Startup

创业笔记 407：印象笔记给付费用户推广告

2021-03-23Luca

#Startup

朋友给我建议，对价值观这种事，要用案例、故事来说明，而不是干瘪地讲那句大道理。

价值观是可以指引产品方向，决定某个特性做或不做的，比如我们的价值观里，有一条“客户价值优先”，即：以客户为中心，解决客户问题，做对客户有价值的事。

拿印象笔记给他们的付费会员推广告（通常类似 x 折续费）的事来说，可以判断一下对客户（付费用户）的价值，我勉强想到俩“长期、间接”的价值：

创业笔记 406：Pinboard

2021-03-23Luca

#Startup

Pinboard（https://pinboard.in/）是我多年前很喜欢过的一款产品，喜欢的原因有：

极其简单（可能很多人会觉得简陋），但哪怕是现在，还是够用甚至值得付费的；
可以算是 Maciej 的“个人作品”，但从 2010 年开始，已经生存了 11 年，每年营收十几到二十几万美金。

多年前喜欢并付费了，付的还是比较贵的 archive（可以将 URL 的内容缓存下来）。可惜的是，当时他对国内对网页支持不好（其实是国内不少网页“特立独行”了），比如微信公众号，在 Pinboard 里曾经好几年获取不到正确对标题（Title），给作者写信得不到反馈后，我只好放弃付费，此后辗转了如 Pocket、Readability、Instapaper 之类的产品，都不喜欢，最终放弃了“书签收藏”产品。

其实过程中还有个小插曲，我们甚至自己做了一个——在知识星球里，曾经输入一个 URL，就能自动获取 Title，并且缓存下链接内容。本来曾经想，打磨一段时间后，可以成为一个有价值的功能，后来发现自己想简单了，功能最终砍掉了。

昨天突然收到 Maciej 的邮件，大意是请老用户“转换”用户形态——之前是一次付费，终身使用，他想请这些老用户更改为年付。我好奇心起，又看了看：

目前 Pinboard 已经支持国内主流网站的 Title 获取了；
从 2017 年起，活跃用户和收入双双逐年下滑。

感觉他遇到的主要问题可能是：

新增乏力——对书签（URL）有执念的用户，年纪都大了，年轻人可能已经不知道什么叫书签/链接了，而且媒体形态被短视频侵蚀的速度很快；
用户与收入下滑的同时，存储量（成本）却在增长。

不过还好基数不大，从 Pocket 这些产品里抢一些用户过来，应该还是有机会的。

一些链接：

你应该用 Pinboard 的 13 个理由：https://pinboard.in/tour/
Pinboard 博客，每年发一篇文字公布营收：https://blog.pinboard.in/

附上 Pinboard 作者的邮件原文：

Hi there,

My name is Maciej, I run the bookmarking site Pinboard, and I’m writing to ask for your help.

You joined the site back when there was a one-time signup fee. Back then, charging for bookmarking online was unheard of, and the fee was more of an anti-spam measure than a revenue model.

In 2015, I changed Pinboard over to a subscription site, where even “basic” users (who don’t use the archiving feature) have to pay an annual fee. But I did not make this change retroactive, since that felt like going back on a promise.

Today I’m asking you to voluntarily change the way you use the site by going to https://pinboard.in/convert and converting your account to a ‘modern’ one, the kind you have to pay for every year.

Let me explain why:

First, it will allow me to do more active development on the site. As a solo developer, this has become difficult as the site gets bigger and older. I not only run and maintain all the code, but I also install and fix the physical hardware, keep up with the various patches and breaking changes at every level, run and test backups, and try to keep up with big changes in the way the web works (like the huge move to javascript, which is hard to archive).

I would describe my work like single-handedly running a restaurant in an old château. It’s cool and fun, and the ambiance is great, but occasionally the soup is served cold or not at all because I have to chase a bunch of bats out of the kitchen, or replace a collapsed beam, while the diners sit and wait. This is no fun for either me or the diners, who rightfully complain that it ruins their dinner.

Having more paying users would let me hire some dedicated carpenters and and bat-chasers that would let me focus on the cooking.

Second, it’s become rather hard to have two populations of users, one of whom pays annually for a service that the other gets for free. Right now, about 2/3 of Pinboard users with basic accounts are people who signed up, like you did, in 2009 or 2010 with a one-time payment. The remaining 1/3 pays $22 a year. I have noticed this has created some feelings of annoyance in the paying group, odd expectations in the one-time group, and a general confusion about pricing policy.