
Show HN: One year devoted to open source and I've almost made $2 – horrraaaaay - realty_geek
https://opencollective.com/property_web_builder
======
sheetjs
Don't go into open source expecting anyone to pay you. It doesn't work like
that. The reason your open source project is used by anyone is, to a great
extent, because it's free and open source. If you charged money at the outset,
there's zero reason to believe that anyone would use it. If others are making
money or raising funds on the back of your work, there's zero expectation for
them to even give you a token of appreciation.

Anecdote: A few of our open source projects (our largest is
[https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx](https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx) )
have web-based demos ( [http://oss.sheetjs.com/](http://oss.sheetjs.com/) )
which some people have copied, stripped license and attribution comments,
changed the name, raised money, and then turned around and tried to shut us
down. On the bright side, at least someone found it useful.

~~~
Agebor
> Don't go into open source expecting anyone to pay you. It doesn't work like
> that.

It's changing a bit in the crypto space. Take a look at:

\- [https://gitcoin.co/](https://gitcoin.co/)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
So gitcoin could be really revolutionary or it could be a total flop.

I had a lot of hope for BitHub, a simple tool for paying bitcoin per git
commit. What seems different about gitcoin which might increasing its chances
of success is that it seems to be focusing on building a
community/marketplace.

Would be great if GitHub could add donate buttons to pages and issues and
payout. No reason this has to be done with cryptocurrency.

[1]
[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub)

------
mholmes680
yo dawg, the image (wording) here is off-putting.
[https://propertywebbuilder.herokuapp.com/](https://propertywebbuilder.herokuapp.com/)

I'm not uptight or anything, but it bothers me when people allegedly (see, i'm
doubting you already) put in so much work and then shoot themselves in the
foot with shenanigans for half a laugh. First impressions, and such...

This often bothers me, and obviously when i was cooler and in college I did it
to. Aaaaaand it didn't get me anywhere. In this particular case, we're talking
real-estate? big money, important purchase, long-term debts. It especially
doesn't fit.

~~~
realty_geek
Fixed. Reset the database and re-seeded it. Come on guys - do you really think
I would put such nonsense on my own site.

~~~
eat_veggies
If anyone can deface your site at will, and it takes your manual intervention
to fix it, you won't be able to just "set it and forget it" as you will be
constantly babysitting your website.

Find a way to limit the damage one can do to the site by localizing changes to
a randomized URL or something, because giving anyone on the internet access to
your main demo is quite dangerous.

------
wastedhours
All projects are cool, and kudos on going down the open source route.

I'm struggling to determine what you're offering though? How many new real
estate websites launch, how many are looking for a "RoR ecosystem solution",
how many are genuinely losing out anything by being based on Wordpress?

If you think the niche is there, I'd suggest your monetisation strategy should
be like most of the big hitters in the space: continue to give away the
product, sell value-added services on top. Offer the hosting, devops, SEO
management, branding and advertising, or something.

At the moment there's no compel, it's a solution looking for a problem (I'm
not judging, built plenty of them myself, just without any sort of expectation
someone would give me money for the sake of it).

------
voidhorse
Not well versed in the open-source realm at all, but my guess is that if
monetary gain is your primary goal, you'll probably have a bad time.

Most of the value of open-source work lies in the experience gleaned. It looks
good on a resume. (There's also of course the personal satisfaction you may
get from knowing a bunch of strangers use, and maybe even love, something you
made or contributed heavily to).

~~~
megalodon
> (There's also of course the personal satisfaction you may get from knowing a
> bunch of strangers use, and maybe even love, something you made or
> contributed heavily to).

From my experience this is actually way more rewarding than getting paid.

------
caniszczyk
[https://twitter.com/SquidDLane/status/943622664211652615](https://twitter.com/SquidDLane/status/943622664211652615)

------
nxsynonym
I'm interested in this project - but I do have a few questions:

Who is the target audience? Developers that need an OSS RoR alternative to
wordpress? Property owners/managers that need quick sites? Someone else?

Why does Open Source matter in this case? And how does it affect the target
audience?

What disadvantages of Wordpress are you trying to fix/improve/innovate around?
(I took a look at the link provided on the website, but assuming the reader is
not a developer, it may be better to summarize in your own words).

What do donations go towards? What fees are associated with the upkeep and
development of this product? How will my donations contribute to development?

~~~
realty_geek
Good questions. The target audience for now is developers. The long term
vision is that it acts as a platform on which other real estate services can
be built.

Maybe the title I chose makes it sound like I'm complaining or begging. I'm
not - just a sarcastic dig at myself. I'm not expecting to raise much money
but whatever I raise will go back into the project.

The opencollective is actually a great idea because it means I don't have to
go to great lengths to prove that I will put the money I raise back into the
project. What I raise and spend will be entirely transparent.

------
rectang
There are many open source business models. For individual developers,
probably the most viable one is to become a domain expert in a popular open
source technology and then to find a commercial entity who uses that
technology and is willing to sponsor some work on it, in exchange for having
someone on staff who can help them use it much more effectively.

Not all technologies are suitable for this business model, and it is best if
you are comfortable with permissive licensing. And you may wind up working
more and working harder than colleagues who don't choose an open source route.

Nevertheless, there are big advantages: the job security that comes from
having a good reputation in open source is valuable, and if you care about
open source ideals, you can take pleasure in how much this sort of position
allows you to spread them and move them forward in our industry.

------
realty_geek
I'm not bitter. Just saying. I know open source takes a long time to be
worthwhile but it has kind of hurt thinking how much income I was losing out
on each month (especially as everyone around me was showing of their shiny
bitcoins). Hopefully I'll figure out a way to monetize next year.....

~~~
karljtaylor
near as I saw, you were up to $17, so there's that.

"This project has been created to address a glaring gap in the rails
ecosystem: the lack of an open source project for real estate websites.

The result is that WordPress has become the dominant tool for creating real
estate websites. This is far from ideal and PropertyWebBuilder seeks to
address this."

isn't a bad way to sell the widget to developers. but because you've already
put some of the work in to set up the one-click deployment, it looks like
you're walking the path of going to a wider audience, and if that's your goal
(not a horrifying one, it maybe where more dollars are...) it's good to think
about how to explain that chunk more broadly.

granted, it's a tough line to walk but a lot of people are doing interesting
things --> [https://www.eclipse.org/oxygen/](https://www.eclipse.org/oxygen/)
for example.

~~~
realty_geek
The $17 is the projected annual budget. The guy just started donating $2 this
month ;)

Yes, you are right. I should aim for a wider audience. To be honest I'm
totally to blame for not making more of an effort with marketing.

I will make more of an effort next year. I actually wasn't even expecting the
$2 donation - it did cheer me up.

------
vorotato
PropertyWebBuilder is currently sponsored by Coddde, Ruby On Rails consultants
based in Spain and Chile:

uh they sponsored you for 2 dollars? This might be you problem.

Also until you have users you aren't going to and shouldn't make money.

~~~
bartread
> Also until you have users you aren't going to and shouldn't make money.

How then do you explain crowdfunding, which is effectively what this is?

~~~
egypturnash
Have you ever looked around Kickstarter? I mean really _looked around_
Kickstarter? There are a lot of campaigns that are going nowhere. Same on
Patreon, same on any clone of either of those two sites.

You’ve got to have something people want, and find a way to tell the people
who want it that you’re making it. You don’t magically have people show up and
rain money on you just because you’ve put up a page on a crowdfunding site.

(FWIW, I’ve done three comics kickstarters, and have a Patreon that pays most
of my rent drawing comics on months when I’m cranking out pages at a good
pace.)

~~~
Applejinx
I agree with egypturnash. I did two failed Patreons and currently have a
successful one that barely is enough to live on (in southern Vermont, on
Section 8) which was launched off the existence of an existing business about
four times its size.

I can't speak for Kickstarter: that seems more of a 'from nothing' place and
it'd be a gamble. I can say that if you are running a business charging money
for what you do, you can do Patreon for the same thing and make a quarter to a
half as much, IF you don't find viral success of some sort.

One big difference: doing the Patreon, you get to give your life work for
'free' to your community, which might desperately need that sort of support. I
give tools to musicians, and I passionately believe that there are many
musicians/producers/etc who cannot blow lots of money on proper tools they
need. And, the ones I want to hear are not necessarily the ones who have the
spending money.

So, my Patreon has other than monetary value to me. I take a hit in my income
so that I can get the tools out there, across a wide range of host computers
that sometimes aren't supported by the commercial sphere, and I get a lot of
appreciation for doing it.

Even to do that, you need to already have a following, and it had better be a
following that's already paying you or hiring you to do something.

~~~
egypturnash
I fuckin' _love_ that Patreon earns me more from drawing my comics than ads
_ever_ did. My stuff's all ad-free now. Which, yeah, it sure is nice to be
able to have media that broke queer femmes can see themselves in as long as
they have some kind of Internet connection. And other broke people who may not
be seeing themselves in my protagonists but enjoy other aspects of my work.

~~~
Applejinx
Yeah, I was selling software as retail off my own storefront: I never tried to
make it ad-supported, I hate that. Patreon seems like it's a cut above trying
to be ad-supported or Youtube-supported. That doesn't make it comparable to
operating on a true retail basis selling merchandise… but it's definitely
better than 'everything being free' and trying to roll your own support
system.

I get people mad at Patreon wanting to send me money by PayPal. The thing is,
if you do that, where are you going to be next month? I already know what
total chaos of income and not being able to set expectations is like. It's
called 'selling at retail and trying to get a next hit product'.

------
fecak
As a couple other commenters alluded to, when it comes to making money you
should consider open source as the "long game". There are thousands of
developers who improved their ability to get jobs and higher salaries by
demonstrating their ability via open source projects and commitment.

The more prominent names in open source are an obvious example, but there are
countless others who are more marketable, perhaps more visible, and likely had
more negotiating leverage upon hire due to open source work.

Your work today might pay off in far higher figures down the road.

------
stuaxo
I'd look at the wording on the opencollective page.

E.g., change the first sentence from

Ruby on Rails website builder for real estate.

To

Real estate website builder based on Ruby on Rails.

Also, put some newlines in, and expand the blerb out a bit.

The example site looks nice, though I notice on clicking the links to
different sections in firefox, it draws once and then everything slightly
resizes a little bit, so may be worth sorting out.

It might be worth mentioning propertybuilder more in the example, I've been
using Wagtail recently, and their bakerydemo does this quite well. It's not
over the top, but it is in there.

------
laurent123456
The way to make money with software is to either have a good marketing team or
to spend a lot of time doing it yourself.

But releasing a project and hoping donations will come in almost never works.

~~~
bartread
This is quite true.

I have an online games website I work on mostly for my own enjoyment.
Basically just my take on classic arcade games like Asteroids
([https://arcade.ly/games/asteroids/](https://arcade.ly/games/asteroids/)) and
the little known Star Castle
([https://arcade.ly/games/starcastle/](https://arcade.ly/games/starcastle/)).
It's made a grand total of less than £7 from ad revenue over the last two
years... because what I want to do for fun is write the games, and not a bunch
of boring SEO.

Sadly it's the boring SEO that might make it pay enough to cover its own
hosting. And even knowing this I'm still too unmotivated to do anything about
it[1].

 _[1] Granted I should probably use Fiverr or Peopleperhour to pay somebody to
do it for me, and I probably will, but I at least want to finish my version of
Space Invaders first... and, fortunately, I have some time off over Christmas
to work on it._

------
itake
as a fellow RoR dev and a real estate agent. My $0.02 is RoR isn't really the
right tool for agents.

with WP, you get this huge ecosystem of easy hosting opportunities and addins.
You can integrate your MLS directly with a wordpress app with no extra coding.

For the larger brokers, they often provide a web hosting solution for their
agents to use that they built custom in house.

It is just too expensive to maintain and build compare to WP.

------
hartator
Made $0.49 with a close to 1,000 stars repository :)

~~~
bartread
That hurts to hear.

You know what gets me though? Patreon and YouTube. Granted you have to work
your ass off to get to, say, $1000/month - based on channels I watch I'd say
you need 30k+ subscribers to get to this level - but clearly there are people
out there, in fairly decent numbers, who are willing to donate to support free
content.

So, the question becomes: why does this not work for OSS?

~~~
Applejinx
It's not about the code. I'm not bad at Patreon (around $750/mo, have an open
source goal at $800/mo) but it seems like code is fungible, and it's not worth
paying a person just to code.

The position to be in (and I think this will work for me) is to have a vision
and essentially be the leader for that vision. Then, rather than getting paid
to do what might be pretty ordinary code, you're getting paid because you're
communicating a vision, one that's coherent and exciting to people.

What helps me is that I'm legitimately one of the vanguard developers in
digital audio and have been for many years. It shows in my work, and that work
isn't mainstream, and I'm able to communicate what's being discovered (for
instance, the significance of repeated quantization of mantissa in floating-
point representation: people behave as if you have infinite resolution because
you can represent an infinitesimal value, but of course that's meaningless
around 1.0f)

Just coding is NOT enough, and in fact having high value is not enough either.
You have to get people to want to support your vision (or indeed personality,
for the youtubers: and that holds for other types of creators as well).

I will do substantially worse when I go open source than when I was keeping
things proprietary, just as I did worse going Patreon than I did when I was
selling my stuff at $50 a pop. I'm doing the open source goal (and it's
designed to be a trickle of source rather than a sudden throwing open of the
gates) because it's the right thing, and that's in line with my brand (or, the
way I represent myself).

I just have to manage the transition in such a way that I, personally, survive
this doing of the right thing. That's not a given, but I think I can do it.

Never Patreon, or open source, in the belief that it is helping you. It's
helping the world. Done unwisely, it can hurt or kill you if your resources
can't withstand serious poverty.

~~~
bartread
Thanks for sharing your perspective: good food for thought there.

------
gk1
There are many extremely talented artists, musicians, writers, educators, ...,
who don't get paid (much). If you're doing this with the intent making money,
then you should a) reconsider or b) leverage this project and experience to
get contracting or consulting work — which, thankfully, does pay.

------
_Marak_
I'd like to feel your pain, but I have a project I've been working on for
seven years that has 60x more stars and 10x more watchers than your project.
It's used by a multitude of businesses and tens of thousands of developers.

Here is the open collective:
[https://opencollective.com/fakerjs](https://opencollective.com/fakerjs),
you'll see it's not even paying a pittance.

I suggest you either give up on writing open-source software or adjust your
attitude entirely.

------
web007
Congratulations - you can now put "built software that people paid for" on
your resume!

Sarcastic or not, that's a legitimate achievement.

------
pfarnsworth
You don’t do open source because of the money. You do it because you believe
software should be free, and if you’re lucky and your software is useful then
maybe you can eek out an existence. But most open source makes no money.

~~~
rectang
There are lots of good reasons to do open source when you don't expect to make
money for it. However, for some technologies there are definitely business
plans which can work and yield higher returns than donationware: open core,
consultancy, sponsored development, etc.

------
benbenolson
Begging for money?

