Eight years of victory(blog.pinboard.in)
blog.pinboard.in
Eight years of victory
https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/07/eight_years_of_victory/
36 comments
FTA and in addition to venning's comment: "In November I began traveling extensively in support of Tech Solidarity, an attempt to mobilize tech workers after the US election. All the travel meant I sometimes ignored support emails for weeks at a time."
I do sympathise with valid reason to not be able to respond. However, I think a minimum level communication should maintained in any kind of service. In this case, I don't think I would have been unhappy even with an autoresponder, but no response feels despairing.
I agree, though I do sympathise with any fellow smallfry operator who hasn't set that up, or feels like it's impersonal so avoids it.
Reminds me of the idea that you'll often avoid an email for a while because you want to respond perfectly. For you, that email is critical. Meanwhile, in the absence of a response, the sender assumes the email is completely ignored and meaningless to the recipient.
My unread count is generally 350-500, so I'm very guilty of that.
Reminds me of the idea that you'll often avoid an email for a while because you want to respond perfectly. For you, that email is critical. Meanwhile, in the absence of a response, the sender assumes the email is completely ignored and meaningless to the recipient.
My unread count is generally 350-500, so I'm very guilty of that.
(Not affiliated with Pinboard or even a user.) If your problems occurred 1.5 months ago, the "huge impending work" was likely Pinboard buying Delicious [1] and subsequently being inundated with Delicious users attempting to onboard. Not an excuse, just context.
[1] https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...
[1] https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...
The experience for new users has been very frustrating lately. There's no need for you to apologize.
My goal for the summer is to get things to a place where people don't have such a frustrating experience with me, or the site.
My goal for the summer is to get things to a place where people don't have such a frustrating experience with me, or the site.
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Love everything that Pinboard is doing - both service and attitude wise. Great to have living examples of hackers doing what they love, without having to sell out to investors or a large company, all the while bringing in decent money.
All that said, I'm always surprised that Maciej racked in over $100k in revenue his first year. I was of the impression that your first 1-2 years are going to be in the red, unless you have something big to build on (existing business to promote your new one, big twitter following, etc.).
The fact that he has 10x the users now compared to the first year but only 2x the revenue is interesting. I assume that's due to moving the subscription fee to a small but ever incrementing amount to a larger, fixed one.
Any tips/prep advice for someone who has a business they want to launch but dread spending the first couple years making no money/having few users?
All that said, I'm always surprised that Maciej racked in over $100k in revenue his first year. I was of the impression that your first 1-2 years are going to be in the red, unless you have something big to build on (existing business to promote your new one, big twitter following, etc.).
The fact that he has 10x the users now compared to the first year but only 2x the revenue is interesting. I assume that's due to moving the subscription fee to a small but ever incrementing amount to a larger, fixed one.
Any tips/prep advice for someone who has a business they want to launch but dread spending the first couple years making no money/having few users?
The 100K was the first full year of operation (2010) and 80K of that came over a two-week period in December, when Yahoo announced it was 'sunsetting' my main competitor. The period from April 2009 to December 2010 was very lean. I don't have the figures handy, but it was a few hundred bucks a month at best.
I would also love to hear advice. I'm looking at starting a service soon, and I really love the way that Maciej handles things. One man show that built a service for himself, has grown it organically and seems to enjoy working on it still.
I know there are lots of rival bookmarking services out
there to choose from.
I will consume them all, like I consumed the pie.
You're in for a treat if you just learned about Maciej (https://xkcd.com/1053/). I've been an admirer of his writing for a long time.
http://www.idlewords.com/
https://blog.pinboard.in/
http://www.idlewords.com/
https://blog.pinboard.in/
Pinboard user here.
I'm very good at archiving links, I use a chrome extension that just does it.
However I'm not so good at the recall side of things. This isn't pinboard's fault, it's just my habits. Right now I just throw links into a box with a few tags and then forget about it.
Maybe one day it will come in useful and I'm glad it's there.
I'm very good at archiving links, I use a chrome extension that just does it.
However I'm not so good at the recall side of things. This isn't pinboard's fault, it's just my habits. Right now I just throw links into a box with a few tags and then forget about it.
Maybe one day it will come in useful and I'm glad it's there.
I have the same issue. I usually just head to Google when I need to find something again...
> The big story this year was last month's surprise acquisition of Pinboard's long-time nemesis Delicious. This illustrates the importance of always having a backup nemesis.
I love Maciej's writing.
I love Maciej's writing.
Kudos to Pinboard. How he pulls it off with the almost non-existing support and without a(n official) mobile app is interesting, too.
Other apps have Intercom or some other support app telling you that you're special and promising you a reply in a few hours. Meanwhile Maciej doesn't reply to your emails or tweets.
And yet, growth.
Perhaps neglect is the secret sauce!
Other apps have Intercom or some other support app telling you that you're special and promising you a reply in a few hours. Meanwhile Maciej doesn't reply to your emails or tweets.
And yet, growth.
Perhaps neglect is the secret sauce!
I don't like the idea of outsourcing support to strangers. I think it's more meaningful to have your email ignored by the founder.
Perhaps chance is the secret sauce.
Perhaps being awesome, fully human and sincere with your users, and standing behind your service while providing an amazing narrative around your product is a part of the secret sauce.
Nice job, Pinboard is great!
One question, how come the number of users has increased 10x, but revenue only ~2x. Has the pricing model changed over time?
One question, how come the number of users has increased 10x, but revenue only ~2x. Has the pricing model changed over time?
Two years ago they changed pricing from a 1-time fee, to a recurring fee. So the majority of users are not a recurring revenue.
It has. It used to be a one-time signup fee, now it's an annual subscription.
Anyone else subscribe to Pinboard primarily to support Maciej's writing/organizing?
It's like the fair trade coffee of online bookmarking services.
It's like the fair trade coffee of online bookmarking services.
Just wanted to say: You're an inspiration, Maciej
Thank you; that is very friendly!
The best 6 dollars I ever spent...
what a terrible website, i'm still amazed how people can make money with such poor UX, i have to zoom the page at 175% to be able to read whats written there
Such poor UX? Are you joking right? Pinboard UX is awesome and fast: just straight to the point. Font size is about 13pt: standard; just like HN.
It's actually 13px, which is much smaller than 13pt. 16px (which is slightly smaller than 13pt) is pretty much the standard minimum.
Pinboard is great, but the UX could definitely do with some attention. It annoys me to the extent that one of my pet projects is a better front-end, using its API. As one small example, it's incredibly frustrating that I have to view page source to extract metadata (e.g. title + description) when adding a new URL, rather than pinboard just doing this for me.
Pinboard is great, but the UX could definitely do with some attention. It annoys me to the extent that one of my pet projects is a better front-end, using its API. As one small example, it's incredibly frustrating that I have to view page source to extract metadata (e.g. title + description) when adding a new URL, rather than pinboard just doing this for me.
As one small example, it's incredibly frustrating that I have to view page source to extract metadata (e.g. title + description) when adding a new URL, rather than pinboard just doing this for me.
I think my bookmark extension extracts at least the title for me.
IIRC one bookmark extension I used used to add whatever text I had highlighted before bookmarking as the description.
I think my bookmark extension extracts at least the title for me.
IIRC one bookmark extension I used used to add whatever text I had highlighted before bookmarking as the description.
How are you adding URLs? The bookmarklet auto-adds the title, and turns any selected text into the description.
I have to zoom HN 125-150% to read it comfortably. It's the only site I have a custom zoom level for.
Archiving didn't work for me for first 3 days, so I sent an email, no response. Followed up 2 days later, no response. Contacted on Twitter, got a response that it'll be looked into, but it wasn't solved. Contacted on Twitter again 3 days later, no response. Finally, it did start working a few days later but stopped again.
I emailed again, no response. Followed up 4 days later, no response. Contacted on Twitter, no response. Emailed on founder's email 2 days later, no response. Another contact on Twitter, no response. I did get a response when I send a DM that the lack of response was due to huge impending work.
It's completely possible that the work was indeed huge and I was growing impatient (for that, I apologise), but I wasn't expecting that the problem is solved immediately but just how and when it'll be solved, that's all.
I didn't send any messages after that and it seems issues are slowly getting fixed. There are still issues with accessing the archived links, but I feel there won't be any point in reporting them. Pinboard is an excellent service that I use every day, but I wish there was more effort to make users feel less frustrated.