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by stavros 650 days ago
Can you please just add a paid tier before shutting down? Just a $5/mo something that shows a badge on your account, or whatever. Call it something other than "donate", "premium account" or something, and see how many people pick it up. You "only" need 1500 people to do that to cover the costs, which is less than a thousandth of your user base.

Even if it gives a few useful features to subscribers, that's better than shutting down.
3 comments
dustincoates 650 days ago
They have a paid tier, called insiders, although you can also "pay" through helping other users on the site: https://exercism.org/insiders
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stavros 650 days ago
Ah, thanks, I looked for that but didn't find it (the "donate" button reminded me of a one-off). I'd recommend changing the link name to "pricing" and A/B testing the recommended donation amount being $5/mo.

I don't know how much effort they've put into experimenting with pricing, but it'd be worth trying to increase donations, especially for such a well-designed site.

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joker99 650 days ago
Never knew they had this, signed up immediately :) Exercism is worthy of 120$ a year and worth its weight in gold. It has helped me learn Rust, Swift and Kotlin and I'll be forever greatful!
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sroussey 649 days ago
I’ve had things with more users and 1/1000 would have been amazing. The difference between $0 and $1 is gigantic though, and a hard ask for content in most cases.
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stavros 649 days ago
Yeah, I guess that's true, but it's something that can be worked on and optimized, and I have a feeling the OP hasn't focused much on actually making enough money to pay employees.
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ihid 650 days ago
We're not shutting down :)

But yes, rather than shutting down, I'd probably just put the whole thing behind a paywall to try and keep it alive.

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stavros 650 days ago
Well yes, I mean "maintenance mode" or whatever it is. You've built a really valuable service, if you want some help with maybe reducing costs, I'd be happy to have a chat at some point, I have experience in running things on budget hardware.
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wyclif 649 days ago
Please do not give up. You are doing something that I think is very important in the educational space.
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