Ask HN: What is the best way to monetize a small side project?
As we all know, servers aren't free, and maintaining side projects that have many users can get expensive. What is the best way to be compensated for your work, while still being fair and allowing everyone to use the creation you've worked so hard on, and are so proud of?
The specific case I had in mind is PbNotify (http://pbnotify.herokuapp.com/), where I currently charge $5/month for unlimited access (though I'm not sure this is the best approach).
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The homepage could use a lot of work. There's nothing wrong with it now, as a hacker project, but for something that's soliciting money, there's no indication of that on the homepage, no explicit illustration of what the value prop is, or any reasons listed why it's something I dhould pay for (or really, even that I have to pay at all).
You could probably fix that with a $15 ThemeForest theme (to make it look less like an abandoned open source project and more like an actual product) and some A/B tested copy.
You need a lot more copy on the homepage. Figure out what the answers are to the questions I asked above and plaster those on the homepage. Why should I buy this? How much does it cost? If you can take some nice pictures of it in action, that's even better.
If you're selling a service, you need to actually sell the service. It's harder than just saying "Here's this thing, buy it", which is basically what you're doing now.
On the whole, the project is intriguing, and though I'm not a Pebble user, I could see value in being able to speak directly to it. Who is your market? Pebble users? Or sites that want to target Pebble users? I don't know that from the copy on the website.
You're already charging money for the service. If your issue is too many users then charge more money, if the issue is not enough users find more or charge more. Targetting only Pebble users is a really small niche.
The only way to be fair to your customers is to make enough money to keep the service they love alive.