The Price Of Free
I have now advanced to the era beyond not charging for my products - no longer giving my products away for free and no longer charging cheaply, as you attract the type of people who try to nickel and dime you. I had finished a project at the end of 2015. It would be my very first product that led me into understanding how to code and how to work with mysql and all things database which opened up quite a few doors for me.
With the price of free, I really didn't maintain the product, but I made sure there were no bugs in it and it was usable. I had noticed an increase in posts and the product went viral, going from 4,000 to over 11,000 posts in a few months, a product that seemed to be making its way around the world. It was great.
Unfortunately, it hit the dark web and a tool created for educational and entertainment purposes was now being used for something illegal: to distribute illegal copies of media or warez, and also malware. Since the product was free, I didn't really take notice, but I would delete the posts for anyone who complained.
The posts were getting created faster than I could take them down and faster than I could discover them. It is completely my fault for not eliminating the problem and building in filters as soon as I noticed it, but... the DCMA hit my web host and had them take the site down. While my web host didn't ban me, they did warn me that the content violated their terms.
When I finally restored the site, the amount of posts were at 29,000+ in a matter of a few days. Someone or something had created a system that could bypass my captcha. I have since put up the site with a message that it is being revamped, so currently, no one can use it. However, because I have no desire to work on it, I was thinking about just revamping it and charging for posts. I had never wanted to charge for it, but I have no desire to work on it, either.
It sucks for those who were legitimately using it, but the dark web took over.
Your post reminded me the story of http://jsbin.com, and Remy's tale...
Just out of curiosity, what captcha system did you use?
Hope the best for your product.
Custom built captcha that required the user to type in random digits generated via PHP and sent to js and also, a checkbox, as well as a hidden field. It wasn't impossible to break, but it likely would take time to figure out the keys. I had gone with Google Recaptcha for a bit, but there were just way too many false positives, so i had built my own.
Could you encrypt the blob being sent so client can't just break it easily? Also, what were false positives? My point is that instead major revamp could you just improve your captcha and re-release the site?
I could redo the captcha to a Google recaptcha and hopefully that stops it, but the issue even before was that these posts were being inserted manually, so people were actually creating these posts and it hadn't been automated.
False positives on the Google Recaptcha were the fact that you choose the correct images that Google has you choose, and then they show you another captcha screen as if the first one wasn't accepted. Sometimes, I would have to fill it out three times, which was just more annoying, prompting me to create my own captcha.
The code was written in PHP 5.6, so .. it's old code that does need upgrading. So when I speak of a revamp, I don't mind upgrading it so that it works in 7.x. It'd probably be faster and it wouldn't be too bad for me to start charging for my product anyway.
I'd rather charge $5/month subscriptions to post unlimited posts -- and scare away almost everyone and get those few customers who actually do use the product than to keep inviting unwanted people, especially when it brings the DCMA to email me and my web host. DCMA violations are quite serious and can result in up to a $500,000 fine as well as 5 years in prison. And also -- obviously the banning of my web hosting account(s).
$5 a month is a good insurance policy to keep that from happening.
First, congratulations on making a popular product!
Is really hard to reach those numbers, even if you give away your product for free.
Second, you always have to charge your work even if your userbase goes down. After all, you spend a good amount of time working on your project, so be honest with your customers and ask them to pay so you can keep working on your product.
Is a win/win situation, you only have to trust in yourself and put a price on your work.
And for your 'spamming problem' I recommend you to move your DNS to Cloudflare or a similar service that can help you detecting 'bot automation'. Usually, checking the option of 'i'm under attack' is enough to deny any of this threats.
Also, levels made a post about what 'price is enough' to stop spammers:
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/has-nomadlist-always-been-behind-a-paid-wall-b502001242
Cheers,
And don't give up! :)
I appreciate this and the link.
I didn't want to think I was crazy for thinking I should charge, but it's a product that I and many others were using, many businesses were posting on it and using it to get a quick web page up on the Internet. Really great product for those who used it.
But keeping it free... just isn't viable. I was thinking about just charging $10 for 100 posts or $5 per month or something like that, just to stop the scammers from joining.
I didn't want to resort to charging for it, as I had been using it to advertise my own products, but... it's the only way I believe I can stop the scammers. They will get beyond the filters and keywords that I put in ... going through a database of 29,000 entries and scanning for specific keywords... there are many that would bypass my filter.
And it's not something I really wanted to upkeep manually. So charging will at least stop most of the scammers immediately. This will be the way I go.
I remember reading / listening to Pieter Levels about the early days of NomadList. Once it got popular, he started getting spam. At first, he charged $1 in hopes that it would get rid of it. Eventually, this helped him realize that by charging more, it would actually attract better customers.
Hope you can recover your product from the dark web!
Cheers,
Jonathan
Thank you Jon, this definitely has given me the idea to start charging. Even if no one comes... I'd rather have that insurance that people who use it are legitimate, and sometimes, it just requires putting up a little money in exchange to behave like a human being.