

Show HN: Relaunching a dormant startup and switching from free to paid - Goldy
http://www.thirstyminds.com.au/2011/02/sprixi-is-back/
Blog post links to the startup (www.sprixi.com) which is an image search engine that focuses on helping people not just find, but also use an image.
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A1kmm
How are you planning on getting traffic in the long term? There are free
alternatives like <http://search.creativecommons.org/> so I suspect most
customers will be people who don't know about the alternatives.

I'd be sceptical if you could get many people to pay for it unless you found a
good source of people who weren't very Internet savvy.

I think if your search engine is better at finding images compared to other
sites, the best thing to do might be to let people search without logging in,
but only show them a thumbnail, and to find out where the image comes from,
they need to pay. However, you will still need to find a way to attribute
images if the license terms require that.

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Goldy
To be honest, I don't know how to get revenue in the long term. What I want to
do is to break even so I can justify investing more effort.

I would love Sprixi to be free and then money around the edges (e.g. API).
However, that will require more work. Being bootstrapped and already at it for
a few years, I can't keep working for free.

Interesting idea about moving the pay wall - thanks.

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nikcub
Another instance of a blog post that assumes we know what the product is.

I have no idea what Sprixi is, still don't after reading the post and clicking
two links on that website

Please put a para about the product in the sidebar, or write an intro
paragraph, see this sooo often on HN

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Goldy
Good point - I've hacked up a brief description in the sidebar.

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perlgeek
That still doesn't tell me why I would use it over google images, for example.

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yoseph
Link to the startup, not the blog post: <http://www.sprixi.com>

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dmboyd
Just an idea, charge for the API. I can easily imagine this being very useful
for a feed/content provider to automatically source an automatic image related
to a news feed/ or product.

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Goldy
I do like that idea. Being bootstrapped I needed to be a bit more direct with
getting revenue from the majority of the traffic visiting us in the short
term.

What do you think of our very lightweight freemium model? (Searching for dog
or cat is free, other searches are behind the pay wall.)

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jackowayed
That's not freemium. It's a demo. With true freemium, someone can use your
service regularly while on the free plan. Very few people are going to use
your service just to find dogs and cats.

Not saying you shouldn't keep it (you should. demos are a great way to get
people to convert), but it's not freemium.

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cjy
Why not limited the number of searches that someone can make, or limit the
resolution of the photos they can download? That will get a lot of people in
the habit of using site and then they might upgrade when they get annoyed by
the free limitations.

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Goldy
Good ideas - thanks!

Re limiting the number of searches - I'm concerned that people may just
register throwaway accounts to get the free searches (and thus never paying).
I could use cookies or IP smarts to counteract this, but it doesn't seem a
good solution. I also don't want to make the sign up process harder.

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yeahsure
Not sure if this comment adds any value (I really need to go to bed) but how
about requesting an action before showing people the search results for the
first time? Kinda like <http://www.tweetperview.com> for searches.

Another way to monetize without a pay wall would be to use CPA ads, though
some of them are scams...

Have you checked out <http://sxc.hu> yet? They have been online for a few
years now and they monetize through iStockPhoto aff links.

Hope this helps :-)

Good luck!

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Goldy
Hopefully a little inspiration for anyone else in the same boat.

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Teflon
Sprixi, glad to have you back, you've been gone too long!

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superluminosity
Cool. I've been waiting for this site to come back.

