include, complete control over the html and css.

------
mattjung
Encouraging!

------
jamiequint
pic <http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/120/onemillion.png>

------
ttol
Congrats Weeblers

------
sdurkin
Congrats, guys. Your product is excellent.

------
volida
wow, I remember Weebly when they were presenting at LeWeb3 2 years ago when
they had 6000 users.

------
sabat
You inspire us all.

------
petergroverman
This is great...

------
globalrev
Not to be negative but they have existed for 3 years and that is all they have
produced? Maybe I missed something when I tried it a couple of months ago but
it seemed more like something that had been around for 3 weeks. I really
wanted something like it but for sure there wasn't much to it. Some simple
drag and drop features but nothing that let a noob create a cool webpage by
just dragging and dropping.

Did I manage to miss the point?

~~~
fallentimes
Most people in the world are n00bs.

~~~
globalrev
That answer means you must have misunderstood what I said. Anyway, I was
mostly looking for an explanation of what is so great about Weebly because I
didn't get it.

Surely we must be able to critisize here right?

~~~
awad
It makes something that most people are unable (or unwilling to take the time)
to do a simple matter of mouse clicks. And it does so pretty nicely.

Sure, most people on HN can create pretty slick sites that just are not
possible with Weebly. But then again, most of society isn't on HN.

