
Ask HN: Best way to sell a small web app? - barmstrong
I setup http://FeedmailPro.com about a year ago.  It's a freemium product that I built to meet my own needs.<p>The site is now being used by about 700 blogs, only about 20 of them are paying $10/month which covers hosting costs but isn't much money otherwise.<p>The site has the potential to be bigger, but I don't currently have time to work on it as I'm working full time at a y-combinator startup and FeedmailPro is just a side project.  And I don't want to just leave support requests unanswered and stop maintaining the site as a good number of people are using it now.<p>So I'm not sure what I should do.  Could the site be sold or donated to someone else?  If so where would I list it for sale and how could I find someone trustworthy to take it over?  I could just close up shop but it is being used by a number of people now who have come to depend on it. Merging the service into someone bigger like MailChimp would be another option if I could get a meeting with those folks and they were interested.<p>Any ideas?
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aagha
Don't sell the app: If it's self-sustaining without taking up much of your
time, charge for it!

For support-related tasks, find someone that will do the support for a
percentage of the new revenue you realize with some version of the suggestion
below.

Tell all your existing, un-paying customers that in 30 days, you're going to
start charging $19.99/month for it, but if they sign up before the pricing
starts, they're in for $9.99 (or $12.99--whatever floats your boat). Leave all
your existing customers happy by not charging them more.

You could also consider an annual subscription model where they pay either
$240 a whole year, or $199 if they sign up before the date of the price
change.

A lot of your customers will say no and leave, but some will likely say yes
and contribute to your top-line. Either way, you'll make more money than
you're making now. Be sure to explain why you're charging: E.g.: I think the
service is valuable and in order to keep it running, I need to charge
something for it.

THEN, once you have more paying customers, you can either sell the app and
charge more for it or sit back and have a pssive revenue stream.

UPDATE: @ barmstrong, If you're not interested in the above and decide you DO
want to sell it, contact me and we can talk about me buying it from you.

~~~
scottmagdalein
This is poor advice. Powering RSS-to-email is a losing proposition unless it's
destined to bring more value than the FREE Feedburner. Also, forcing users to
switch from free to paid (or else) with 30 days' notice is a jerk move,
especially with an RSS product.

Your product is promising, but isn't easily differentiated from Feedburner and
thus it's difficult to charge anything for it. I'm surprised you have _any_
paying customers actually.

However, if the guts of the application are as solid as they seem, then you
have a gem on your hands that just needs the right business touch to position
the product for the right market.

~~~
happybuy
I think there is a market position for this service. If you are currently a
non-savvy blogger, then the current feedburner homepage:
<http://feedburner.google.com/> is practically indecipherable and unlikely to
result in a lot of conversions. I also believe that a smaller operator who
concentrates on adding value to a product such as this would have a high
chance of success versus Google where a product such as this can, and probably
will, be easily lost in terms of internal development priorities and
management attention.

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dangrossman
If you want to sell it, create an auction on <http://www.flippa.com>

If you're asking more than $1000 for the site, only accept payment through
escrow.com.

Flippa's the best marketplace there is for selling websites in the $50 to
$250,000 range. I've sold several sites there in the past, including one for
$90,000 which had several serious bidders. There are real buyers there.

~~~
barmstrong
Good idea. Yep I was thinking about that - browsed it a bit and most of the
sites looked like total crap. "Make money at home", diet scams, etc.

But maybe there are some diamonds in the rough. Will try listing there,
thanks!

~~~
dangrossman
Flippa has a very detailed search/filter system so you can ask it to only show
you sites that are over a year old, with over $x in monthly revenue, and get
their income from a certain source, etc. And you can save the search to have
it e-mailed to you. There are tons of "built to flip" sites for sale but it's
easy to find the older sites too.

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ccarpenterg
Try to sell it on Flippa: <http://flippa.com>

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aberkowitz
Unless your site is profitable, selling it is not going to get you a fair
profit for the time you have spent on it.

The cheapest investment for you is marketing. Use your favorite outsourcing
site to hire a worker to create a list of sites that would benefit from your
service. I'm guessing that how-to and news blogs would be your best customers.

With this list compiled send them all a template email telling them about what
your product does for them. The ultimate goal being more paying customers
which allows you to either sell it for a good price or hire someone to work on
it for you.

~~~
phugoid
I'm very curious why this comment got down-voted. I would not have thought of
doing what aberkowitz suggested, and it's doesn't sound stupid to me at all.
Would anyone care to explain why they think it's a bad idea?

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detst
The down vote was me. It was accidental but as you know, I couldn't reverse it
and I thought it would correct itself so I didn't bother responding.

I actually don't disagree with the advice. It's a method I plan to use on an
MVP that I'm working on soon. I think it can be effective if not done in a
spam-like way.

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scottmagdalein
I'd be interested if the business model were a little different. It seems like
it's just a replication of Feedburner in its current iteration, but you have
to pay for it after 1000 subscribers. I think there's another approach that
would be both more intriguing as a business model and more compelling as a
product, without changing the app itself very much. Interested in connecting?
scottmagdalein@gmail.com

~~~
barmstrong
It has some features FeedBurner doesn't, although I like FeedBurner a lot:
<http://feedmailpro.com/faqs/7>

Will message you.

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JustinUK
There's plenty of other reputable places besides Flippa to sell a website and
some will probably get you a better price. There's a list here -
[http://www.flipfilter.com/blog/2010/10/01/how-to-find-
websit...](http://www.flipfilter.com/blog/2010/10/01/how-to-find-websites-for-
sale-35-sites-ranked/)

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soojurn
Wait....you pass-through your users' ads (from their blogs).. too bad you
cannot get any of that ad-sense revenue (if there is anyway).

biz opp right there if you can attract more money-making bloggers

~~~
drm237
Hubpages does rev sharing by showing their adsense code a certain % of the
time and the authors code the remaining. Maybe this is a good way to monetize
the free customers.

~~~
barmstrong
I'm not aware of a way to do it technically since I'd have to integrate with
any sort of ad system they might be using. Most probably Adsense for feeds,
which I don't think allows me to rev share. Also, for some reason adds in RSS
feeds tend to convert terribly compared to normal adsense - at least from what
I've seen.

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cheae
What ever you want to do it, do it quickly. As one of the paying customers, I
don't want to grow my subscribers in there and have trouble later transferring
to another service.

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rokhayakebe
Maybe you should post how much you are looking to sell it for.

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donniefitz2
Would you consider partnering with someone who could take it over and run it
for you? How can I contact you?

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barmstrong
Can use the contact form on my blog that is linked from my profile. Thanks!

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barmstrong
Clickable <http://FeedmailPro.com>

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jrockway
Not a fan of the stick figure.

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barmstrong
Ok, thanks for feedback - considering the number of upvotes I'll go ahead and
remove that :)

