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8 Comments

Should I put a price tag to a simple side project?

Hello IH πŸ‘‹!

I made in a couple evenings a really simple javascript widget that adds a whatsapp button with a custom message (your usual chatbot, but it just opens whatsapp) for my gf as she needed it for her business.

I was going to just leave it on github but, should I try to add a couple more features and make a freemium product?

I don't think it's that useful but thought I would ask first.

Cheers and thanks in advance!! πŸ‘

on July 19, 2019
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    Nothing wrong in freemium. Go ahead and add nice features.

  2. 2

    As long as it does what it claims to be, it make sense to charge for it. The thing is that you are not going to earn anything from open-source project (in case of donation). I had a couple of open-source project and bunch of users still haven't got any donation. So I would say improve the product, add some features and charge for it.

  3. 2

    Always slap a price on it and see what happens :). If you look at the history of Buffer (https://buffer.com/) for example, it all started with a"stupidly simple" project (doing a cron job to send tweets in their case).

    1. 1

      Hey thanks for the reply!

      Yeah I think I'll just slap a cheap price and see if someone is interested in using it, if not, I can always leave the code on github for portfolio 😁.

      Thanks!

  4. 2

    Yes add some features..you never know what might happen .

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    I'd lean towards just having it as an open source project. However, if you want to charge for widget like that, I'd recommend following/learning from @desandro (https://github.com/desandro) who've built a business around this model.

    1. 1

      Thanks fro the input!

      I'll put a cheap price just to try, and I'm looking throug @desandro, really cool!

    2. 1

      I looked into this link. Only a bit ago, his business has reverted back to a side business: https://metafizzy.co/blog/full-time-fizzy-finish/

      Look like he will easily sustain it as a side business tho.