[kenn]

As a founder of http://lingr.com, I know firsthand how hard to build a chat app and make it sustainable. I've been working on it since 2006, first as a startup, then as my personal side project.

I've learned to not invest too much on the project, staying with the minimum server cost, and that's the only sustainable way for me. In fact it costs me almost nothing and users have built trust on me for running it for 6 years.

I'd give her tons of credit for trying to turn it into a real business. That's what I've been failing so far, or maybe I just don't even have the guts to do. I admire her courage and thus feel really sorry.

Hopefully I'll find another course, who knows.

[tijs]

Looks pretty good actually (from the screenshot), you even have an iPhone app and everything. Why not just charge a small something, even if it's only to get you a nice side income? Somebody mentioned $5/month as a reasonable price for something like this. For me personally that would make me less hesitant to sign up as currently it would seem you could pull the plug any moment. Unless you like the idea of being able to pull the plug at any moment of course, which of course is your prerogative.

[kenn]

Thank you. I think you made a good point - by not charging I may be actually making people skeptical. We even have a vibrant developer community on bots and extensions, but it's barely known (shit, I realized that it's not even mentioned on the top page). I'll have to come up with some turnaround ideas.