[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a meme creator that makes around $4k...
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Show HN: I made a meme creator that makes around $4k a month
Author : par
Score : 374 points
Date : 2021-08-27 15:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (metameme.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (metameme.app)
| conqrr wrote:
| Nice! What brings the revenue? Ads or do you charge?
| par wrote:
| It is subscription based model. $5/month or $35/year.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| I'd love to scoff who would pay a subscription fee for a meme
| generator, but clearly plenty of people. Good work!
| tarey wrote:
| Great work
| par wrote:
| thank you
| javiermaestro wrote:
| From your comments, you turned from a one-time purchase to
| subscriptions.
|
| Can you share your attrition rate? Also, how many want to pay
| per-month VS the full year (heavily discounted price)?
|
| Thanks!
| par wrote:
| Yes happy to. From the app store analytics over last 30 days
|
| Retention rate: 82%
|
| Monthly subs: 93%
|
| yearly subs: 7%
| javiermaestro wrote:
| Thanks! I just can't wrap my head around the fact that
| someone is willing to pay $5 a month for a meme app! XD
|
| Are the users active? Have you thought / analyzed if they pay
| and forget that it's a subscription? :-?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Same, but on the other hand memers do seem to take their
| craft seriously. While I wouldn't want to pay monthly for
| this app as I would use it a few times a year (I'll just
| fire up photoshop), I guess its not too much cash for users
| serious about creating. Apparently you can make some good
| cash focusing on a niche user market.
| par wrote:
| Something interesting I found is that the many of the
| 'power users' of the meme world have many different meme
| making apps and they pay for most of them!
| robocat wrote:
| What are some of the sites that the 'power users'
| initially seed with their memes?
|
| Are there any patterns to (profiles of) the power users,
| or customer segments you know about the power users?
| Amateur versus professional?
|
| Edit: I see you mention "a lot of my users run fairly
| large instagram pages (50k+ followers)", so other sites
| or segments?
| meristohm wrote:
| We've long spent resources on increasing attention and
| popularity; might this expense be similarly justified?
| Having a meme generator at one's fingertips seems a timely
| way to increase standing in the online culture participated
| in.
| blondin wrote:
| creators and influencers would be my guess.
| par wrote:
| Yes the users are quite active. The main thing people are
| paying for are the video features and the video scraper.
| There is some code which allows the app to pull videos from
| youtube, instagram, facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, and I
| think that is really the thing that separates this app from
| other generic image editors.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What are the legal implications of grabbing from
| arbitrary video and profiting off derivative works? Is it
| fair use?
|
| Have you had to moderate to avoid illegal images from
| getting into the system?
| erhk wrote:
| Remove this post before google does to you what it did to
| groovy
| [deleted]
| vletal wrote:
| From YouTube? I thought that such app would get rejected
| from App Store...
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't know about the app store, but a screenshot with a
| satirical comment superimposed is easy fair use.
| croes wrote:
| Not all countries have something like fair use. Could be
| a problem in the EU.
| lrem wrote:
| Only if the comment is about the screenshot itself
| though. https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU has some sad
| explanation.
| vletal wrote:
| I was thinking along the lines of not being OK to scrape
| YouTube rather then breaking copyright or intellectual
| property.
| lrem wrote:
| Oh sure, YouTube forbids that. Once there's enough
| traffic to care, it'll get cut off. But YouTube is
| somewhat unlikely to try to sue one's socks off for
| breaking the ToS. Copyright owners though...
| damsta wrote:
| Nice work!
| freediver18 wrote:
| congrats, I was looking for something like this, but tried 5
| different apps and gave up. there's a bunch of these apps. how do
| you stand out?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I loathe apps that want a subscription for such a trivial
| concept. Why did you choose this route over ad support or one
| time payment?
| na85 wrote:
| I find ads to be disgusting, and I loathe apps that are ad
| supported. I'm glad the author chose the subscription route.
| par wrote:
| I don't get enough volume for ad support to be meaningful, and
| i didnt want to ruin the experience with ads. Before
| subscriptions, for a long time it was a one time purchase only.
| Then some VC's suggested i experiment with subscriptions, and I
| was very hesitant and semi grossed out. But I decided to give
| it a try, and I was seriously amazed that my conversion was
| barely impacted, and the same people buying one time purchases
| were also willing to purchase subscriptions. From there I did
| price experimentation, and was even more surprised to see the
| results there.
| chippy wrote:
| how did you do the experimentations? some kind of AB testing?
| par wrote:
| I'm embarrassed to say that I never used any formal a/b
| testing tools. I just fully converted to subscriptions, and
| ran it for a few weeks, and compared it to the previous few
| weeks (which were one time purchase.)
| inetknght wrote:
| You don't need A/B testing tools. Most people don't like
| being tested on. Trust your gut, listen to your users,
| and just beware of vocal minorities. It seems like you're
| doing well already.
| robocat wrote:
| > embarrassed
|
| That's a shame because it seems like you did the smart
| and effective solution without wasting your time. A/B
| testing isn't needed if the signal is clear enough
| (!parachute testing!), and it is hard to get enough
| samples for a weak signal. Good on you.
| asddubs wrote:
| I'm surprised as well. I respect the hustle, but I honestly
| don't understand why anyone would debase themselves by paying
| $5 a month to make memes
| code_duck wrote:
| Anyone's perception is $5 is affected by their economic
| class. Globally, there are a significant number of people
| who would view $5 the same way others view .50.
|
| For me, .15 a day is negligible. I can easily imagine
| someone who creates memes for social media choosing to pay
| that, especially if they feel there is value in supporting
| the creator. Memes aren't frivolity any more than other
| content - they're one of the most popular forms of
| communication on the internet.
| liquidise wrote:
| If you think someone's paying customers are "debasing
| themselves", it probably says more about you not being the
| target market than a negative critique of the customers
| themselves.
| oiegha wrote:
| I disagree. Many users are simply whales or people with
| compulsive disorders. Not everyone genuinely "enjoys" the
| model more so than being stuck to it.
|
| Not saying there aren't people who truly like it. There
| are. But not everyone who uses it does.
| gitgud wrote:
| The app provides a service, that some users find valuable
| enough to pay $5 a month to use.
|
| It's really that simple...
| robocat wrote:
| > Many users are simply whales or people with compulsive
| disorders.
|
| Your comment might apply to addictive games, but you are
| being extremely dismissive towards a creative app that
| isn't designed to be a slot machine. Who are you to tell
| others how to spend their time or money?
| par wrote:
| a lot of my users run fairly large instagram pages (50k+
| followers), so for them it's quite worth it I think.
| bostik wrote:
| Ok, that's actually quite an interesting - and remarkably
| specific - customer segment.
|
| If your core customer base pulls in 4 or 5 figures a
| month from their own hustle, they might be willing to pay
| up to $15/month for features tailor-made for their needs.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I don't know either, but I imagine it's the same reason
| they debase themselves by valuing the fake internet points
| the memes earn them.
| zem wrote:
| what would you consider "real" internet points?
| wila wrote:
| hacker news karma points (ducks)
| msrenee wrote:
| Wait, what's the conversion rate of HN karma to ducks? I
| haven't received any ducks at this point. When should I
| start to expect them? I'm fond of mallards and mandarins.
| Do I get a choice?
| wy35 wrote:
| A successful meme page with thousands of followers can
| generate substantial income. "Fake internet points"
| sometimes correlates directly with real cash.
| Freeboots wrote:
| A lot of big ig pages or whatever make decent money, even
| 'theme' pages that dont revolve around an 'influencer'
| personality. This would be a pretty minor business expense
| if its even a little bit useful.
| tyingq wrote:
| Hard to argue when it's making non-trivial revenue. I was
| surprised people would pay a subscription for a meme tool too,
| but...
| par wrote:
| but here we are :)
| exdsq wrote:
| Clearly it's not trivial enough such that hundreds/thousands of
| people are willing to pay for it!
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I loathe apps that want a subscription for such a trivial
| concept. Why did you choose this route over ad support or one
| time payment?_
|
| Not OP but to counterpoint: I loathe apps that want to be
| supported by ads. Give me a one-time payment or a subscription.
| Let me choose if your service if worth paying for. If it's not
| worth paying for then it's also not worth ads. I'll use
| adblockers and use your service without ads anyway or else not
| use it at all.
| ryandrake wrote:
| As a user, my order of preference is:
|
| 1. Non-personalized (non-intrusive) ads
|
| 2. One time payment
|
| 3. Yearly subscription
|
| 4. Ads that mine Bitcoin or otherwise make use of my compute
| resources
|
| 5. Monthly subscription
|
| 6. Personalized, intrusive ads
|
| I will go out of my way to actively avoid 4-6. For 3 it would
| hav to be DAMN good software.
| orangea wrote:
| I know it is a popular opinion, but I never understood
| it... why would you rather have non-personalized ads than
| personalized ads?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Because I know personal ads were made possible by
| obtaining private information about me, whereas non-
| personalized ads likely weren't. I'm not going to
| interact with either of them so I prefer the ones without
| privacy cost.
| handrous wrote:
| They're creepy as fuck. Same reason someone might not
| like being followed around everywhere, even if the person
| following them just writes down stuff about them but
| never does anything else. Spying ads are like that, but
| worse: it's like that person also occasionally runs in
| front of you to slap an ad-bearing sticker on some
| surface you're about to encounter, based on stuff they've
| written down.
|
| Spyvertising is that, but at an industrial scale. If
| one's creepy and ought to warrant intervention by law
| enforcement, the other's much, much worse.
| chucksta wrote:
| I don't trust whatever company is holding their
| informational profile of me to hold it securely. Or what
| the extent of the information they've gathered can
| indicate, no one is going to stop at "just enough"
| orangea wrote:
| Honest question, why do you care if it isn't secure? What
| would be the downside of one's internet activity being
| public?
| inetknght wrote:
| > _What would be the downside of one 's internet activity
| being public?_
|
| Are you for real?
|
| Want to know what your employer has you working on? Let's
| see what searches you've done.
|
| Want to know what your employees are doing? Let's see
| what things they're buying.
|
| Fuck that obnoxious bullshit.
| orangea wrote:
| Yes I am for real and I genuinely don't see why either of
| those things are bad.
| inetknght wrote:
| Well your employer probably doesn't want you to leak work
| to competitors.
|
| You probably don't want your employer to know that you
| have cancer, are hiding a fling, and could soon have
| family problems requiring you to take a leave of absence.
| orangea wrote:
| Personally I'm not convinced by those arguments, because
|
| - I think it should be my right to share the details of
| my work with anyone.
|
| - It's already illegal to discriminate against people
| because they have cancer, and I don't think that
| imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going
| to significantly affect anyone's chances of this
| happening to them.
|
| - If someone does something and faces consequences for
| it, I don't think that's a bad thing.
|
| Honestly seeing people's responses here and elsewhere on
| the internet is kind of a Kafkaesque experience for me
| because everyone seems so convinced that internet privacy
| is valuable yet no one seems to actually have thought
| through their position (no offense to you personally). I
| guess I can only conclude that my base values differ in
| this area.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I think it should be my right to share the details of
| my work with anyone._
|
| I agree! So why are you letting third parties get that
| information without you having any ability to provide or
| decline consent?
|
| > _It 's already illegal to discriminate against people
| because they have cancer, and I don't think that
| imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going
| to significantly affect anyone's chances of this
| happening to them._
|
| You think people don't do things that are illegal?
|
| > _no one seems to actually have thought through their
| position_
|
| Can you explain that better?
|
| > _I guess I can only conclude that my base values differ
| in this area._
|
| I think that much is clear.
| semanticsbitch wrote:
| It's like saying, "I guess my base beliefs (or whatever
| bullshit you said) makes me believe that you are cunt. I
| don't know how else to say it."
|
| Yeah what a shit argument and a failure to society you
| are
| esquivalience wrote:
| - your work is not yours if done for others. It is
| theirs. You get the paycheck in return.
|
| - it is also illegal to steal from homes. Do you lock
| your front door?
| pacifika wrote:
| When you search for information on a medical issue for a
| friend and your life insurance premiums go up.
|
| That's hypothetical but big publishers already make
| financial calculations about your profile based on your
| page visits. So the rest is extrapolation.
|
| We have no control over the correctness of information
| and no way to correct it.
| kaybe wrote:
| I am deeply annoyed by ads with bad context fit. When I
| read about something I don't want my attention to be
| hijacked to other topics.
|
| E.g. when I look at code I don't want ads for photography
| equipment, but ads for coding courses or books may be
| juuust acceptable. It also has the nice benefit of not
| needing personalization, so the sibling comments' points
| are also included.
| mishafb wrote:
| 1. You charge what people are willing to pay, not how much your
| product is worth.
|
| 2. When it's a subscription as a customer you have more trust
| that it will continue working. When it's a one time purchase,
| who knows how long it will last.
| xaedes wrote:
| > When it's a subscription as a customer you have more trust
| that it will continue working. When it's a one time purchase,
| who knows how long it will last.
|
| Funny, for me this is the total opposite: subscription
| software may end any time and then you got nothing. One time
| purchased software you can just continue to use. Well, I
| guess in the games of rent-seeking, cloud-only, security and
| updates the viability of this is fading...
| WA wrote:
| It depends on the software. Is it an isolated thing? Then
| yes, you can continue to use it. But apps that read from
| APIs or scrape data are one version away from not
| functioning at all. Hence, regular updates. Hence,
| subscriptions to justify the ongoing modifications.
| cftm wrote:
| Total tangent, I used to have the Office 365 subscription
| but canceled it, yet I can still use word/excel - I've just
| lost access to the cloud features which I wasn't using to
| begin with - I would have thought they'd disable my version
| of word/excel but when I canceled it did not happen.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 1. You charge what people are willing to pay, not how much
| your product is worth.
|
| What's the difference?
| yupper32 wrote:
| Probably better phrased as:
|
| You charge what people are willing to pay, not how much you
| _think_ your product is worth.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Or maybe:
|
| Your product is worth what people are willing to pay.
| FunHearing3443 wrote:
| True, with #1 this is pedantic but it could be restated as
| the worth of your product is what people are willing to pay.
| granshaw wrote:
| What do you think? To make more money of course, which is the
| whole point of businesses.
| bob229 wrote:
| Are you a communist or something?!
| 58x14 wrote:
| Forgive me, but if the market responds to OP's subscription
| model (and $4k/mo is not trivial), no ads is a better user
| experience and there is less dependency on the ad network for
| revenue.
|
| It's typically much harder to acquire new users than retain
| current users = subscription model allows you to monetize your
| userbase over a broader period of time (let's say $5/mo * 6 mo
| = $30) to a value that would likely be cost-prohibitive. Most
| users would not spend $30 for this app. But they might sign up
| for a free trial, and then the $5 subscription.
| csilverman wrote:
| That's the thing--I'd consider a limited version of a one-
| time $5 app, and very likely pay $30--once--to remove the
| limitations if I found the app useful. But when I see an app
| demanding subscriptions, I wouldn't even try the free
| version. I'd never consider anything that didn't offer a one-
| time payment.
| angryasian wrote:
| the one time payment for a multi year support of software
| doesn't grow businesses. We just don't see the business of
| releasing a new version of the same software every two years
| with some new features and minor refresh, though it still
| done. It might support a small dev, but you need recurring
| revenue and subscriptions and ways to increase the ARPU to
| grow a real business.
| par wrote:
| Yes agreed. I used to have a one time purchase, but then I
| kept improving the app, adding more complex features, and
| the old price didn't reflect all the new work I had put in.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Since you're essentially mostly repackaging content other people
| have created, what's your approach to copyright and royalties? Or
| is the plan to simply hope you never get a DMCA notice or the
| like?
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| For some time I wanted to make browser-based utils/time wasters
| in the same vein (think Photopea but simpler, or .io games) - to
| generate some passive income, even if it'd be $100 a month or so.
| Has anybody succeeded in that and can share what was key to
| achieve income? I mean, most savvy people have ad blockers these
| days.
| par wrote:
| Personally I think app would be the way to go, and charge some
| in app fee or subscription. I don't think anyone would pay for
| browser apps, and you would require massive volume to be ad
| supported.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I guess the adblock usage percentage for mobile is much lower
| due to the hassle required :)
| sosodev wrote:
| I made a web game that has been played by around a hundred
| thousand people so far and net a few hundred dollars. Now that
| the idea is validated I'm releasing a huge update soon that
| will tie in with a Patreon page and I expect it to earn some
| decent monthly revenue.
| 0xbkt wrote:
| Have a client from Turkey who is basically running all Agar.io
| clones today (600+ online players) in the Web. Google ranks him
| 1st in search results (even higher than the original Agar.io
| itself) for multiple competitive keywords, and he makes around
| EUR3-4k every month from ads. Target audience is mostly kids,
| who are looking for unblocked alternatives of their favorite
| browser games at school.
|
| He keeps saying SEO is everything, and won't drop the tiniest
| hint about how he's achieving to top Google results.
| afwefeawafe wrote:
| Go here. https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker Search for his
| site: agario.tube (probably this) It lists backlinks. Example
| backlink is from bostonchildrensmuseum.org
|
| Go to google. Search "agario site:bostonchildrensmuseum.org"
|
| Takes you here:
| https://www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org/exhibits-
| programs/exhi...
|
| Look at the html source: <marquee style="width: 0px;
| position: absolute"><a href="https://agarr.live/"
| title="agario">agario</a> - <a href="https://slither-2.io/"
| title="slitherio unblocked">slitherio unblocked</a> - <a
| href="https://diepio-2.com/" title="diep.io
| unblocked">diep.io unblocked</a> - <a
| href="https://agario.tube" title="agario unblocked">agario
| unblocked</a> - <a href="https://yohoho-io.live/"
| title="yohoho unblocked">yohoho unblocked</a> - <a
| href="https://yohoho.gold/" title="yohoho">yohoho</a>
| </marquee>
|
| tldr: he is hacking sites or paying someone to hack sites.
| likely exploiting wordpress vulnerabilities to insert hidden
| backlinks into thousands of websites.
| gldev3 wrote:
| I enjoy seeing posts like these, good for you pal. Is it hard to
| maintain? Is this just side income?
|
| :)
| par wrote:
| Thank you! It doesn't take a lot of maintenance, mostly side
| income at this point. But I have put in a LOT of hours on it
| over the years. I will work on it in bursts, and take a few
| weeks and work on it 3-5 hours a day, and then not work on it
| at all for a while. I do need to keep the image library fresh,
| but that is pretty easy. To be honest, if I worked a bit more
| on it, I think it could do a lot better.
| giarc wrote:
| At $4k per month, you could sell it for quite a bit of money.
| Multiples on apps are pretty high right now.
| yreg wrote:
| Thank you for all the info you shared in this thread, it is
| interesting.
| lxe wrote:
| Awesome work, Par! Nice to see this on HN.
| [deleted]
| par wrote:
| thanks buddy :)
| dburenok11 wrote:
| This is very cool and inspiring! Would you mind sharing how you
| implemented the object tracking feature? It seems very complex,
| I've seen it on big apps like Snapchat or Instagram but you made
| it all on your own. Would love to know how!
| gramakri wrote:
| I am seeing "Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue" in
| firefox.
|
| Here's a screenshot - https://imgur.com/a/SzVS75Q
|
| Same in chrome. The cert is wrong, it has the cert of
| "search.dnsadvantage.com"
| par wrote:
| Hmm, i just installed a new SSL certificate today, but it seems
| to be installed correctly. Can you try some kind of refresh or
| a different browser?
|
| edit: oh, please try https://metameme.app
|
| edit: the cert should be sectigo https://imgur.com/a/jb91a0z
| gramakri wrote:
| Heh, seems to be something with the wifi because it works
| fine with android+mobile network. Suspicious! Looks like a
| misconfigured dns server in the coffee shop. Sorry for the
| false call .
| par wrote:
| no no, it's not false! My friend on at&t has also noticed
| some really weird dns or server configuration issues with
| my server. It's a digital ocean cloud instance. I need to
| get to the bottom of it.
| [deleted]
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Nice work! Living the true freedom dream, love to see it
| opencl wrote:
| The Android version seems abandoned, it hasn't been updated in
| several years and there are several reviews complaining that paid
| features no longer work. Are there any plans to update it?
| par wrote:
| I do personally apologize for this. The android app was built
| by a very close friend of mine as a favor/side project back in
| the early days, and you are correct, it has been abandoned :(
| The plan is to just take it down. I need to contact him but
| don't want to offend him! Let that be a lesson of going into
| business with friends!
| imnotreallynew wrote:
| You're making a healthy revenue, any reason you don't want to
| just contract out a few updates? I work full time but I've
| also run a small contracting business for years, happy to do
| it at a reasonable cost.
| par wrote:
| I have considered this, I don't see anywhere near the same
| purchase conversion on android that I do on iOS. But that
| could also be due to build quality. Do you have any insight
| on how successful pay models are on android apps?
| handrous wrote:
| This is the norm on Android, and means you have to have
| huge scale before it's worth releasing a paid or
| subscription app on Android, which might be viable at
| much smaller scale on iOS. It's part of why Android's
| ecosystem has so much prominent adware. Common wisdom
| (backed up by data) in the industry is that, generally
| speaking, your "conversion rate" for paid or subscription
| apps on Android will be a tiny sliver of what it is on
| iOS, unless your app is very unusual.
|
| There are a bunch of factors that probably cause this,
| but they're all mixed up and intertwined so it's hard to
| point at one and go "that's it, that's the reason".
| Selection bias of the user base (think: socio-economic
| status, and maybe even average technical know-how or
| comfort with software); iOS users use their devices _way_
| more than Android users, for all purposes (but, is that
| because of the previous thing? Maybe); it could have
| something to do with the ecosystems the two app stores
| have cultivated, causing different levels of trust among
| the two user bases when it comes time to spend money; it
| could have something to do with the quality of the
| experience of using the respective operating systems
| themselves.
|
| Probably all of those contribute _some amount_. It 's
| hard to say, though.
| [deleted]
| tjbiddle wrote:
| Mate - you're making $4k/mo. Budget some Operating
| Expenditures! Check into "Profit First" to ensure you're
| handling your business finances in a proper manner. A
| healthy allocation of OpEx is 30% of your revenue at your
| size. Start saving $1200/mo for all OpEx, and use some of
| that to build your Android app. It'll pay dividends!
| 58x14 wrote:
| This is pretty standard - most Apple ecosystem users tend
| to be somewhere between 2-3x more measurably valuable,
| whether App store v Play store revenue [1] or as audience
| segments in advertising _.
|
| You may consider a relationship with another developer
| where they maintain the Android distro in exchange for
| some significant percentage of revenue.
|
| 1 - https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-
| downloads-1h-20... _ - source needed, but speaking from
| experience at scale
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Curious if you've thought about getting anyone else to take a
| look at the Android side of things. Seems a shame to just let
| a working project fizzle for Android.
|
| Do you have a repo or something for the Android app that
| curious people could look at?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cushychicken wrote:
| Man, that's really cool.
|
| I love memes. I've always wanted to do some kind of a browser
| based meme maker I could either monetize with ads or a nominal
| ($10/yr) payment to remove ads.
| par wrote:
| I think Kapwing has dominated the browser market as of
| recently, but before that imgflip was always my go to.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Slightly OT: Other than mobile apps and web sites what are some
| other ways for devs to make beer money?
| jslpc wrote:
| Piggybacking off of this to come back to it later. I'm also
| looking for some side project to start that'll encourage me to
| learn more about programming while I'm still in school for CS.
|
| I've launched some hobby projects online in the past but none
| of which are monetized in any way, and almost all of them ended
| up costing money to run or still continue to do so. I'd love to
| build something for practice (to start out), with the intent of
| it eventually being good enough of a service for others to use
| too. I'm just blank on ideas at the moment.
| samename wrote:
| $4k/month is beer money? I must be doing something wrong
| njsubedi wrote:
| Depends on where you live. In some cities in Europe, after
| paying taxes and living expenses you might have money left
| only for a couple of beers a day. In the developing parts of
| the world, $4k a month is 10x the average developer's salary.
| But if that's a passive income I don't see a need to live in
| an expensive city so your comment makes sense.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| That's about 10 Mass (Oktoberfest beers) per day. Sounds
| reasonable.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| No. I did not mean at all to imply that.
| atum47 wrote:
| Memes are a good source of income now a days, just look at Elon
| Musk.
|
| Jokes apart, great to see a fun project like this giving profit.
| Well done.
| par wrote:
| thanks! memes can pay off apparently :)
| appguy wrote:
| Did you change the original paid app to the free/subscription
| model? How did the original users who paid for the app react to
| this? Considering to change one of my apps to a subscription
| model, but unsure if this is the best approach.
| csilverman wrote:
| When apps I use switch to subscriptions, I stop using them and
| switch to ones that don't. When I'm considering an app and I
| see that they're demanding regular payments, that app is out of
| consideration. (I've also convinced my friends and employer to
| avoid subware as well; people often back away from it once they
| do the math and realize how expensive it really is.)
|
| I have no problem paying $50--or even $100--for good software,
| once. Thousands of dollars over the course of years is simply
| not reasonable.
| zfxfr wrote:
| It looks like the Android version is not accessible or the link
| contains a mistake. Or you removed it from Google play store ? If
| so why ?
| par wrote:
| seems like it was just taken down by my friend... the android
| version is woefully out of date. Sorry about that. I am
| removing the links now.
| calltrak wrote:
| looks good. Would be nice to see a feature to share your image on
| our image sharing site https://picc.io
| laangregor wrote:
| Well Done! Really appreciate you sharing your experience.
| santa_boy wrote:
| Where do most of your customers come from? Any typical profiles?
|
| Quite impressive that you could do this with a meme creator!
| par wrote:
| Thank you! The early users came from me buying instagram ads,
| and recent users are primarily from App Store ads. Amazingly
| there is some organic traffic as well. I spent a lot of time
| trying to improve my app store ranking, and that makes a HUGE
| difference for getting new customers. If you can rank in the
| top 3 for a couple of important keywords, you can do really
| well.
| joenr wrote:
| What did you do to reach so many users? How did you grow it?
| par wrote:
| I have been building the app for many years now. In the
| beginning I spent money mostly on instagram and facebook ads. I
| had pretty decent results on this, and could get installs for
| around 20-30 cents. However, those users also trashed my app in
| comments and didn't convert to paying users. Later I moved to
| App Store ads, it costs a bit more for the downloads, but the
| users convert much better. I am starting to think of going back
| and giving IG ads a shot though.
|
| Edit: forgot to mention, I also spent quite a bit of time
| improving app store ranking, which contributes significantly to
| getting more downloads and customers.
| tommymachine wrote:
| what did you use to do the ASO?
| par wrote:
| I used the free version of App Annie, and did a bunch of
| experimentation on the title, subtitle and keywords that I
| entered into the app store.
| kebsup wrote:
| Good job! I've created gif meme creator and so far I've only
| received one 5 USD donation. :D https://gifmemes.io
| bcherny wrote:
| This is neat! Is it open source? Or, do you have a write up
| about the algorithm somewhere?
| kebsup wrote:
| You can download my bachelor's thesis here:
| https://dspace.cvut.cz/handle/10467/92780 (it's the "plny
| text" link)
| tomrod wrote:
| https://gfycat.com/WellwornHalfHake
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Wow that is amazing...how can I donate? I've wanted an easy way
| to make animated memes for a while...
| aazaa wrote:
| > The total cost of this tool is: 60$ (yearly, domain) +
| 60$(yearly, hosting) + more than 150 hours of programming
| (which would be about 4000$ from where I live). Revenue is non-
| existent. I've decided to leave the site ad-free because ads
| suck but now it's only eating money so please donate. My
| current plan on getting a payout is getting Elon Musk to use it
| and hoping he will buy me a Tesla.
|
| That is a seriously good result for 150 hours give or take. I
| wonder if Elon peruses HN...
| cookingrobot wrote:
| Looks neat. FYI the templates search isn't working.
|
| I'd love to browse for more examples.
| steelbrain wrote:
| I went to your website and pressed space. It broke :P
|
| > An unexpected error has occurred.
| jaeh wrote:
| this.props.player.decodedFrames is undefined
|
| guess they play/pause functionality does not check if there
| is something to play/pause.
|
| @steelbrain: should be quite easy to fix.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| That looks amazing. Did you have fun building it? What's your
| tech stack?
| Mossly wrote:
| Would you be open to adding .webm or perhaps even .mp4 support
| with a filesize limit? In my opinion .gif has rapidly become a
| legacy format.
| egfx wrote:
| Your opinion is misconstrued.
| bluecatswim wrote:
| How? Of course asking OP to add features for a site he
| offers for free is wrong, but I don't think he's wrong
| about gif. As far as I know all the "gif" sharing sites
| like giphy and stickers in chat apps like discord, etc
| actually use webms/webps.
| Mossly wrote:
| Twitter for instance automatically converts gif to h264.
|
| However there is a point to be made that iOS only grants
| VP9 decoding to Youtube, certain colourspaces fail to
| decode on Android etc. ergo gif is a safe default.
| kebsup wrote:
| I've tried pretty hard to get it to work with ffmpeg and
| mediaRecorder, but both of these options are quite limited at
| the moment and the results just weren't good enough. Other
| option would be to go server-side which I don't want to do.
| Mossly wrote:
| I was unaware the rendering could and was being done
| client-side! Given the limitations I can see why gif would
| indeed be suitable format. You've tooled a compelling
| amount of functionality into something very lightweight and
| convenient, and that's a more than acceptable tradeoff.
| maximum_stress wrote:
| You're also missing an obvious donation link. Might want to
| link to Patreon, Paypal, a *coin address. Something.
| didibus wrote:
| Well, you offer it for free, but also you don't target mobile?
| Maybe that's the difference?
| zem wrote:
| that's seriously impressive!
| lpa22 wrote:
| This is incredible work
| mimifriends wrote:
| Neat. I have a real business problem to solve using very
| similar techniques if you are interested to discuss. Not memes
| specifically, but with the image and text mix.
| catears wrote:
| That tool is great! Sent you some teslas (or coffe) and
| commemorating it with this silly meme I made:
| https://gfycat.com/DampDesertedAfricanhornbill
| CiPHPerCoder wrote:
| How do we pay for this?
| kebsup wrote:
| A donate button shows up after you export a gif.
| ezconnect wrote:
| You should have a donate button on the front page.
| jwithington wrote:
| template search isn't working. did you exceed your search api's
| limit lol
| kebsup wrote:
| yep, I needed to upgrade firebase.
| par wrote:
| get on the blaze plan :D
| im3w1l wrote:
| It looks nice, but some people might be instantly turned off by
| the new meme dialog.
|
| I was pretty tired so I didn't read everything that carefully,
| and just pressed the "upload gif" button expecting file picker,
| but instead I got an error message that the upload failed. I
| actually thought your webpage was broken.
|
| Only when I when back and read everything carefully did I
| realize what had happened. Two and a half suggestions: In my
| mind upload means its transferred from my device, so consider
| changing the text to "fetch" or something. Handle empty url as
| a special case. Like maybe just highlight the url box in a red
| border or something. And finally the half suggestion: measure
| whether uploading (my guess, but idk) or fetching is the more
| common usecase, and emphasize that one visually.
| khazhoux wrote:
| How do I donate? I'll double your year-to-date earn!
| kebsup wrote:
| The donate button shows up only after gif export. It did not
| want to clutter the ui.
| behnamoh wrote:
| You're one good conscientious developer.
| atum47 wrote:
| this looks super cool. I'm working (from time to time) in a web
| flash app, that could be used to this kind of meme creation.
|
| How do you do the tracking? Is it blob tracking or do you use
| something more sofisticated?
|
| this is how my web flash app is coming along:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6...
| atum47 wrote:
| I'm also interested in the GIF export. Right now I'm only
| exporting videos using canvas record stream, but I'm thinking
| about using ffmpeg.js to support different formats including
| animated gifs
| kebsup wrote:
| I've tried using ffmpeg but the browser support just isn't
| very good yet, so I'm using
| https://github.com/deanm/omggif.
| kebsup wrote:
| The tracking is basically a greedy search of the least sum of
| square differences of pixels in anchor, so even simpler than
| that.
| par wrote:
| Uhhh, WOW! This is actually really well done. I love the labels
| anchored to the objects in the image. That is so crucial. And
| the frame editor, the label position editor, I mean this is
| seriously well done. I think it might be a bit too powerful for
| average users though.
| kebsup wrote:
| It was my bachelor's thesis project, so I just kept adding
| features. There is a simplified version on mobile, in which
| you just choose a template and change texts.
| bernardv wrote:
| Great job, especially the UI, which is clean and simple. I like
| the Tools section of your thesis - not being up-to-speed on web
| dev, I understood the which? and why? of your tech stack in
| under 5 minutes.
| retox wrote:
| spam
| DantesKite wrote:
| Way to go man.
| par wrote:
| thank you!
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Good job, may I ask , what was your marketing strategy? Did you
| engage a lead generation company, SEO? How did you gain
| visibility in the virtual shops? Used social media for promotion?
| Pricing structure?
|
| If those questions are too profound, feel free to not address
| them, but either way, this is impressive for a solo Indy dev.
|
| And what is the tech stack? Do you listen to users feature
| requests and bug reports?
|
| I have a project in mind myself and all the above questions I
| wouldn't know how to handle.
| user5994461 wrote:
| Definitely SEO and low content spam.
|
| Look at the tabs on the website, a page to Win $100, a blog
| that's low content meme spam written by third party authors.
| https://metameme.app/blog/
|
| Ideally he should be cross posting these across reddit, insta,
| tiktok and whatever people use these days to drive traffic.
| par wrote:
| I have not engaged in any outside marketing consultancy, lead
| gen or SEO. I have done some stuff myself, written blog posts
| and tried my hand at basic marketing tasks, but honestly i
| don't have much time for it. For gaining visibility, i mostly
| rely on app store optimization or paid ads.
|
| Tech stack is swift, and python on the backend. I do listen to
| user requests and bugs, in fact I get tons of great feedback
| from my users with how quickly i respond to their issues,
| usually resolving issues within an hour, all on my own. It
| takes up a decent chunk of time, but I do care a lot about the
| customers, so that makes it worth it.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Working on something for hackers who hate marketing: wax.run
|
| Basically outsourced growth
| thenberlin wrote:
| As a hacker who hates marketing: What is this exactly?
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Wax helps you systematically find and implement strategies
| that grow your company. The system is based on the book
| Traction[0] by Gabriel Weinberg (founder & CEO of
| DuckDuckGo) and Justin Mares (founder of Kettle & Fire and
| Perfect Keto). Wax guides you thru process of testing
| growth channels to find what works for your company. We
| also offer a "done for you service" where a contractor will
| execute the the strategies for you.
|
| 0 - https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-
| Explosive-Cu...
| fzil wrote:
| So I signed up on your website, and the confirmation
| email it sent me doesn't work. The link goes to
| localhost:8080.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| fixed! please try again.
| phalangion wrote:
| Well, they did say it was for hackers.
| smnplk wrote:
| yep, you need to gain access to his LAN first
| mritchie712 wrote:
| fixed! please try again.
| PinkPigeon wrote:
| Tried signing up, but (presumably) your configuration is
| pointing the signup link in the email at your local Dev
| environment...
|
| I tried replacing localhost with wax.run, but it didn't do
| anything.
|
| Lastly, considering you are all about marketing and growth,
| you'll need a landing page that demonstrates this. As in,
| your landing page needs to be better than most landing pages.
| While I'm all about minimalism, I found it quite jarring to
| just land on a page with a half moon on it, which doesn't
| really do anything.
|
| Some words about who you are would go a long way. There is a
| "team" link in the navigation and that also doesn't go
| anywhere (without a login presumably)
|
| Just some pointers. Pm me when we can sign up, because if you
| are the people who solve marketing for me, that would easily
| be the biggest revolution in my entrepreneurial journey. I
| hate marketing so much.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I clearly made this comment
| prematurely, but the interest pushed to get a reasonable
| landing page in place and implement the login in
| production. Let me know what you think of the extended
| pitch (click "what is this"): https://www.wax.run/
|
| Can you send me a note mike@wax.run ? Would like to stay in
| touch as we get closer to launching.
| Lapsa wrote:
| Meaning of word meme got raped.
| lurn_mor wrote:
| Whom do you license the Original Content from? Or do you steal it
| without recompensation?
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Parody/satire is generally fair use.
| trolololooo wrote:
| I wonder if that protects the person who makes the parody,
| rather than the app developer who make $4K a month. Lawyers
| will not typically go after targets that don't have money for
| payouts.
| hnick wrote:
| Only if you are parodying the content used.
|
| If you use copyrighted content to parody something else, you
| aren't protected. Penny Arcade had to pull a comic back in
| the day when they misunderstood this.
| langitbiru wrote:
| I mean Elon Musk steals memes all the time.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/style/elon-musk-memes.htm...
|
| Technically speaking, building a meme platform that takes
| recompensation into account is an interesting problem.
|
| https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1370373708506750977?lang=...
| par wrote:
| I've always been concerned about this, but there are so many
| meme creation tools out there that don't seem to be impacted by
| this problem.
| giarc wrote:
| I'd say just be ready to take down an image if someone
| approaches you and you should be fine.
| holoduke wrote:
| You cannot be a business without being a bit of a pirate in the
| beginning.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I am really envious of people living in countries that have fair
| use. In the EU somebody would sue you because of copyright
| infringement.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Nope.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47708144
| luckylion wrote:
| That's about platforms where memes are posted to though, not
| a meme generator that creates templates (i.e. other people's
| pictures etc) for you to post and takes money specifically
| for providing that service.
| par wrote:
| I've always worried about copyright infringement as well.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I love the promotional messaging. :D
|
| "Your Instagram page will gain tons of followers. You will be
| famous on Twitter."
| par wrote:
| thanks, writing copy is not my strong suit, and this was after
| many iterations.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| actually it's quite to the point, no fuss, clear value
| proposition.
| smhenderson wrote:
| And it comes across as just whimsically sarcastic enough to
| fit in with the overall subject really well.
|
| If that wasn't intentional, even better!
| gitgud wrote:
| I was expecting to see cringy meme jargon trying to sell the
| tool. But your copy is very pleasant and funny, good job!
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