

Ask HN: Total Dick or Totally Awesome - cyberpanther

I recently turned my hosted Google Drive code editor, https://neutron-drive.appspot.com/, from being free to $3.99/year.  Many people think I'm a dick for switching from free to paid.  But something has gotta pay for the hosting and development time in the future.  I also gave all existing customers a free year.  So is this a total dick move?  Or am I totally awesome for trying to make a sustainable product?  Also what alternative ways of generating revenue are there if this is too much of a dick move?
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kgodey
I think it's a good thing. $3.99 per year is really affordable, and not just
in the US. It's better to have a sustainable model than having to stop
development on an awesome product.

Some alternative revenue suggestions:

\- A "pay whatever you want" model, where people set their own price. They
could set it to 0.0, but I don't think they'd want to.

\- A free version with a limited set of features, but this can be a pain.

~~~
cyberpanther
I like the idea of a free version but think it may take long to generate
revenue. For Evernote I think it takes on average one year to convert a
customer from free to paid. If I had investment I would probably do it because
you grow your audience and then eventually make money. But for me I'm hoping
this will be smaller audience who can make this a solid small business.

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dgunn
Why aren't you charging more for this? Serious question. Does the value your
service provides your users equal $3.99? More? Less?

What line of thought resulted in $3.99/year? Are you interested in this being
a business or is this just a hobby?

[edit: explanation] I ask this because there is no way I would pay $3.99/year
for something like this. At that price, you have no real reason to keep the
service running and thus I wouldn't risk becoming dependent on it. I will use
free things from Big G and company but if I am going to use a niche service, I
want to know the developer is motivated enough to make it better and keep it
alive.

~~~
thenomad
I couldn't agree more.

I'd actually be happier paying $3.99 a MONTH if the tool was in any way
important to me.

If you're feeling guilty about charging, a) don't - it's your time you're
using up to make this thing! and b) spend, say, 50% of the money you make on
improving the tool.

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YuriNiyazov
$3.99/year is _nothing_. I can't believe people would hate on that.

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mb_72
In my experience it's common for a significant portion of developers to
undervalue their skills and the value of the stuff they make. So - no, it's a
not a dick move, and the large majority of people will get why you did it. Now
as for the rest - there's always someone who responds to any change in a
negative way. Ignore these people (almost always). Only get worried when you
make changes or do 'something', and no-one seems to care; even a negative
response is indicative of interest in what you are doing.

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achompas
$4/year is obscenely cheap. In fact, you could probably charge an order of
magnitude more.

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padseeker
you are not a dick and have nothing to be sorry for. You are not charging
enough quite frankly.

Anyone who bemoans what you are doing should be embarrassed.

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meric
It's not a dick move.

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rxooo
Ok this is an awesome idea. I'm a student and really cheap and I don't really
like using my credit card to buy things online but this is awesome. This is
what I was searching for for about a week last year. Google docs/cloud based
code editor. Great job.Does this support collaborative coding? Awesome man. I
was looking for exactly the same thing wow.

~~~
cyberpanther
Right now it does not, but if Google release an API for this I'll be on it.

