
How I've built a profitable Slack bot as a side project in Rails - pawurb
https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot-rails
======
nathan_f77
Great project and writeup! But I think a one-time fee makes very little sense
for a hosted SaaS product, and you should definitely switch to recurring
billing. Instead of a one-time fee of $29, I think you could charge $3 per
month, or $29 per year (20% discount.) You could also charge more for larger
teams.

~~~
farnsworthy
Companies are using this, though? The price (both annual, and the above,
especially considering transaction costs) is too low!

The post says: "Abot logo is just an icon from Icons8. I have to pay
$19.90/month for a license." _That_ begins to approach professional-level
pricing.

~~~
oliv__
Not to pick on the app but with a product at such a low price, this sounds
like the ideal way to bleed out a ridiculous amount of money.

Three months of that is already more money out than 2 new subscriptions bring
in.

~~~
justusthane
He says in the post that he was already using that icon service for other side
projects though.

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pjc50
I'm glad the author acknowledges there are abuse risks to anonymous
communication.

~~~
hnarn
One thing that the bot is missing (just my opinion, obviously) is a
pseudonymous identifier. I realize this technically does not make it anonymous
anymore, but I don't think it matters.

For example, if you post anonymous feedback saying "the toilets should be
cleaned more regularly" and you then post an anonymous comment to that post
saying "I agree", there's no way of knowing if consensus is building or if
someone is astroturfing the discussion.

Compare this to if the feedback is posted by anonymous#f46d and the reply is
posted by anonymous#6c7e, at least you know it's different people making the
posts.

~~~
cronin101
Or just only highlight whether the response is from the creator, that way you
can't correlate between threads.

~~~
hnarn
That still doesn't help you identify if a second person is impersonating
others.

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throwaway2016a
Great writeup. And, if the author is here, congrats on profitability!

As a tip for other aspiring bot developers, though.

I've been writing a lot of bots lately and I've been convinced that for Slack
bots Serverless really is the way to go. Pay for what you use, no
infrastructure to run, and mostly seamless scaling.

I know the infrastructure is already lean based on this article but with AWS
Lambda and DynamoDB each user would be pennies a month.[1] Profitability would
only require about 1 user.

Ultimately, though, the most important thing is to launch and if RoR gets you
their fastest or offers some features that are critical to your app and can't
be done in serverless then that is what you should do.

[1] When you consider the DynamoDB free tier. Which I'd venture you can get to
a huge number of users before exhausting your free tier with a chat bot.

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romanovcode
Great idea but weird examples given.

> I know you've been stealing my sandwiches.

Doesn't this kind-of defeats the purpose? It's pretty clear who is who in this
scenario.

~~~
alistairSH
Even the initial example of anonymous feedback about meetings was strange to
me. If a large meeting is worthless/long/whatever, I'll tell my VP directly in
person.

Do other people really trust their coworkers so little that they feel the need
to submit any criticism anonymously? That doesn't sound like a healthy work
environment.

~~~
runeb
I agree its not healthy, but the author might be in a culture different from
yours where such issues are hard to raise directly.

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martin-adams
Interesting project. The only thing that really came to mind is since the
messages are deleted on their server, could someone use it as a way to harass
to a colleague leaving the company unable to take any action because it would
be 100% anonymous.

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assafmo
You can maybe save the 9$/month by replacing PostgreSQL with a more generous
cloud database. Maybe Cloudant
([https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloudant/pricing](https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloudant/pricing))
or Firestore
([https://firebase.google.com/pricing/](https://firebase.google.com/pricing/)).

You should also check out the lambda services of google/azure/aws/webtask.io,
maybe they are cheaper for your usage than the $7/month you are paying Heroku
for the dyno.

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alfonsodev
I was surprised by the one time purchase model. When I see that many other
bots are charging by user per month.

What are you thoughs on the by user/month model ? Example 1$ per active user
per month vs fixed amount per month ?

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darepublic
Seems like this could lead to a lot of trolling, harassment, and false flags.
As humorous as I find the guy fawkes avatar I would pass on this for my own
workplace.

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blacksoil
Hi, thanks for sharing your journey. You might wanna share this on
www.indiehacker.com, more people will be inspired :)

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imhoguy
Excellently simple and well executed idea! I also plan to go global with some
tiny for fun&profit side-projects. I agree, it is not easy job with our EU VAT
MESS laws so I look for some all-in-one solution too. I wonder if you had a
chance to compare Paddle with FastSpring in any way?

~~~
pawurb
Never heard about fast spring before. I give more info about paddle in the
blog comments, check them you if you're interested.

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nxrabl
"Rails" is in the title, but there isn't really anything in the article about
what the advantages of using Rails for a Slack bot are. What have been
people's experience using Rails for this kind of app?

~~~
TomK32
Not done a slackbot (yet?), only a few small app and a large 7-yr-project, but
with Rails it's really about whether or not you love Ruby. There's still
Sinatra but that's about it in regards to web-frameworks. Rails is perfect for
punching out a prototype quick and heroku (which started as an online Rails-
editor) make delivery very easy.

Try ruby and see if you like the language.

~~~
andrei_says_
Hanami is growing in popularity and Roda is a rock-solid and faster
alternative to Sinatra.

Both worth considering.

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nukeop
Very interesting article and it gives me hope that creating a couple of decent
APIs or bots can return a reasonable passive income that could make it easier
to switch jobs in the future or enjoy an extra vacation a year.

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keithnz
Interested to know why paddle rather than something like Stripe?

~~~
pawurb
I give more details in blog comments, check them out.

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lr4444lr
This bot is a great idea. Kudos to you!

