This is a story about JS Bin. I’ve told one story of JS Bin before, and this is the b-side: the dark side. But remember with everything I share with you, JS Bin is the longest running live pastebin, and it’s not going anywhere. It will continue to run and serve its users. Even the scumbags.
The story has been broken into 5 parts, released over a series of days.
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[Part 1: The start of the DDoS](/jsbin-toxic-part-1)
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[Part 2: Spam](/jsbin-toxic-part-2)
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[Part 3: Registered users wreaking havoc](/jsbin-toxic-part-3)
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[Part 4: The cost](/jsbin-toxic-part-4)
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[Part 5: Police](/jsbin-toxic-part-5)
Part 4: The cost[](#part-4-the-cost)
In July 2014, JS Bin finally landed [Pro accounts](https://jsbin.com/upgrade). The aim of this would be for JS Bin to eventually be self-sustaining. It’s been running out of my pocket for the previous 6 years (for server and related costs), and development and design (2014 excluded) had been lovingly "donated" by myself and Danny (who is responsible for the design).
In 2014, I decided to give JS Bin a full shot, and employed two (amazing) developers, [Giulia Alfonsi](https://twitter.com/electric_g) and [Fabien O’Carroll](https://twitter.com/allouis_) to work with me full time on JS Bin.
At the end of May 2015 (10 months after launching pro) the income JS Bin has provided has only just covered operating costs for the previous year. That’s awesome and terrible at the same time. Before "pro" it was making a 100% loss - so that’s something, but it doesn’t even touch the edges of what I had hoped it would return (and I wasn’t even being optimistic, as any British person would expect).
But there is a cost to taking money…
VATMOSS[](#vatmoss)
[VATMOSS](https://remysharp.com/2014/12/16/vatmoss) was a change to the way that VAT is processed in the EU. Unfortunately, the geniuses behind the change at the EU (or whatever rock they hide under) hadn’t quite thought the whole thing through. The information was thin, convoluted, confusing and not really accessible to small companies like myself and many others.
This is the landing page for the EU European Commission’s Digital Market:
The European Commission is the EU’s executive body. It represents the interests of the European Union as a whole (not the interests of individual countries).
The slogan: bringing down barriers to unlock online opportunities. What a crock of shit. VATMOSS has single handedly killed off new business and for others made it more difficult for others do to their commerce. It’s worth reading around the back story of VATMOSS, and even in mid-2015, it’s there’s a fight for change going on.
The VATMOSS reporting is now (as of 1-Jan 2015) a requirement for anyone in the EU selling digital services or goods (i.e. ebooks, apps, subscriptions…JS Bin Pro subscriptions), and there was (and is) the threat of fines if you don’t report and pay on the sales correctly.
VATMOSS requires that you charge the VAT of the country of your customer. i.e. if the customer is English, 20%, if they are Danish 25%. Also, you have to capture three proofs that you’re charging the right country (it’s actually 2 proofs, but you need a 3rd backup proof). If these are all in conflict… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The last month of 2014 were riddled with stress from the VATMOSS changes that I had to complete on JS Bin. It took weeks to try to fully understand VATMOSS, and what exactly would be required to satisfy requirements.
In the end, the development time was about 2 week for both myself & Fabien (employed to work on JS Bin) and about two weeks of research, filing and accounting time on Julie’s part (my business partner - and wife).
Estimated business cost: £3,500.
£11.70p. VATMOSS, the stress of it all, to collect pennies from seven people. It would have been cheaper to book flights to each of their addresses to collect the cash by hand. [It was not fun](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Arem%20%23vatmoss\&src=typd).
Fraud credit cards[](#fraud-credit-cards)
Since pro accounts initially cost £6 for month, it turns out that this is low enough that it won’t send red flags to stolen cards.
This means that JS Bin was being used as a testing ground for stolen card numbers. If the card went through then they would use the card. Unbeknownst to me, the user wouldn’t do anything on JS Bin, and I’d be on my merry way thinking I had a new pro sign up.
Eventually, the rightful owner would think, "What’s this 'JS BIN PRO MONTHLY' doing on my statement", follow up with their bank, and raise a fraud complaint.
I can’t win the complaint. The card was stolen, the £6 belongs to the original card owner, no question. But! If there’s a dispute on Stripe, there’s transaction fees for reversing charges. £15.34 in fact. Since I know I’ll lose the dispute, it’s cost me, £21.54 to allow some shithead to use JS Bin as a stolen card testing facility.
My process now is that I’ve taken to checking each and every individual sign up and their bins to see if they look spammy. I caught my first fraud card and reported on 13-April 2014. Not a huge success but very satisfying to know I’ve avoided the charge. Woot!
Pro[](#pro)
Pro accounts was never the intention when I launched JS Bin back in 2008. I’d made stupid efforts to avoid having user accounts for quite a few years, but insisted that it should be 100% free.
I don’t know why.
During 2013, I attended a lot of events where individuals kept coming up to me asking how do they pay for JS Bin, or why don’t I add Pro, or explained that the only reason they used CodePen over JS Bin was that they were paying (i.e. the perceived security of data from the business exchange). The more I considered it, the more I realised I wanted to do JS Bin full time, and work on something I loved.
I ran some numbers based on registered users in the database, and factored for about 20% spam/idle users, and then put my aims at 1% conversion. It didn’t seem like much.
The problem was: that’s all I did.
There was no business plan. There was no business development team. There was no marketing plan. There was no deadlines. There were no aims.
So there my amazing product sat. To others it was ready to launch, but I was still heads down focused on the last 1% stretch, so it was parked.
I’d had the odd conversation that suggested I might be able to get funding from the government (as JS Bin is a tool primarily for learning), but I’d shy away from the idea of having to do "business" stuff. It scared me a little too.
Launching became the well know problem of chasing the end of the rainbow. Striving for the perfect, polished product before everyone else had access to it. Sure we had some alpha users in there, but they weren’t invested in JS Bin any more than you are, so feedback came when they had some time.
This went on for months and months. All the while JS Bin isn’t making money, my entire company is focusing it’s time on JS Bin and not producing any cash flow from any other sources.
Pro (eventually) went live on 23 July 2014. And the first wave of registrations was an amazing feeling. In fact, one user ([David Gauld](https://twitter.com/dcgauld), who actually worked for me doing the [Left Logic](http://leftlogic.com) redesign and built a fair amount of [confwall](https://confwall.com)) was the first to go pro catching the [commit landing in Github](https://github.com/jsbin/jsbin/commit/814251af40334990cf2490dc45d88ba246542f2f#diff-0aab8fc4f1799dc88c8d29729b719d87L118), even before I had announced it - a cool side effect of the open source.
Users did come, but looking back, it really wasn’t very much if you consider the costs of running JS Bin, let alone paying for development, and then look at what the monthly (or yearly subscriptions) got us. A total of 42 upgrades in the first week (26 were on the first day).
I had always tucked money aside for a rain day (actually rainy year), and yeah, I can look back and say "sure, I took a shot" - but it came at a pretty penny.
The next 6 months I lost my love for the project. Very simply: any new development had to justify its existence and its demand on my time. I did continue development until the end of 2014, but by that point, all love had been sucked dry and I needed a break. JS Bin is solid enough that it can run without day to day attention and I could return to client work and try to recover my now sad looking business bank balance.
Plan, and know what your users need[](#plan-and-know-what-your-users-need)
There were two major problems that hurt the success of JS Bin Pro.
The first was the nearly zero planning, and strange fear of business, marketing and actually making money. I often associate with the underdog, and those users looking for free access. But I run a service that’s abused from all directions and every new user is more of a burden than growth.
Very simply put: should I want to run a service for 100 paying users or for 100,000 non-paying users? Me? Now, I realise it’s the 100 paying users, because, honestly, I’ve got bills that I want to pay. I’d rather pay those bills building something I love rather than building something I begrudge.
I lost a lot of love in this area of working with JS Bin. I can take the spam, and the junk, but this part of JS Bin required that the project actually raises money to support itself - and constantly feeling that I had to deliver some part of code for JS Bin to continue…it just didn’t work for me.
The second, major issue was that I had hoped, naively, that the web community will swoop in and pony up some cash. But the bottom line was JS Bin Pro had nothing that users needed. Sure, now it has asset uploads and other features, but at the time, there wasn’t anything users really needed.
I pay for my Github account because I need private repos. I pay for Gmail, because I need real business email accounts. I pay for Dropbox because I need the extra space.
With JS Bin, everything users need is given away and open source. That’s honourable, but doesn’t pay the mortgage.
The next time around, with products like [Confwall](https://confwall.com), I launched as soon as it was usable. I offer a free area, but I make sure that you can’t get to the stuff you need unless you pay. The way it should be! In fact, at time of writing this post, Confwall still doesn’t take payment online - I cut that part to launch as early as possible, and we handle payments via email & invoices.
[Part 5](/jsbin-toxic-part-5) sees our conclusion and tells of the police encounters I’ve had, along with the worst email I’ve ever received.
Published 17-Sep 2015 under #personal & #web. [Edit this post](https://github.com/remy/remysharp.com/blob/main/public/blog/jsbin-toxic-part-4.md)
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rem
0 points
8 years ago
So you work full-time unpaid and for free? Some of us can’t afford to do that.
You’re lucky to be in such a privileged position, what is it that you work on for free all year round that helps others (also access for free)?
(By the way, this user’s comments fell foul of the [House Rules](https://remysharp.com/house-rules)).
niccolox
0 points
8 years ago
@rem, good luck
rem
0 points
8 years ago
You "don’t agree with my approach". Aw shucks.
niccolox
0 points
8 years ago
@rem please dont get nasty
Kevin Nagurski
0 points
8 years ago
Can’t say that I either fully agree nor disagree with your points here. It’s awesome when you get to spend time doing something you really enjoy that benefits the "community". But spending ever increasing time on something that takes away from activities that actually put shoes on your kids feet, I know I couldn’t justify that.
It’s a bummer when a free service becomes paid, but if it really is a great service, paying a little bit to make it worthwhile for Remy has got to be worth it, right?
pgaert
0 points
8 years ago
I don’t really understand why you decided to tackle with VATMESS yourself. You could go with automated sales broker service - there were a few available in 2014. Of course they commission is much higher that normal payment service. But still this is cheapest way to validate your business model. You exchange only one B2B invoice monthly with them and you are done. I would switch to home-baked VATMOSS solution once income justifies that.
Jon m
0 points
8 years ago
Though I wasn’t ever in your exact position, I understand your pain. Losing love for a project in which you’ve invested so much is one of the worst feelings I know.
But don’t lose faith, some people don’t even have projects they love to work on in the first place. Wish you the best of luck and success!
beachhutman
0 points
8 years ago
I played foosball. I played in tournaments up to world class. But I worked out at the top level a goal from the penalty spot is in the back of the new quicker than 1/24 of a second (You tube video frames) meaning no to reaction time or even anticipation…the stats show a 50% score rate between equal ranked players.So the outthink your opponent with a slow shot (dink) is cleverer than using "speed" i.e. strength. I was a big fish in a little pool playing and owning 20 coin op tables. Even the best players agree to share the prize money for 1st, 2nd or 3rd, showing a classic workaround the supposed survival of the fittest. We know. We are not suffering unnecessary trauma and it allows for some audacious attempts to outthink your opponent with slow trick shots. It killed the love for the game but framed my early innocent years without all the hoopla. Trust me…if a simple table top game with football players on rods being twirled around shows the deus ex machine is cruelty, cultivate the camaraderie and joy of the simplest of pleasures and projects. We can’t all found multinational success in a garage but we can be a hub for our friends and hope that network survives in any way it can.\ We had a table in a garage of a pub. Then in the pub. Money was not important at nickel and dimes prices. But the reasons we can’t do that today are video games, pool tables. darts nights and economic forces looking for a better cash cow. Indoor amusements acc. to the Encyclopaedia Britannica need to display skill, be a spectator sport, get rid of aggression and bring men and women together socially.\ A pool table was better business because it provided a real spectator bonus.\ I knew when to stop. But it took 20 years and an IRS investigation. Luckily they agreed I/anyone else traceably had made no profit, and (to use another framework) , no prestige, competition or continuity either, really but I tried.
komrath
0 points
8 years ago
Ouch, posts like that make me sad, because they only confirm what I already noticed: Internet users do not want to pay for anything (and I’m not better than that, really). Apparently we are spoiled with free services: iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, that offer gazillion of storage and service for free. It’s really hard to start anything that is not business-to-business product these days, because there always is a free/open-source alternative.
That is why, for my newest private project (a cooking blog: http://cookarr.com) I decided to actually skip the commercial part and at some point, when the content is more mature, I will head to Patreon and GoFundMe to crowdfund. I know it’s a pretty silly idea, since "there are so many cooking websites for free", but with this I think I would move the fraud away and focus more on the "nice part" of the work — creating content, tinkering in the website, making it amazing, instead of trying to push out some kind of product. I think you might consider this option — just make a campaign somewhere and let people that love your product help you :-)
maxsurguy
0 points
8 years ago
Thanks for sharing your story!
I am the creator and sole developer behind [Bootsnipp.com](http://Bootsnipp.com) which in some ways is similar to JSBin (people can create snippets of JS/CSS/HTML and share them) and I’ve been at crossroads multiple times, trying to decide if I should run it full time. If Bootsnipp didn’t have revenue from ads - I would’ve shut the project down a long time ago but now I’m realizing that sometimes you have to be "the bad guy" in order to make legit money. Codepen is doing that by featuring some of the Pens and placing ads throughout the site for example. Maybe having just the landing page on [JSBin.com](http://JSBin.com) have a single ad could turn the revenue around and make you fall in love with the project again?
Alfonso Pérez
0 points
8 years ago
Very nice read, I like your honesty and sincerity in your words, you also seem like a really cool guy. Waiting for Part 5. I wish you all the best!.
Henrique Costa
0 points
8 years ago
Can´t wait for Part 5. Good job!
agumonkey
0 points
8 years ago
jsbin helped and inspired me many many times. I wish you the best for everything you do.
Rob Saric
0 points
8 years ago
Thanks for sharing Rem. Had a very similar experience and the struggle is real.
Jacob Plaster
0 points
8 years ago
Great read. You share a lot of information that tech startups don’t usually share. Would it be possible to share some of the information on your marketing strategy? As a developer that is the area in which I suffer the most with.
rem
0 points
8 years ago
This, evidently is also where I lack. Personally, I’ve just been around for a long time. I started publishing on the web in 2006, JS Bin is 7 years old. I don’t particularly think it’s the best product out there, it’s decent, but it’s also been around for a long time. I think that has been the marketing strategy (for better or worse) all these years.
Jacob Plaster
0 points
8 years ago
Thanks, would you regret this endeavour? From what i’ve read it seems that financially you would regret it. However, reading through the problems you have faced it seems like the experience was lucrative. What would you have done differently?
rem
0 points
8 years ago
Wait for part 5 :)
By "lucrative" I assume you don’t mean financially lucrative…because, no, no it wasn’t :)
In terms of learning, yeah, I’ve definitely learnt a tonne of lessons, good and bad.
The big things I’d do differently would be making use of more AWS type services (like the db), I’d make paid for features part of the product up front, and I’d do registration differently.
That’s just off the top of my head, but come back tomorrow, part 5 is the closing act.
Z3T4
0 points
8 years ago
Don’t give up just because your business plan didn’t work.
Each user is worth $1 per month if you find a good monetization strategy. If you do not get that, there’s room for improvement.
If Facebook suddenly started to charge one dollar/month, they would loose 99.99999% of their users. So don’t do something like that.
rem
0 points
8 years ago
Wait for part 5 :) tomorrow, same time.
denver\_dave
0 points
8 years ago
This is probably a dumb question, but did you ever try to hire a business guy to make the site profitable? 15m users seems pretty easy to monetize, if that’s what you do. Maybe a VC can find you someone good, while investing in the product.
rem
0 points
8 years ago
Not a dumb question at all. The answer is no, for a few reasons: 1) I come from a boot strap background which is ingrained in my blood. 2) due to (1), I don’t see VCs in the best light (and there’s a lot more that could be said around that, but it’s really just subjective).
The bottom line though is, I probably should have got a bizdev person, at least to give them some share of the profit.
Chris Hartwig
0 points
8 years ago
Reminds me of a side-project I had… It made like 10k€ in a year then I lost the motivation to keep it running. I already had done too much when I asked for money. It’s maybe making 50€/m now, barely enough to pay for hosting… I think it will go free for a year, then I’ll kill it.
Kent Beck
0 points
8 years ago
You say "honorable" but that doesn’t seem like the right word. There is a strange dogma going around that it is morally good to give away everything we do. It’s neither moral nor practical. In the end everyone loses: you had to stop working on something you loved and others stopped receiving the benefit of your passion and expertise. Sure capitalism sucks, is exploited, is used to oppress, but it also (heuristically) sends scarce resources where they will do society the most good. (BTW performing service without expectation of return is also part of a full life, but that comes after Maslow is taken care of.)
Pawel
0 points
8 years ago
Love this, Kent.
furytrader
0 points
8 years ago
Thank you for your brutal honesty - this is the best article I’ve read in awhile.
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