
Eight years of victory - jjwiseman
https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/07/eight_years_of_victory/
======
shubhamjain
I am 1.5-month Pinboard user and I have to say I am not particularly happy
with the support. I admit that for $25 / year, providing full-text search +
archiving is an excellent deal, but it's also incredibly frustrating when your
problems don't get solved.

Archiving didn't work for me for first 3 days, so I sent an email, no
response. Followed up 2 days later, no response. Contacted on Twitter, got a
response that it'll be looked into, but it wasn't solved. Contacted on Twitter
again 3 days later, no response. Finally, it did start working a few days
later but stopped again.

I emailed again, no response. Followed up 4 days later, no response. Contacted
on Twitter, no response. Emailed on founder's email 2 days later, no response.
Another contact on Twitter, no response. I did get a response when I send a DM
that the lack of response was due to huge impending work.

It's completely possible that the work was indeed huge and I was growing
impatient (for that, I apologise), but I wasn't expecting that the problem is
solved immediately but just how and when it'll be solved, that's all.

I didn't send any messages after that and it seems issues are slowly getting
fixed. There are still issues with accessing the archived links, but I feel
there won't be any point in reporting them. Pinboard is an excellent service
that I use every day, but I wish there was more effort to make users feel less
frustrated.

~~~
prawn
FTA and in addition to venning's comment: _" In November I began traveling
extensively in support of Tech Solidarity, an attempt to mobilize tech workers
after the US election. All the travel meant I sometimes ignored support emails
for weeks at a time."_

~~~
shubhamjain
I do sympathise with valid reason to not be able to respond. However, I think
a minimum level communication should maintained in any kind of service. In
this case, I don't think I would have been unhappy even with an autoresponder,
but no response feels despairing.

~~~
prawn
I agree, though I do sympathise with any fellow smallfry operator who hasn't
set that up, or feels like it's impersonal so avoids it.

Reminds me of the idea that you'll often avoid an email for a while because
you want to respond perfectly. For you, that email is critical. Meanwhile, in
the absence of a response, the sender assumes the email is completely ignored
and meaningless to the recipient.

My unread count is generally 350-500, so I'm very guilty of that.

------
GuiA
Love everything that Pinboard is doing - both service and attitude wise. Great
to have living examples of hackers doing what they love, without having to
sell out to investors or a large company, all the while bringing in decent
money.

All that said, I'm always surprised that Maciej racked in over $100k in
revenue his first year. I was of the impression that your first 1-2 years are
going to be in the red, unless you have something big to build on (existing
business to promote your new one, big twitter following, etc.).

The fact that he has 10x the users now compared to the first year but only 2x
the revenue is interesting. I assume that's due to moving the subscription fee
to a small but ever incrementing amount to a larger, fixed one.

Any tips/prep advice for someone who has a business they want to launch but
dread spending the first couple years making no money/having few users?

~~~
idlewords
The 100K was the first full year of operation (2010) and 80K of that came over
a two-week period in December, when Yahoo announced it was 'sunsetting' my
main competitor. The period from April 2009 to December 2010 was very lean. I
don't have the figures handy, but it was a few hundred bucks a month at best.

------
bertman

      I know there are lots of rival bookmarking services out 
      there to choose from.
      I will consume them all, like I consumed the pie.
    

I like the owner's style :)

~~~
smnscu
You're in for a treat if you just learned about Maciej
([https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)). I've been an admirer of
his writing for a long time.

[http://www.idlewords.com/](http://www.idlewords.com/)

[https://blog.pinboard.in/](https://blog.pinboard.in/)

------
djhworld
Pinboard user here.

I'm very good at archiving links, I use a chrome extension that just does it.

However I'm not so good at the recall side of things. This isn't pinboard's
fault, it's just my habits. Right now I just throw links into a box with a few
tags and then forget about it.

Maybe one day it will come in useful and I'm glad it's there.

~~~
geostyx
I have the same issue. I usually just head to Google when I need to find
something again...

------
maxfurman
> The big story this year was last month's surprise acquisition of Pinboard's
> long-time nemesis Delicious. This illustrates the importance of always
> having a backup nemesis.

I love Maciej's writing.

------
factsaresacred
Kudos to Pinboard. How he pulls it off with the almost non-existing support
and without a(n official) mobile app is interesting, too.

Other apps have Intercom or some other support app telling you that you're
special and promising you a reply in a few hours. Meanwhile Maciej doesn't
reply to your emails or tweets.

And yet, growth.

Perhaps neglect is the secret sauce!

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Perhaps chance is the secret sauce.

~~~
andrei_says_
Perhaps being awesome, fully human and sincere with your users, and standing
behind your service while providing an amazing narrative around your product
is a part of the secret sauce.

------
tren
Nice job, Pinboard is great!

One question, how come the number of users has increased 10x, but revenue only
~2x. Has the pricing model changed over time?

~~~
wodenokoto
Two years ago they changed pricing from a 1-time fee, to a recurring fee. So
the majority of users are not a recurring revenue.

------
jtcond13
Anyone else subscribe to Pinboard primarily to support Maciej's
writing/organizing?

It's like the fair trade coffee of online bookmarking services.

------
convertguy
Just wanted to say: You're an inspiration, Maciej

~~~
idlewords
Thank you; that is very friendly!

------
kome
The best 6 dollars I ever spent...

------
negativ0
what a terrible website, i'm still amazed how people can make money with such
poor UX, i have to zoom the page at 175% to be able to read whats written
there

~~~
kome
Such poor UX? Are you joking right? Pinboard UX is awesome and fast: just
straight to the point. Font size is about 13pt: standard; just like HN.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
It's actually 13px, which is much smaller than 13pt. 16px (which is slightly
smaller than 13pt) is pretty much the standard minimum.

Pinboard is great, but the UX could _definitely_ do with some attention. It
annoys me to the extent that one of my pet projects is a better front-end,
using its API. As one small example, it's incredibly frustrating that I have
to view page source to extract metadata (e.g. title + description) when adding
a new URL, rather than pinboard just doing this for me.

~~~
reitanqild
_As one small example, it 's incredibly frustrating that I have to view page
source to extract metadata (e.g. title + description) when adding a new URL,
rather than pinboard just doing this for me._

I think my bookmark extension extracts at least the title for me.

IIRC one bookmark extension I used used to add whatever text I had highlighted
before bookmarking as the description.

