

Ask HN: How to sustain project with steadily increasing active users? - freshlog

Hi Hacker News,<p>I launched the private beta of http://handpick.me about 2 weeks ago on Hacker news:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949117<p>After being covered by 3 blogs, the number of users has grown steadily, with a good handful of active daily users.<p>In the event that the copy on http://handpick.me is unclear, Handpick offers you a bookmarklet or Chrome extension where you select which groups of folks you'd like to send a link to. Handpick will compile the links and send them in a single email digest at the time of the day you specify.<p>I think Handpick has a chance of making a dent in the universe and I love to wake up to emails from users who tell me how much they love Handpick when they suggest a feature or find a bug.<p>The app's running on a free Heroku plan with a free Sendgrid addon for sending daily email digests on links collected.<p>Right now, I'm uncertain how to proceed. I've been using Handpick myself with my friends for the past year and it seems like there are others who like this too.<p>I haven't started promoting Handpick at all as I'm worried that I wouldn't be able to support a sudden growth of users. I'd prefer not to pay for resources out of my own pocket yet.<p>Is there a way to monetize Handpick and yet maintain a high amount of respect for my users’ time, attention, and happiness?
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sixtofour
You could email those people who've emailed you, and ask them if there's
anything missing that they'd be willing to pay for.

I have this vague idea of companies using your service to keep their customers
informed and/or engaged in some way.

~~~
freshlog
Cool, I'll do that.

