Ask HN: Why aren't you charging money for your side project?
I see many side projects that don't charge their users and was wondering why that is.
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Because I'm utterly, utterly selfish; allow me to explain:
A dollar, euro, naira, deutschmark, ruble, yuan or yen has an imprint of life and context based on its' cultural origins (and the minter who produced it).
My business project (still a side-project at the moment, effectively) is imprinted -- to the git commit-level -- with the authorship of myself (and hopefully other contributors in future).
Given the choice between offering that software DNA (including, admittedly, plenty of faults) to other people to use and remix as they like, or to trade it for monetary units that are relatively-characterless in compensation -- even a billion such monetary units -- well, it's not really a choice that requires much consideration.
(regardless of the choice, the two options are equivalent at a technology/runtime level; they're a series of compute instructions that run locally or over a network to achieve result(s))
It introduces business psychology, for one. You get all this and more, for free:
- An expectation of support which is likely based on the purchaser's subjective past experiences in receiving support, rather than on what's available in your support section
- Pushback from your new customers-who-are-always-right
- Passionate and very specific suggestions for improvement, _for free_, from people who paid and therefore believe they are your target audience
- A complimentary covert contract governing the vendor-purchaser relationship, to accompany whatever you previously made very clear, which they did not and will not read
- A noticeable dilution of others' perspective on your personal values--"ah, they are just sharing that link with us because they make money off of it"
These are just some of the possible outcomes...
Which is not to say it's not worth doing, but there are lots of important factors.
Once you take money, you are running a business (even if you mislabel the money as a donation). That means having to register with the tax authorities, adding a ton of accounting related overhead and very likely spending money on all of that overhead (e.g. when hiring an accountant to offload some of the overhead).
At some point you realize that you have to ramp your business up, just so it pays for the cost of accepting money. Then it's no longer a side project.
I'll just leave this here:
https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/software-development-cost/ ↗
Off the top of my head:
1. Charging then creates an expectation that doesn't otherwise exist. That may not be something you can or want to commit to;
2. There is an overhead in charging. Payments infrstructure, billing and so on. This isn't "free";
3. Earning an income from your side project may well violate your visa status (particularly appropriate for those on US temporary work visas);
4. A side income may violate your employment conditions; and
5. Contributors may be less willing to volunteer their time to a paid product.
I think donations is one way to go.
Since I'm on Linux, I use a lot of software from people outside the big tech camp, such as the awesome kitty terminal.
There was a bug in it which unreported and when the developer fixed it in less than 24 hours, I signed up to give him 10 dollars per month. About 800 other people were already signed up and giving donations (possibly smaller).
People just like to give back, so make it easy to do and they will. But you need to make a product they use every day.