On: Show HN: I made a meme creator that makes around $...

[jjmaestro]

Thanks! I just can't wrap my head around the fact that someone is willing to pay $5 a month for a meme app! XD

Are the users active? Have you thought / analyzed if they pay and forget that it's a subscription? :-?

[par → jjmaestro]

Yes the users are quite active. The main thing people are paying for are the video features and the video scraper. There is some code which allows the app to pull videos from youtube, instagram, facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, and I think that is really the thing that separates this app from other generic image editors.

[erhk → par]

Remove this post before google does to you what it did to groovy

[paulryanrogers → par]

What are the legal implications of grabbing from arbitrary video and profiting off derivative works? Is it fair use?

Have you had to moderate to avoid illegal images from getting into the system?

[vletal → par]

From YouTube? I thought that such app would get rejected from App Store...

[pessimizer → vletal]

I don't know about the app store, but a screenshot with a satirical comment superimposed is easy fair use.

[croes → pessimizer]

Not all countries have something like fair use. Could be a problem in the EU.

[lrem → pessimizer]

Only if the comment is about the screenshot itself though. https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU has some sad explanation.

[vletal → lrem]

I was thinking along the lines of not being OK to scrape YouTube rather then breaking copyright or intellectual property.

[lrem → vletal]

Oh sure, YouTube forbids that. Once there's enough traffic to care, it'll get cut off. But YouTube is somewhat unlikely to try to sue one's socks off for breaking the ToS. Copyright owners though...

[nickthegreek → jjmaestro]

Same, but on the other hand memers do seem to take their craft seriously. While I wouldn't want to pay monthly for this app as I would use it a few times a year (I'll just fire up photoshop), I guess its not too much cash for users serious about creating. Apparently you can make some good cash focusing on a niche user market.

[par → nickthegreek]

Something interesting I found is that the many of the 'power users' of the meme world have many different meme making apps and they pay for most of them!

[robocat → par]

What are some of the sites that the ‘power users’ initially seed with their memes?

Are there any patterns to (profiles of) the power users, or customer segments you know about the power users? Amateur versus professional?

Edit: I see you mention “a lot of my users run fairly large instagram pages (50k+ followers)”, so other sites or segments?

[meristohm → jjmaestro]

We’ve long spent resources on increasing attention and popularity; might this expense be similarly justified? Having a meme generator at one’s fingertips seems a timely way to increase standing in the online culture participated in.

[blondin → jjmaestro]

creators and influencers would be my guess.