How do I know if I can monetise this project?
Hi!
First post here! :)
I while back, when I was looking for software engineering jobs for the first time, I was based in Spain but interviewing for companies based in different cities. Namely Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Toronto. It was pretty hard to compare them because currencies, salary ranges and cost of livings where all different.
I ended up joining a company in Dublin with what I thought was a good salary, but once I started looking to rent my own place I realised that after tax and rent the salary was not really enough to live comfortably. I thought at that point that a tool to compare salaries between different cities would have helped me make a better decision. I also thought that a tool like that would allow me to compare my salary with that of my colleagues in the US. That way I could see if salaries were equivalent and I was just spending too much, or if my salary was comparably lower and it was normal that I couldn't live comfortably.
That's how Compalary was born –yep, it's hosted on GitHub–. I worked on it for a couple of weekends to get the initial version, and later I added a few features. Initially it was just me using it, and then I told a few friends when I knew it could be helpful. I've shared it on a couple of subreddits and tweeter a few times, getting just from 15 to 50 views on the same day. Worth noting here that I have almost no following on either platform.
Every time someone has given me feedback it has been positive, but I don't see too much traction. I mean, a couple of days after sharing the project and getting a few visits, it usually goes back to 0 visits for most days.
I never thought about monetising it, but I wonder if it would be possible. Do people think this project is helpful? How do you think it could be monetised?
look up to nomadlist.com
I looked into it. I think this tool wouldn't bee as good because is not targeting a niche as nomadlist does. Pieter pretty much monetises it via a paid subscription to the social network that runs on top of nomadlist. Also ads, but I don't think this tool could get enough traffic to be profitable using ads to monetise.
I actually thought my idea could be a good tool for nomadlist, rather than a similar project. I even sent him a direct message talking about it, which he read but never replied. The message also got exactly 0 upvotes haha. I mean, the code is all open source and I thought it could be useful for nomadlist users to be able to know equivalent quantities in different cities. He could just copy paste it and it should be good to go. Maybe change some styles for consistency, but that'd be all.
Thanks for your feedback :)
funny thing, I had a similar idea to hoodmaps.com and then saw a post on reddit, and started following on social networks. realised he even recorded how he programmed it (and I did nothing on the other hand). but it's kinda cool too, seeing that idea of the city areas can be implemented and this is how exactly.
I tried Compalary, and I didn't get what is the relation between the central upper drop-down menu (citySelector) and cards.
apparently I live in Dublin too, I picked Moscow in the citySelector and got this:
🏠Cost of living with rent: 88,829 - this is before tax, right?
🛒Groceries: 84,749 - this looks strange
🚀Gitlab: 69,720 - I have no idea what it is
If you could add some text I bet more people will know how to use the site.
Also I would ask for emails to bring more insights for users later in the form of the letter and potentially bring them back to the site for further comparisons.
I see what you mean. Yep, that's one of those things that is quite obvious to me because I made it, but in hindsight it's not clear at all. I mean the relation between the central upper drop-down and the cards. Thanks for pointing this out!
Another thing that you point out is the comparisons being before tax. They're actually after tax. I already knew this one was confusing. The reason to be after tax is that before tax comparisons would need the app to estimate your taxes, and that's very complex and depends on a lot of factors. I think I'll have to think about a way to give people that info.
Also great advice to collect people's emails. That might also be useful if I decide to build something around salaries, cities comparisons or other related topics.
Thank you very much for your feedback! :)
I think the idea can be helpful, but you should add salary comparisons based on the position and the job field.
Comparing just a base salary won't tell the person that much. What's more insightful is, if I'm a marketing director in London, how does that compare to my peers living in Germany?
Another issue I see is that the UI is not that great. Why are the salary definitions so pushed up to the left?
The site isn't pushing the message of "let's compare your salary vs other countries, and see where you stand." I think the value proposition here is for your users to see if they are being underpaid in their area, in relation to their position and their field (maybe even years?)
Hmm interesting point. I initially tried to solve for the scenario where you have at least one offer/data point and want to know what's the equivalent in other places. That way you can at least get a sense of how much that amount would be in other cities. I didn't actually tied amounts with roles/experience.
The way I see it in the example you mention, if you're a marketing director in London and you're making say £100k, you can go and see that the amount of money that would be equivalent in Berlin would be €78k. If your peers in Berlin are making more than €78k it means they're better off in terms of salary/cost of living, and viceversa. I think that way you can still compare salaries without having to add any information about roles.
I don't know, I feel adding roles there would add quite a good amount of complexity, because now I'd be taking into account market salaries. I agree it would be great if you could add your role and it told you something like "you're on the 90th percentile" or something like that, but I think that's pretty much what levels.fyi or payscale.com are doing. If they had a free API I could integrate with I'd definitely add this to the backlog.
Regarding the UI, I agree it's not great... this was thrown away in a couple of weekends and didn't put too much effort in designing it. Just enough to be usable. I'll make sure to add some margins to the definitions!
Thank you very much for your feedback! :)
By the way, another goal that I had in mind creating that tool was to be able to compare "market salaries", because I felt they can be completely broken and unfair. You might have heard about the drama that came after Dan Abramov shared his salary at facebook.
I think people using this tool could have a positive effect in making market salaries more fair, because right now they are not fair at all. If people understood that they have a worse quality of life just because they live in X city, they might move to a city where quality of life is better, therefore decreasing the offer in low market salary cities, and maybe increasing them. Or they might just ask for a better salary using data to back their arugments.
To be honest, I made the exact same mistake. Moving from London to Dublin (I'm Irish myself, so I was moving home). The thing that struck me about the move was the difference of price of imported products. The price of fruit and vegetables was significantly higher over here, the price of a beer etc. etc. And rent is extortionate due to the housing crisis.
But if you treat that as a question - how do I make a better decision about where to live based on financial circumstances alone? Then it's a very interesting problem to solve. I actually believe that the human perception of price and value is super interesting, and for some people much higher linked than others.
Looking at the solution you have built. If you engineer a tool to try to figure this out, it has a lot of engineering ahead of it, and potentially a lot of input for the user and a lot of work to decipher the output, but if you just ask people about their lived experiences, it might be a lot faster to solve the original question, and a lot easier for a human to understand. Content could be an answer here. Let me know if you want to discuss further, I've been thinking about something in this space.
Hey! Sorry for the late reply!
I feel you with the cost of living in Dublin. I'll sidetrack here a bit, but I started working remotely for the same company after talking with them about how the cost of living was not affordable for me. In December they told me that for 2020 they wanted to stop having remote people in Europe –in USA it's fine– so I started looking for that option. I was paying €1550 before I left, and this time similar places were listed at €1800+, so I've ended up leaving the company. Just because the cost of living is crazy. In the meantime salaries are exactly the same. That's another argument that I have against the market salary. They are completely broken and have no relation with the cost of living.
So, changing topics, I see what you mean about using people's input to make the comparisons, but I'm not sure how I would approach it. You mention that there would be a lot of engineering involved, and maybe it's just that I'm trying to think about very simple solutions.
I'd definitely be happy to talk more about your thoughts around this space. It's also a topic that interests me a lot. Compensation in different places, cost of living, and how to make it more fair, because it's definitely not fair. Feel free to DM me, I'm not sure if it's possible through IH, but otherwise you can ping me on twitter @dgrcode
Thanks for your feedback! :)
I suppose another thing to consider is, is this a common problem? I think it happens maybe twice in someone's life that they may need to relocate. So is this a viable idea from that point of view?
I just came across Nomad list, which I think is very relevant to what you are looking at.
https://nomadlist.com/krakow
I wish you the best of luck with it.