business

The history of Page.ly

I came across an excellent “behind the curtains” series of blog posts, telling the fascinating story of the Page.ly project. Page.ly is a user-friendly WordPress hosting, providing hassle-free setup and configuration of WordPress websites. I haven’t used the service myself – being a fan of WordPress I do enjoy diving into the code and learning the details – but I’ve heard a few good words about it.

For me personally, the interest in this story is not only in technology, but also in the ways of thinking. Running a profit-oriented company (and a small start-up at that) on and around Open Source Software is guaranteed to provide a number of challenges – from competition and marketing to community managing. And even though there are many companies that do business around Open Source Software, an insight into ways of thinking, the system of values, and into specific challenges is rare. Building Page.ly series has plenty.

In 2010 we saw the arrival of a handful of what most would refer to as competitors, it was inevitable. We did the hard part proving the space had legs and there was revenue to be made. And no good idea goes un-copied for long. We were also starting to make a name for ourselves in the WordPress community and that helped quite a bit to get the word out.

A couple interesting points regarding these new arrivals. At SXSW in 2010 I went to the WordPress BBQ at a co-working space in Austin where I handed out a few shirts and were talking to folks about what Page.ly was. One fellow I distinctly remember talking to must have really been listening, a few months later he was a co-founder of a competing company. Around the time this company was launching their other co-founder solicited us about using our technology to power their new offering rather than ‘re-inventing’ the wheel. I was amicable to the idea (fits squarely with our collaboration over competition philosophy) and agreed to a phone conversation which never took place. They decided to roll their own and off they went.

One of the other new players was not happy merely re-factoring our idea, but went so far as to be heavily ‘inspired’ by our marketing to the point I had to have a private conversation with them about the overt similarities between our website copy.

At the end of the day, we did not then and we still do not see any of these chaps as competitors at all. We work from a mindset that with 30+ million WordPress powered sites out there the space is deep enough to support 5-10 page.ly’s and we rather pull clients over from the econo-hosts like bluehost, mt, and godaddy.

Inspirational and insightful, to say the least. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

Why Do All Movie Tickets Cost the Same?

This Slashdot thread raises an interesting question:

Like tens of millions of Americans, I have paid money to see Mission: Impossible, which made $130 million in the last two weeks, and I have not paid any money to see Young Adult, which has made less than $10 million over the same span. Nobody is surprised or impressed by the discrepancy. The real question is: If demand is supposed to move prices, why isn’t seeing Young Adult much cheaper than seeing Mission: Impossible?

For those of us not too versed in economics, the question does sound reasonable. I am not too good with demand and supply nuances, but I do know that the costs for the movie theater are pretty much the same no matter how many people show up for the show. This comment confirms that and also touches on the economics bit of the question:

If demand is supposed to move prices…

What a bad place to start your argument. In classical economics, demand shifts affect pricing if supply is a factor. When it comes to movie distribution, supply usually isn’t an issue.

Also, profits of Mission Impossible to to cover the losses of the gamble on Young Adult. Essentially, movie ticket prices are aggregated and normalized across movies to mitigate risk. Do you really want to spend $40/ticket on Mission Impossible so that Young Adult would cost only $3?

The actually hard-costs to the theaters (staff, electricity, rent, etc.) is pretty much the same regardless if 5 people are in the theater or 500, and is relatively minor in their overall operations. They pay back to the studios based on how many watchers they have, which where most of their expenses actually lie. They have to pay back the same amount to the studios regardless how how many tickets they sell, so why would they implement variable pricing?

On hiring

I thought it was my idea, but apparently not. This Slashdot comment says it was Rockefeller’s.

This is exactly how Rockefeller was thinking: when you come across talent, you hire, then you adapt your business based on the people available. Even if in the short term it does not fit in an existing MS-Project plan, over the years you build a strong core and the team is driving the business, not the other way around. And if people walk away to get more experience, you keep the door open so you can benefit from what they did elsewhere.

I said it a few times though – if you are lucky enough to come across someone awesome – hire him (or her) straight away. Even if you don’t know at that moment how you will use the person. You will figure it out later. In the best case scenario you won’t even have to – really cool people usually know how to occupy themselves and how to improve your business. In the worst case scenario, you can always fire them. Firing is much simpler of a process than hiring.

Open Source or not?

Slashdot has an interesting discussion on whether or not a small start-up company has to Open Source their code or not. From one of the comments I followed a link to an excellent blog post by Tom Preston-Werner, one of the co-founders of GitHub.

Lastly, it’s the right thing to do. It’s almost impossible to do anything these days without directly or indirectly executing huge amounts of open source code. If you use the internet, you’re using open source. That code represents millions of man-hours of time that has been spent and then given away so that everyone may benefit. We all enjoy the benefits of open source software, and I believe we are all morally obligated to give back to that community. If software is an ocean, then open source is the rising tide that raises all ships.

In a nutshell he basically says that you should Open Source everything, except things that are at the core of your business value. His arguments are insightful and I suggest you read the whole thing.

Interestingly, this reminds me of a few discussions I had on outsourcing. And I was saying is that a company should outsource as much as possible, except for things which are at their core business value. As in, IT company should outsource accounting and legal, not IT, while accounting companies should outsource IT and legal, not accounting. And so forth.

That leads me to think that Open Source community is a huge outsourcing resource. Something that I’ve known for a long time, but now arrived to through a totally different route.

Monetizing the blog with paid links

Long-time readers of this blog know that once in a while I attempt to monetize this blog. I haven’t built this site to earn me money, but, on the other hand, I’ve spent thousands of hours on building, updating, maintaining, designing, and programming this over the years. It’s nice to get some money out of it once in a while.

So far, I’ve tried the following:

Google AdSense. Which is still here and which I tweak from time to time. This is the easiest way to cover my hosting fees. However it does just about that.
Banner ads. This is are much more profitable, but it’s hard to find advertisers and the whole thing with following up on payments, banner placements, statistics, etc is just too much overhead for me.
Consulting. As well as other side services. The money are good, but there is no constant stream of work. And anyway it is somewhat disconnected from the site itself. The blog is merely a point of contact, nothing more.
Donations. These are still here, but they don’t work too well either. I’ve received only a couple of those.

Today (or, in fact, yesterday), I decided to try something else. Every week I am bombarded with the offers to place a text link relevant to the content into one of my older posts. I’ve never thought about it seriously before. But something changed recently. Maybe the offers went up, maybe the links got better. Doesn’t matter. I decided to give it a try.

Of course, this being my personal website, carrying my own name, I am going to be careful with what I accept and what terms. I will check the links before agreeing. And I will be checking them periodically afterwards as well. No SPAM, and only content-relevant links. I will also add a tag ‘paid link‘ to any post that contains the link for which I was paid.

So far, I have two posts with paid links and considering the money, I think these should work pretty good. Let me know what you think in the comments or directly.