Pinboard.in as a model for Hubzilla?

Christopher M. Rasch via zotlabs.org | Hubzilla Development

East Palo Alto, Thu, 05 Apr 2018 13:40:00 -0400 last edited: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:49:24 -0400

!Hubzilla Development

Pinboard.in is a social bookmarking site, similar to Delicious. It's an unusual company, as internet companies go. First, it's run by a single individual, Maciej Cegłowski. Second, it accepts no ads, and no third party tracking. Third, Ceglowski directly charges users money for the service. Initially, the fee was a one-time fee based on the formula (number of users * $0.001)--about $5.00/year. Currently, it's about $11/year for a regular account, and $25/year for an archival service which stores a copy of the bookmarked page and enables full text search. The site began in 2009, and currently makes about $259,000/year in revenue.

Is anyone doing paid Hubzilla hosting yet? If not--given Ceglowski's experience with Pinbooad--it seems like it might be a workable business model that's consistent with the ethos of Hubzilla's community.

See screenshot:

https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/07/eight_years_of_victory/

#pinboard

pinboard ecommerce hubzilla

show all 4 comments

Christopher M. Rasch

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 13:15:01 -0400

@Andrew, FWIW, there are VPS providers outside the U.S. who allow anonymous registration and payment with Monero (anonymous cryptocurrency).

Start Administrator

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 19:37:39 -0400

That's kind of like hoping you don't have to pay taxes as long as you store the money in off-shore accounts that they can't trace back to you. It might work technically speaking, but for me, I'm too much of a rule follower.

Waitman Gobble

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 20:35:33 -0400

I could host sites, but I'm not sure it's a value winning proposition. I've hosted thousands of sites since the 1990's. There's all kinds of cheapy hosting plans out there, i've never gone that route. Charging less than 25 bucks a month isn't really worth the trouble financially for a small hosting company. Really you have to upsell on updates and maintenance. try to get another 50/mo out of them.

I have a godaddy account with one domain, i totally dislike godaddy but i support a couple of people who use godaddy so i have to be an expert at it. or at least log into my account and tinker with things to find the answer to a question. That costs me about 35 bucks a month.

A ballpark idea would be a server that runs about 250 a month, and maybe you could put 10 to 15 hubzilla sites on it? the money isn't there. I haven't tested that and maybe i could load more hubzilla sites on that machine, but that's my guess.

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