Ask HN: How to monetize support of existing free and open-source projects?

12 points by hakaaak 13 years ago | 10 comments

Have been managing a few open-source projects for years and have wanted to get paid for the work that I put into it in my spare time. I am aware that it is much more difficult getting people to pay for support for free, open-source projects, especially after the maintainer has been supporting them for free previously, but I feel like I have nothing to lose since the product will only get better if I am more motivated to work on it. Any advice?

Mz 13 years ago |

I think it depends a lot on context. I used to participate in a free forum. The founder was brilliant at choking off all possible avenues of monetization while bitching endlessly about wanting to make money (edit: mostly to help cover costs, not necessarily profit per se in his case). He did not want to ask for donations and he also did not want to commercialize it. However it was quite popular and outgrowing its hosting solution, which led to lots of complaints of slowness due to traffic load. I thought he should have posted a notice saying "The site is slow because we need to upgrade from x server costing x amount of money per month to y server costing y amount of money per month. When I get enough donations to cover y for a year in advance, I will happily upgrade. Until then, quit your bitchin." Then any time someone complained, link to the notice (with donate button, naturally) and tell them "Put up or shut up". Similar to the webcomic author whose audience was whining he wasn't updating enough and he said "I make x amount at my day job. Match that." Much to his shock, he had $4000.00 in an hour. He said it to say "shut the fuck up". Instead, he ended up quitting his job and doing the comic full time.

So where do you have demand? Find some way to charge for it. That's what I am trying to say. List your assets, list where you have demand, list different ways that might get monetized. Tie pay to what people want from you.

Best of luck.

saurik 13 years ago | |

> He said it to say "shut the fuck up". Instead, he ended up quitting his job and doing the comic full time.

Does this story continue? Getting a bunch of money from a one-time plea or stunt is drastically different than a recurring revenue stream; I'd love to hear how well he did after he started doing it full time (and how he chose to monetize; still donations?).

Mz 13 years ago | | |

Iirc, it is the backstory for this comic, which I believe is still the author's full time job:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/

subpixel 13 years ago |

If users are submitting pull-requests and you're just too busy to manage the process for free, that's one thing. Good luck charging for that.

But if you have a backlog of enhancements that a bunch of people want but can't/aren't coding themselves, maybe you could run a little campaign to raise $this_much money by $this_deadline in order to deliver $these_features

jmathai 13 years ago |

I'm doing this for a project I started, OpenPhoto. It's sort of like Wordpress in that anyone can download and install the software. And like Wordpress, we are trying to monetize it by providing a hosted solution.

I quickly found, for us, that hosting alone wasn't sufficient. So now we are offering complimentary solutions along side the open source product. We let you import photos from Facebook and Instagram for free. You pay to do it from Flickr.

We also automate some tasks that would otherwise be nearly impossible. Such as migrating from Deopbox to S3 (one aspect of the product is that you select where your photos are stored). This feature also let's us offer storage provided by us (required to get users up and running immediately. Then we can let hem change their mind later.

It is early in the game but people are paying. Hopefully enough users will. It becomes a win for the project and the creators since active development can continue.

bbunix 13 years ago |

I wrote Big Brother (http://bb4.com), and it was 99.5% free (until we sold out to Quest/Dell). Originally a lot of our revenue came from support.

We just offered 3 tiers of support. For $250 a year we'd answer emails. For $500 we promised an answer within a day. For $750, within 4 hours, and for $1000 a month I'd take your phone call.

So, people are paying for your time, and for access... I was shocked my how many people opted for $1000 a month phone support (direct access to the developer/author).

Otherwise, support continues to be provided by a mailing list, group or other mechanism.

Good luck!

adambenayoun 13 years ago |

You should check binpress http://www.binpress.com (I'm one of the founders), it is a marketplace for source code. While 50% of the projects are not necessarily open source, the other half are open source projects where the developer also charge for a support license.

Many customers will prefer to purchase a support license in order to ask the developer a question. Some will create a feature suggestion and since they have paid, the developer is more likely to implement them.

cploonker 13 years ago |

Users are always looking for enhancements and willing to pay for them. Allow people to bid features up, by paying.

vineet 13 years ago |

I think that your best bet is to first understand who is using your project and why. Once there try to find the needs of companies - they are often more likely to pay for your time.

markbernard 13 years ago |

If you want more specific advise ,why don't you list the projects you are talking about.