

Ask HN: Thriving side-project, thousands of users. Now what? - guynamedloren

This 'Proposition HN' thing got me thinking...<p>I have a side-project with tens of thousands of users and I have no idea what to do with it.<p>It's an interesting situation. I launched the project almost 2 years ago, and I kind of just expected it to die.  But amazingly enough, it's growing - organically, all by itself, with no advertisement, promotion, or effort of any kind of my part.<p>The project is www.boxify.me - a simple file-sharing utility for groups.  Apparently people find it useful, because nearly 100,000 files have been uploaded, with hundreds more added daily.  I've had people outright offer me money for a premium version (that doesn't exist). It has been featured on Lifehacker, GigaOM, AddictiveTips, etc - none of which I reached out to.  That says something.<p>All of that and I basically haven't touched the codebase since launch (aside from slight styling and recently upgrading to Rails 3), nor have I attempted to monetize.<p>My dilemma is that this is not a project I'm particularly interested in at the moment. And with a full time startup job, I don't have much time to invest in it. The hosting bills are costing me a pretty penny, but I can't just kill the project with so many people using it.  I've pondered selling, but there's huge potential and I'm not sure I want to pass it up.  Maybe a co-founder or partnership is a good solution.<p>Any ideas?
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orangethirty
Charge people money for it or sell it. You areputting yourself in legal risk
by hosting their files and not getting any benefit. At least by charging, you
can have the income deposited on a savings account for when shit hits the fan
(which always happens with file sharing). Protect yourself by also
incorporating it. There are legal issues at hand thta you must consider. And
charging for the service will allow you to cover the expenses of dealing with
it. I would not run such a service without doing those two things.

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jkaykin
Start charging people. Or hire someone to monetize it and give them a
percentage of all revenue.

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OafTobark
Curious as to what the original reason for doing this if you have no interest
in it?

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guynamedloren
At the time it was solving my own problem (college, short term group projects,
dropbox wasn't as great then).

