Hi,

I started my passion project back in college in 2018 and learnt by myself programming. My idea was to create a recommendation website for movies and TV shows. I was so passionate about that idea to the point that I dedicated countless hours coding and searching about algorithms.

Back then, I didn’t even think about business plans nor promotion (a big mistake I know). My main drive was creating the best possible version of my idea with all the features I always dreamt of: in other words, an enhanced version of IMDb and Letterboxd with an emphasis on recommendations. This was the plan.

After two years of efforts and pain, my website >!www.tastoid.com!< was released in 2020. I find that, in some instances, my recommendation engine is superior to the other similar popular websites (that I won’t name). Also, I provide for free features that are paying on other apps (such as advanced search filters). The main differentiating factors are that, for each movie, tags are assigned to describe the mood, plot, etc. and based on that classification, recommendations are generated.

But, here is the thing, although I like my project and it is like my baby, I am paying the server charges myself (ca. USD 300 per month) and it started to take a toll on my personal finances. I had a huge increase in views over the last 30 days (14K sessions – more than +100% compared to the last period). But I only rely on Adsense revenues which amounted to $7. As you can see, it is unsustainable for me to continue this way. I did everything possible to reduce the costs: but medium computing powers are needed for the database which is constantly growing and machine learning to assign tags to movies.

Last month, I created a subscription option (taking inspiration from Backloggd which is also maintained by one person) to allow users to support me for a monthly fee of $5 in exchange of a few perks. I am not after any monetary gain, only trying to have a self-sustainable service. However, not even one user subscribed… even though so far the feedback I received is mostly positive and I have some active recurring users.

This is a hard pill to swallow and, today, I made a realisation. There is no solution to my problem. My mistake was to think that passion and hardwork were sufficient to overcome all obstacles. I thought about selling my service as an API, but again this is my side project, I am the solo developer and I do not have much time dedicated to market it, etc.

So the only rational option, if I don’t want to burn my hard-earned cash, is to close the website. The thought breaks my heart, as I had dedicated so much time and love creating this dream project, and losing all that will be very hard to bear. I feel that my website has potential to help people finding new interesting movies based on their taste and that it provides a certain value, only I have not the budget anymore. Reality check, I guess…

What would have you done? Any advice?

TL; DR: I worked on my passion project for years, a movie recommendation website (launched in 2020). I am paying the server charges myself ($300 monthly). Introduced a $5/month subscription option for user to support me, but no one subscribed. Considering shutting down due to financial strain, despite positive feedback and my attachment to the project. Seeking advice.

  • von_master@alien.topOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thank you for your feedback. As the solo and hobby developer, I had unfortunately to make concessions and focus more on the technical side. Indeed, the UI is far from being perfect and trendy.

    By “offer a lot more then what you currently do”, do you mean in terms of the perks offered to paid users? If so, yes, this was a deliberate choice to provide exclusive features but at the same not to penalise free users by restricting existing features. A difficult balance to find…

    • RossDCurrie@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      this was a deliberate choice to provide exclusive features but at the same not to penalise free users by restricting existing features.

      I just left another comment about episodecalendar. Being completely honest, the reason I paid for a premium sub on that site is that he had a 20 show limit and I wanted to track more shows.

      If I look at your free plan, it’s got “unlimited titles”, “unlimited lists”, “unlimited reviews” etc.

      There might be some better startup advice around freemium feature pricing models, but I’d do something like workout a behaviour threshold that the top 20% of your users are in - then say okay, anyone who keeps using it like those people should be considered premium from now on, and will have to pay.

      You’d have to come up with a strategy to transition those people from free to premium (restrict future behaviour or just give them premium for free as a loyalty thank you), but you could at least make sure that anybody else who crosses the threshold now has to become a paid user if they want to keep using the site.

      So behaviour threshold could be something like adding X titles to their library, or something like that.