| First off kudos to Ivan - both because i love being a fan of the underdog, but also because what he built really is great! (Maybe a little also because i am definitely NOT a fan of adobe. sorry.) There are a cople of quotes here that are intriguing to me... > "...From 2012 - 2016, Photopea had no monetization plans built in. And after graduation, Ivan only produced $29k in the first year and a half of monetizing..." "Only" $29k!?! "Only" $29k!? I don't know about anyone else, but i actually find that number to be wonderful. Not everyone needs to be facebook-level monetized for their first year. I wish my startup/saas service monetized that much on its first year! > "...Photopea is web-based, but it also is completely built using Javascript with no backend. This means it works offline with no internet connection and doesn't require huge computing power..." I'll admit that when i first learned of photopea - from my offspring no less during one of their homework assignments! - i was impressed right away. Even if it was online only...But i guess i never knew that it can be used offline too! I guess i'll have to play around with it offline. Further, if it is in fact offline usable, well that impresses me a bit from a javascript perspective. I'll admit that i'm not the biggest fan of javascript...but if this kind of comprehensive application can be built with javascript and be usable offline, that's pretty dan impressive, and i guess i gotta give javascript much more respect (and of course play wuith things myself). (Yes, yes, i know that there are Electron apps that leverage lots of javascript for offline purposes, etc...but this thing was built on mostly maintained by one person!) Finally, I really appreciate that they noted that this was not one of those instant success stories. > "...these features weren't built in a day, Ivan spent the better part of 10 years slowly building out Photopea! He's solved over 4,000 feature requests and issues on GitHub alone!...With no paid marketing, Photopea found success through AMAs and old-fashioned, word-of-mouth sharing..." Once again, kudos to Ivan for such a wonderful thing that he built, and for providing with himself a livelihood!! |
Agreed. But he had to slog on this for years making zero. It would be nice to have a way to get people like him some money before something goes viral.
It also goes to show that "Most overnight successes are 10 years in the making."