Show Likes
This section allows you to view all posts where this member received or gave a like to.
1
A few days ago, I discussed doing a Kickstarter with Pete.
It all started when I heard about Ghost (tryghost.org), a blogging platform, and their successful KS campaign -- they raised about $300.000 for a software which, frankly, doesn't look that appealing to me, as a blogger I mean. I figured we could raise at least a tenth of that to compensate for the many costs that were involved in the last 3 years of building Wedge for free, etc.
I even had a preliminary series of stretch goals set up, starting with a simple paid release, then a free release, then an open-source release, then a BSD release, etc...
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to catch too much of Pete's attention, and to be honest, if we're not both into it, I don't see how it could be done. Campaigning for funding takes time and determination I believe, and neither of us is really good at selling ourselves. We prefer to show what we can do, and then rely on word-of-mouth to do the rest.
After all, it worked for Kyodai Mahjongg. I sold tons of copies of this silly little puzzle, not because I spent time advertising it, but simply because it was the best of its kind, and people recommended it around them.
However, Wedge is a different beast altogether. It's not an easy sale, as it's, like all other installable web software, a niche platform.
Meaning word-of-mouth, if any, won't be enough to bring realistic sales for us to keep maintaining Wedge on a full-time basis for the many years to come, which is what has always been bothering me.
Sure, I can keep working on it for free forever, but what happens when I think of a new sustainable project that gets more of my attention..? I don't have one for now, but Pete apparently has found one, and has been focusing on it for some time. Without money, there's only so much we can do for the free software community.
So, anyway, I had a look at Mailpile, it's not exactly 'related' to Wedge in any capacity, and Indiegogo (which I heard about just yesterday, after Ubuntu's failure to raise funds for their Edge smartphone) isn't apparently the platform of choice for web software -- looks like Mailpile is the most popular one right now, and they raised $100K, which is very nice, but not a realistic target for sustaining development over a long period of time. Taxes and everything -- That leaves about $25K per developer in a two-dev team, which represents about $500/mo. for the last three years of work. It's all right, but it doesn't pay for the next three years, does it..?
And I feel that even $100K is going to be tough to raise in the current economy, especially with a niche product that doesn't say "The Next WordPress" all over it...
That's where we're at, right now. More precisely, that's where I'm at.
It all started when I heard about Ghost (tryghost.org), a blogging platform, and their successful KS campaign -- they raised about $300.000 for a software which, frankly, doesn't look that appealing to me, as a blogger I mean. I figured we could raise at least a tenth of that to compensate for the many costs that were involved in the last 3 years of building Wedge for free, etc.
I even had a preliminary series of stretch goals set up, starting with a simple paid release, then a free release, then an open-source release, then a BSD release, etc...
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to catch too much of Pete's attention, and to be honest, if we're not both into it, I don't see how it could be done. Campaigning for funding takes time and determination I believe, and neither of us is really good at selling ourselves. We prefer to show what we can do, and then rely on word-of-mouth to do the rest.
After all, it worked for Kyodai Mahjongg. I sold tons of copies of this silly little puzzle, not because I spent time advertising it, but simply because it was the best of its kind, and people recommended it around them.
However, Wedge is a different beast altogether. It's not an easy sale, as it's, like all other installable web software, a niche platform.
Meaning word-of-mouth, if any, won't be enough to bring realistic sales for us to keep maintaining Wedge on a full-time basis for the many years to come, which is what has always been bothering me.
Sure, I can keep working on it for free forever, but what happens when I think of a new sustainable project that gets more of my attention..? I don't have one for now, but Pete apparently has found one, and has been focusing on it for some time. Without money, there's only so much we can do for the free software community.
So, anyway, I had a look at Mailpile, it's not exactly 'related' to Wedge in any capacity, and Indiegogo (which I heard about just yesterday, after Ubuntu's failure to raise funds for their Edge smartphone) isn't apparently the platform of choice for web software -- looks like Mailpile is the most popular one right now, and they raised $100K, which is very nice, but not a realistic target for sustaining development over a long period of time. Taxes and everything -- That leaves about $25K per developer in a two-dev team, which represents about $500/mo. for the last three years of work. It's all right, but it doesn't pay for the next three years, does it..?
And I feel that even $100K is going to be tough to raise in the current economy, especially with a niche product that doesn't say "The Next WordPress" all over it...
That's where we're at, right now. More precisely, that's where I'm at.
2
New slogan.
"Wedge - where all of the Net dinosaurs meet up."
"Wedge - where all of the Net dinosaurs meet up."