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Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself?
32 points by swombat on Aug 27, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 79 comments
Spawned off from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=288231

It'd be interesting to know what people in the YCNews demographic actually pay for online. Which paying subscription services do you actually bother spending money on?

The question is open to you both as a consumer and as a business. If you are both, please split your answer into two parts, e.g.:

As a consumer, I pay for: Flickr

As a business, I pay for: Bug tracking software,...

Note 1: Please feel free to use specific product names.

Note 2: Please don't include things that everyone pays for online, e.g. Amazon books, electronic odds and ends, hosting - unless you feel your particular version is special.

Thanks for sharing!




Well you said no hosting, so besides that I'd say nothing really. I'm a cheap ass.


Are you sure?

I physically hand over money for hardware, and that's about it. Everything else I like is free...

...except that in return for some of that free stuff I give demographic information. Oh, and in return for some of the other free stuff I give coding/testing/bug fixes. And I guess some of the free stuff I pay for via being temped into buying their real-world/physical products. Then some of the rest I suppose I pay for by validating someone's ego through the mechanism of pushing up their numbers.


I pay for hosting from linode.com. I freely host a project with google code (java chat client/server xkasperx.googlecode.com) so I don't need a pay service like github. With the $30 I pay a month to linode I can host and write most of the software I need. Google seems to have something for everything else.

I'm a cheap ass I like to call it being practical. :)


Holy cow - didnt realize so many people pay for Flickr! Thats seriously surprising to me.

I pay for Yahoo NFL Gamepass (all NFL games streamed live via internet!). I pay 200 bucks a year for that. Would pay >1000 if they wanted to really push it. I'm obssesed.


Skype

I used to pay for the Zune Pass but the service became so utterly worthless plus my Internet connection times out quite often here in Kuwait that I just said forget it. Back to torrents, which will automatically resume the download, when my connection wakes back up (without locking up the entire system, might I add).


Amount spent personally = 0.

Amount spent through business = 0.

Amount that could have been earned if I had been billing instead of on hacker news > 0.


Startup:gitHub, S3 & EC2 (just experimenting, so minimal actual charges), zonedit

Personal:eRobertParker, MyFoodDiary, eMusic, iTunes (mostly for TV Shows and kids movies), callcentric (VOIP line for my house), .mac/mobileMe (I know, I know) *just recently canceled so I can afford my startup.

Business:Safari (as part of my Komodo/ActivePerl Studio license)

Looking at soon: a slice at slicehost, Balsalmiq (an app, really)


I'll start the ball rolling.

As a consumer, I've paid for: peepcode screencasts; a flickr pro account; an account to freshlymixed.com while it was still up; That's about it over the last couple of years. I'm not a prolific purchaser of consumer services.

As a business, I'm paying for: EngineYard hosting, Fogbugz, and we paid for Basecamp for a little while. That's it.

Almost everything else seems to be pretty much free.


Fantasy football real-time stats on Yahoo!


Interesting. Those are free on ESPN now. And, of course, Draftmix :)


We've been using yahoo for 5 or 6 years now and we're just used to it. I think it costs about $10/season and given how seriously we take this thing, it doesn't feel like a lot of money.

Incidentally, we tried to run a league on fleaflicker last year (for free) in parallel with the yahoo league, and the experience was severely lacking.


I knew we could count on you, asif


Holla!


For business and professional development, I pay for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) digital library, which includes a lot of material including a couple of online books selections: One large run by Books 24x7 and a somewhat limited subscription to Safari Books Online.


Things I pay for:

1. ESPN Insider

Things I would pay for (but are free):

1. Hacker News 2. Yodlee 3. Feedburner 4. Google Alerts


Is ESPN's insider content that much better than what you get for free elsewhere? If so, that's really saying a lot, since the bar for sports content has risen faster than the price of gas over the last few years.


At least for the Rockets, the one team I follow religiously, the insider stories are stories just ripped from the Houston Chronicle.

It would be useful though if you care about a bunch of teams and don't have time to read the hometown newspapers of all your teams.


Yes it really is. People like John Hollinger and KC Joyner are must reads for my line of work. Chad Ford has gotten a ton better as well - he used to be a hack.


There's been an all out bidding war for sports writers lately. I guess that must be why.


yea, I seriously miss insider. It was pretty good, especially for the NBA draft. I miss all those mocks :( As an aside, ESPN basically has the lamest security ever. So we were splitting an insider subscription amongst 4 people. The $12 a year became $3. Woohoo!


Careful with that. I took it to the extreme and almost got permanently banned.


I pay yearly for mozy and rapidshare.


1. Freshbooks for time tracking and invoicing clients

2. Flickr Pro account for easy photo management

3. Dedicated server with LayeredTech for hosting projects

4. EasyNews account for newsgroups

5. Netflix for movie rentals and streaming


Rhapsody (2 subscriptions one for the wife, one for me). Safari unlimited. AWS: I just used Mechanical Turk. It's an awesome service. Safeway online grocery delivery. It's only 10 bucks! Neflix, of course. GoToMyPC for servicing the family's computers back home. Basecamp for a short time. Launchsplash. Moo : Killer business cards. Just got them today.


i pay for a slice at slicehost, and a pay for supportive subscriptions to some community-based forums/sites. oh, and skype.

thats it. i'd pay for other things if i had more disposable income and/or profitable startup, though. i'm making do with what i have, for now. i'm considering paying for something like an automatic cloud backup system, too, but am not currently.


Consumer:

Cook's Illustrated (for access to Solid Tested Recipes)

NetFlix

Consumer Reports (big purchases)

Mozy (Online Back Up)

used to pay for WSJ but dropped that due to News Corp content degradation.

Work pays several Online Journal and Library Access fees for me.

This was actually harder to come up with than I imagined because several of these only bill yearly or every two years and so the pain of paying virtually disappears...


One thing I pay for and I don't think anyone mentioned is "O'Reilly Safari Bookstore". US$ 22,00 month (I think?) and quite some nice books: the Javascript Rhino book, Obie's the Rails way, the Ruby way, the Pragmatic Programmer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and Hackers & Painters, to name a few.


Personal: Backpack

Biz: Basecamp, Campfire, PBWiki, AWS ... and hosting from Slicehost, Rackspace, and EngineYard


Consumer: Flickr, Giganews.com, Amazon S3 (personal docs), DirecTV +HBO +HD, access to a private tech forum, Wufoo for my blog's contact form, Google Apps Premier, misc iTunes Store purchases

Startup: Campfire, Basecamp, Amazon S3, Pingdom and soon Liquid Planner


I'm going to limit myself to online services, as opposed to more mail-cataloguey applications.

Video Games: Xbox Live Gold Account, Xbox Live Arcade Games, download tracks for Rock Band, and FFXI (think WoW.)

Movies: Netflix

Hosting: In the very near future, Amazon Web Services

Finance: Credit score tracking


consumer

  Napster - 15/mo - i like to support the musicians i listen to
  Netflix - 15/mo 
  Rockband songs - 25/mo something around that although not anymore as I'm now boot strapping

  Come to think of it, i could easily give up all of those services
business

  TollFreemax - 9/mo
  ProjectLocker - 5/mo svn repository
  Authorize.net payment gateway - 30/mo (not really special, but people *can* use paypal/gpay/aws/ccnow etc freely)
used to run a clothing store (long ago when i didn't know how to build my own ecommerce)

  prostores 30/mo
I've also purchased software for my business

  boxshot3D - 60


Paypal's merchant services still have a montly fee.


Skype, NetFlix, Rhapsody, Peapod

Used to pay for VirtualPBX, Experts Exchange, and Wall St. Journal


JungleDisk (for backup via S3), hosting (Dreamhost for shared, Slicehost for more power), Amazon MP3 for music. I've been trialing Pingdom for site monitoring and will probably sign up once trial is over. Netflix.


I forgot, I too pay for Jungledisk


As a consumer, nothing.

As a business, hosting/mail/sourcecontrol accounts, and the big one is the ADC membership. Sure, you can get the devtools for free but the WWDC videos make it worthwhile around a new OS release.


Personal: TWiT subscription. FLOSS weekly is awesome, http://twit.tv/FLOSS

Business: Pingdom. Easy peasy way to make sure your site is up. Amazon S3.


Office space, a managed colo from a provider in Canada, 2-3 slicehost VMs, DSL from Verizon and AT&T, 37Signals Campfire (excellent), 37Signals Basecamp (not excellent).


Freshbooks(19USD/pm) for Billing Clients. Unfuddle(9USD/pm) for Repo+PM Seobook(100 Usd/pm) for learning marketing.

Ebooks , Domains(Godaddy), Hosting(Webfaction)


Is Seobook any good?


Yes, very!


Rhapsody, and my partner pays for NetFlix. I was paying for Oreilly's Safari but I wasn't using it enough. I pay for Espn.com insider as well.


Subscriptions I have

Business: Basecamp, Zoho

Consumer: O'Reilly safari - safari.oreilly.com - browse their entire library (including books in pre-publication) for $42.99/mo


I only paid some MMORPG subscriptions so far. Ultima Online and WoW - never longer than a month, though.

Also spent 20$ on Linden Dollars (Second Life).


As a consumer? * Flickr * Amazon Prime * NOD32 subscription * S3 * NewsDemon

As a business? * JIRA * Confluence * Fisheye * vBulletin * JungleDisk * S3


As a consumer? * Flickr * Amazon Prime * NOD32 subscription * S3 * NewsDemon

As a business? * JIRA * Confluence * Fisheye * vBulletin * JungleDisk * S3


Skype, Amazon MP3s. For web analytics I pay for GetClicky.com Even though there's Google Analytics, Clicky is well worth the money.


Does it bother you that you can't host Clicky? I'm using Mint (thanks to a rec on #startups), but Clicky seems to have more data by far.


flickr, mefi, FogBugz, used to pay for O'Reilly's Safari. Bought the Instapaper iPhone client, if that counts. Made donations to a ton of services and people, mainly open source projects, web comics and such. Also donated to wikipedia, wikileaks, eff and a few others. That's all that comes to mind right now.


Flickr and blogging software (Typepad).


I should add that I'm about to pay for Balsamiq's Mockups (for business).


Honestly? Nothing outside of the everyday stuff, but even Amazon I only buy books every now and then.


I pay for Backpack and Basecamp, and will start paying for GoToMeeting once we have more use for it.


Flickr and until very recently, Last.fm, although I may subscribe to that again in the future.


"... What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? ..."

Thrifty: consumer/biz: flickr, domain, adsl


Consumer: netflix, amazon prime, ACM, cook's illustrated

Business: shoeboxed, earthclassmail, MSDN


Amazon S3 & UnBox. Google Adwords. Playstation Network. GoDaddy. Tivo.


Rhapsody, Audible, GoToMyPc


I pay for: unfuddle, itunes


Consumer: iTunes, Club Penguin (for my daughter)

Business: CVSDude (VCS hosting), Highrise


I remember paying $.99 for a Google Video once. That's laughable now!


Skype phone number and skype-out.

Tax preparation software.

Everything else online is business related.


I didn't see anyone mention Pandora. I pay for that and flickr pro.


Flickr, iTunes, a backup service, host/server/domain monitoring


Business: Freshbooks, Github, Vonage Consumer: iTunes, Peepcode


Consumer: - ACM membership - Skype

Business: - Google Email - Skype


I pay for GitHub and AWS. Total cost: under $10/mo


consumer: xbox live, netflix (if you consider that "online") for business: skype, pingdom.com (lets me know my clients' sites are up!)


BoardGameGeek, although it's more of a donation.


Nobody uses Smugmug?

Consumer: Smugmug, S3, JungleDisk

Business: GitHub, AWS (soon)


Consumer Reports ACM iTunes CovenantEyes


I pay for Flickr, Last.fm and Github.


rsync.net (solid backup) .mac (hey, it has a few uses) motionbased itunes


notebook backup, website uptime monitoring service


Paypal fees.


My domain.


Lighthouse


todoist


consumer:

flickr

tasks (by Crowd Favorite)

business:

Highrise

Quickbooks online




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