The first two aren't technically possible. And also not desirable, IMHO. That said, [name redacted] can import pageviews from logfiles like goaccess, so that's kind of the closest you can get (although then it's harder to filter bots, so it's more skewed the other way).
That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also in terms of ads; the other day I saw a site which has just <img src="/ad.png">, which I don't really see any problem with, and uBlock goes out of its way to block that – meh).
I recently had a page import something like site_stats.js (site meant as in a physical building/location) from the same domain as the html request and ublock blocked it.
Had to rename the bundle.
Thanks for [name redacted] btw, I've got a little website that hosts useful information that's hard to find otherwise for a little community (~20 visits / day) and [name redacted] has been reliably telling me whether or not people still use it for a few years now.
- "Hey, here's something interesting you might be interested in!"
- "Drink Coca Cola"
The second type of marketing is the sort of zero-sum game you're talking about. Everyone already knows about this, Coca Cola and Pepsi spend phenomenal amounts of money, and it kind of just cancels out.
But the first type of marketing is rather different. The simplest kind is making something and then telling people that you made it.
> Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan.
Yes, I agree. This is also what I told the NLnet people a few years back, but while there's a lot of budget for specific technical things, there isn't really any money set aside for more "soft" aspects like this.
I don't dislike Jimmy Wales. "Please donate to Wikipedia" is one of the most common "please donate" type messages, and at least in the past it was usually written from the first person with a picture of Jimmy Wales' (usually unshaven) mug. It's just a joke. Nothing more.
The infra costs are covered, with some to spare; that's not really the problem. It's more "I have this thing anyway, so might as well ask people using it for some help now I really need it." That's why it's in the release notes (never expected it to be posted here).
Well, there's a long chain of events over the last ~3 years leading up to this point, but I don't really feel like explaining everything in detail (and I don't think it's all that interesting in the first place). Also I never made that much in software dev in the first place.
[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible.
Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)?
I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good enough. It's just that circumstances conspired to put in this rather uncomfortable position.
> but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)?
I was trying to. I highly recommend you to bring back the paid plans. Just leave it as it was. Opt-in for personal and for small commercial websites, paid plan. Like someone else mentioned, for a business, invoices helps a lot to bill as expense if they want to pay you.
Always ALWAYS have a way to give money that results in a professional-looking invoice for a professional-sounding product. That’s a great way for people in business to get the cost expensed.
Thank you for making it free! I've used it on my blog (https://vgel.me) forever, since back before I ever would've paid for analytics, and it's been rock-solid the whole time. Some of the most "set it and forget it" software I use. I definitely owe you a donation so I'm glad I saw this!
It’s very very risky to optimize for just “good enough”. You have to build some reserve, or you risk being in the situation you are in.
You don’t need to optimize to earn tons of money, but minimum threshold should more than just good enough. So, if things go wrong, you can spend that reserve and actually be on a “good enough” position until you figure things out
One difference I see is I heard very little about [name redacted] (first time was mid 2023), but Plausible pops up every few months to the top of HN. So they for sure have marketed harder.
This also validates that maybe something like Setapp for SaaS or Spotify for SaaS might be a good business model.
I'm in a similar position now, so if anyone is looking for a full-stack TypeScript engineer with open-source background (https://github.com/mishushakov) let's chat!
That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also in terms of ads; the other day I saw a site which has just <img src="/ad.png">, which I don't really see any problem with, and uBlock goes out of its way to block that – meh).