This isn't for-profit. It's actually not even technically a startup. I'm paying for the servers out of my own pocket. We've got a big pipe and lots of storage, so we'll last a while.
Ideally, we'll eventually be in a position to run ads internally instead of relying on adsense, and then we can hopefully make a little better money off of that. We also get a surprising number of donations [1] that help keep us going.
By the way, does anyone know anything about marketing? That's one thing we aren't good at. We've gotten very little press coverage. We tell people "if you like it, tell your friends" and that's gotten us this far.
I'm no expert, but here are my two cents:
1> Spread the word manually on HN, 4chan and the like
2> Add basic social media presence (twitter, FB ..). This will let you communicate with your fans/early adopters, and let them talk to you too.
3> When the audience in #2 is big enough, launch on kickstarter et al.
4> IF you have a successful kickstarter campaign, the media will cover you, given the big pain points you solve
What I do not know is how you will sustain when you get BIG. The "donate" method works well for someone like Wikipedia, BUT your traffic/costs are generally higher given that most of it pertains to media, as against text for wikipedia
Regarding 2, we have @mediacru_sh [1] and a subreddit [2]. Not many folk follow that, though. We have a problem with Facebook, though. Considering that all the devs are very pro-privacy [3], none of us have one!
As for Kickstarter, I'm not sure what we'd be raising money for or giving to contributors as a thank you. We are pretty featureful as it stands now, and I'm very against the idea of making people pay for certain features.
Love the idea. Potentially you could fund via a paid tier for business/enterprise use?
Rather than offering more features, you could have some sort of guarantee of length of hosting ie. Pay $299 a year and get x storage for x years? (Choosing suitably generous figures)
Then update your disclaimer on the about page to be free forever for personal use?
I don't know, but personally, this would be brilliant for the business I work at, but we could never use it for fear of hosting being unavailable if you go out of "business". I actually think you're doing a disservice to many organisations out there for not offering that — with the handy upside of having secured incoming funds.
If you're worried about it going away, you can always run your own instance! It is open-source, and the instructions are pretty straightforward if you have a look through the readme. You can always donate [1] to help ensure continued development. Even if it does go under, too, we'll keep the GitHub up and maintain it in our spare time, since we love the project and use it so much for our own needs.
You do have a good point, though. I don't want to force businesses to pay for hosting with us, but I am open to considering other means of monetization. Maybe we could set up and host private instances for people, plus support, for a fee?
Great points. Certainly aware of the open source nature, and ability to clone and run an instance, but for some organisations that's not really an option — they need a turnkey solution that has a somewhat inelastic dollar value and the ability to outsource all of the administration rather bringing another project in-house. That or they don't even have the technical human capital to support even rudimentary development work (there are TONS of Small to Medium Enterprise that would fit this bill).
I think your idea of private instances might be something worth exploring. It allows you to stick to your word, and the essence of the product while still finding another way to monetise.
Of course, if none of that seems interesting and you'd rather leave that problem for someone else to address than that's totally fine too. I only suggest it to you as you're already looking at the solution from a technical standpoint, and validated the need (based on traffic and use), indicating there is a market there to be serviced.
Ideally, we'll eventually be in a position to run ads internally instead of relying on adsense, and then we can hopefully make a little better money off of that. We also get a surprising number of donations [1] that help keep us going.
By the way, does anyone know anything about marketing? That's one thing we aren't good at. We've gotten very little press coverage. We tell people "if you like it, tell your friends" and that's gotten us this far.
[1] https://mediacru.sh/donate