Add-on XenReviews [CrowdFund]

Would you buy this add on?


  • Total voters
    138
Status
Not open for further replies.
Definitely understandable.

An important thing to note that is a major difference is: Custom work is not my sole income. I work for a million dollar company doing web work. I work on the side for extra money. The way I understand it is that Robbo asked for crowd funding so he wouldn't have to do custom work in the mean time. I don't like to do custom work. Any money I make from selling add ons sits in my PayPal and I don't touch it. My plan is to take it out at tax time and basically get a double tax return.

In other words, I'm not going to stop working on this project in order to make money to survive. The only reason I'm asking for money up front is so that I know I'm not wasting several hundred hours of coding to only sell a few licenses and make basically a couple bucks an hour.

If you guys are too nervous to crowd fund another project, that's fine. If you guys can't work up the faith to trust another developer after the Robbo thing, that's fine. If you guys would just rather see if someone else comes through with a review system without money up front, that's fine. I have no hard feelings whatever you guys decide.

Just let me know.
 
Daniel,

Have just added to the poll saying I would contribute. I only run a small forum, with no profit, however i havent a problem on the "$80 - license good for one installation, free lifetime upgrades." option....

I used to run GARS on a very old VB install - it was great for it's time, however seriously outdated now.

With regards to thoughts of where to go on it.... i'm happy along the lines of above :D

cheers
Paul
 
Daniel,

Have just added to the poll saying I would contribute. I only run a small forum, with no profit, however i havent a problem on the "$80 - license good for one installation, free lifetime upgrades." option....

I used to run GARS on a very old VB install - it was great for it's time, however seriously outdated now.

With regards to thoughts of where to go on it.... i'm happy along the lines of above :D

cheers
Paul

I'm glad you're content with the price point.

I'm not nervous about crowdfunding, if you are coder.
You did so well with HashTags.

[Edit]
And the Laundry list of other Addons !
http://xenforo.com/community/members/daniel-hood.5749/#resources

Thanks I appreciate that.

@Alfa1 and I have exchanged a few private messages, discussing a wide variety of things regarding this project. Most of the topic was them wondering what I planned to do with the funds, the support afterwards, assurance I wasn't going to fall off any time soon, trying to see what rewards people would get if they invested a lot into this project.

Alfa wanted to know if I was going to be soley responsible for this project; I haven't mentioned this before, because in your guys' eyes it doesn't really change anything, but @Jeff Berry would be working on this project with me if it does get funded. I'm sure all of you either clicked his name already or are about to and realize that he has no posts. He doesn't post, nor does he frequent these forums. He did however contribute all the css and javascript to the multi prefix add on that I released recently. He's also helping with a group of other add ons that I'm releasing. If any of you used phpnuke years ago, you may recognize his name from being a lead contributor to nuke-evolution. This shouldn't really change anything in your mind as I'm still soley responsible for this project. If it gets crowd-funded, all the funds will remain in my paypal until completion, as I mentioned before. Until a product is delivered the funds, in my mind, may as well be locked in a CD account for however long this project takes (meaning they can't be touched, by anyone).

Alfa wanted to know what my plan was for my add ons, not just this one, when I'm done with XenForo. XenForo is the only system that I've ever worked on for longer than a couple weeks. I usually can't stand developing around a cms that I didn't build. I can't really imagine a system I'd rather work with. With that said, I'm 23 years old, I'm in a stable career, I enjoy what I do. I have no intentions of retiring or to quit coding any time in the foreseeable future. That said, if something changes and I do walk away in a few years or I find out I have a terminal disease [lol], I will offer my add ons to a competent developer who I know will support them properly. That's an exit strategy I've seen here a few times.

It was also suggested that people that invest a lot of money into this project, should possibly get something back later on. After thinking about it, I think that's a wonderful idea. It'll not only be a nice reward for investing but also offer incentive to help it do well (by suggesting it to people, proposing great ideas for features, helping debug, etc). So, anyone that contributes $750 will get 5 licenses with life time upgrades plus a share of 20% of the post-release sales. If 4 people donate $750, not only will the add on be funded and get developed, but they'll also all get 5% [each] of sales after launch. This excludes all funds raised pre-release (the crowd fund). I realize that is a fairly big contribution, but the reward could be great.

If the 9 of you that voted yes and you'd fund, if you're serious, I will set the pozible project up tomorrow and we can start. We can use another site if you guys have a preference.
 
Last edited:
I would be happy to help fund this, wouldn't be able to do more then $200. Also happy with the $80 for the licence.

The plans you've laid out for it sound good so far.
 
I submitted the project to pozible for review. Once they review it, I'll be launching. When we hit $1,500, I'll buy a domain and XenForo license for the project and start development. Development will be very slow until we hit the entire balance but I think some development will encourage more people to contribute.

Thanks to @Sheldon for this logo:

xenreviews.webp

Assuming we hit the goal before Thanksgiving, my goal will be to have a basic beta out by New Years.
 
Definitely interested to help funding.

Most of the features named by @Alfa1 are also the ones I need (including his tips on monetizing functionality).

Must haves for me: claiming, custom fields per category for the review so I'll be able to define e.g. a date field for when the restaurant visit was, integration into xf moderation, usage of phrases (no hard coded text)

Nice to have: google maps, integration into search
 
Last edited:
Just an update: pozible denied my project because of revenue sharing. I had to remove that reward and resubmit. The offer still stands if anyone invests that much though. It's just not going to be visible on pozible.

@Walter I have every intention of using those. :)
 
pozible.com/xenreviews
@BamaStangGuy @Walter @rootsxrocks @TheComputerGuy @Digital Doctor @Paul @Flexin @intradox @ibenick @Gazhyde @denisx04 @Creaky

Project created. $750 gets you a portion of 20% of the sales post-release (the crowd fund obviously is not included in this). 1 person contributes that much they get all 20%, 2 people = 10% each, 4 people = 5%, etc...

Once the crowd fund is done and it's ready for release the price will be $75 a license, maybe more so by investing early you get $15 off. I did raise the price of lifetime upgrades to $90, and the price of a license to $60, this was mostly to help get the goal reached quicker.

Hopefully we get there :). I'm ready to start whenever.

I'll be setting up a development board once we get to $1500. I'll be updating the feature list to include the stuff discussed since the initial post a little later tonight.
 
Daniel, I have a question about how committed you will be on this project. I'm not talking about pulling a Robbo, but rather how committed you'll be to keeping this updated as Xenforo itself evolves. I'd hate to invest time and money into using a major addon like this only to have Xenforo 2.0 come around and XenReview never gets updated. Please don't take that as an insult, just I've been burned that way in the past, and of course I realize that **** happens, but sometimes addon developers just vanish without a trace. Would you allow something like letting the original funders take over development of the project in case you're abducted by aliens or something of the sort?
 
I understand the concern. Given I choose to vanish, I'll seek out a developer to give my projects to. This is a method I've seen work out for people in the past.

Given a situation I just vanish without a trace (aliens), do what you want... I won't be around to stop you :p

Keep in mind, I have a more than competent developer helping me with this project. Given I vanish, I would expect him to keep working on it and for you (investors) to allow him to keep working on it.
 
@Daniel Hood You can only use 5 usertags in a post. More does not work.

One way to keep a financial interest in products is to earn a yearly license fee. If those licenses sold after the release will need to be renewed, then there is reason to keep updating it. Its also an option to give those investors who invest less than say $90 to get 1 or 2 years renewal, but not a lifetime license. This way the addon has a good chance of resulting in yearly income as long as the product gets regular updates.
 
@Daniel Hood You can only use 5 usertags in a post. More does not work.

Good to know.

One way to keep a financial interest in products is to earn a yearly license fee. If those licenses sold after the release will need to be renewed, then there is reason to keep updating it. Its also an option to give those investors who invest less than say $90 to get 1 or 2 years renewal, but not a lifetime license. This way the addon has a good chance of resulting in yearly income as long as the product gets regular updates.

I didn't specify a price for yearly renewals but it was kind of implied in the reward structure. The $60 reward (during crowd fund, increasing after release), includes a year of updates. After that it'll need to be renewed. The $90 reward is a lifetime upgrade package.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom