ExtPay VS Video-Hub-App

I've been using SQLite/Litestream for https://extensionpay.com for about 3 years now! Serves about 120m requests per month (most of those are cached and don't hit the db), but it's been great!

I was convinced that SQLite could be a viable db option from this great post about it called Consider SQLite: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite

Using SQLite with Litestream helped me to launch the site quickly without having to pay for or configure/manage a db server, especially when I didn't know if the site would make any money and didn't have any personal experience with running production databases. Litestream streams to blackblaze b2 for literally $0 per month which is great. I already had a backblaze account for personal backups and it was easy to just add b2 storage. I've never had to restore from backup so far.

There's a pleasing operational simplicity in this setup — one $14 DigitalOcean droplet serves my entire app (single-threaded still!) and it's been easy to scale vertically by just upgrading the server to the next tier when I started pushing the limits of a droplet (or doing some obvious SQLite config optimizations). DigitalOcean's "premium" intel and amd droplets use NVMe drives which seem to be especially good with SQLite.

One downside of using SQLite is that there's just not as much community knowledge about using and tuning it for web applications. For example, I'm using it with SvelteKit and there's not much written online about deploying multi-threaded SvelteKit apps with SQLite. Also, not many example configs to learn from. By far the biggest performance improvement I found was turning on memory mapping for SQLite.

I made a couple browser extensions that make over $500/month each. The key seems to be naming your extension after high-volume search terms and getting good reviews on the chrome store (and obviously having an extension that works well and solve a common problem on major websites). I monetized them with my own service, https://extensionpay.com. Feels so good to eat your own dog food :)

Neat! I'm serving around 120m requests per month for https://extensionpay.com from a 2GB VPS running a single-threaded nodejs process and SQLite as the db. Most of the requests are cached, but still, it's amazing how far you can get with cheap hardware.

I use SQLite/Litestream for https://extensionpay.com! Serves about 120m requests per month (most of those are cached and don't hit the db), but it's been great!

I have no affiliation with Litestream but I was convinced that SQLite could be a viable db option from this great post about it called Consider SQLite: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite

Using SQLite with Litestream helped me to launch the site quickly without having to pay for or configure/manage a db server, especially when I didn't know if the site would make any money and didn't have any personal experience with running production databases. Litestream streams to blackblaze b2 for literally $0 per month which is great. I already had a backblaze account for personal backups and it was easy to just add b2 storage. I've never had to restore from backup so far.

There's a pleasing operational simplicity in this setup — one $14 DigitalOcean droplet serves my entire app (single-threaded still!) and it's been easy to scale vertically by just upgrading the server to the next tier when I started pushing the limits of a droplet. DigitalOcean's "premium" intel and amd droplets use NVMe drives which seem to be especially good with SQLite.

One downside of using SQLite is that there's just not as much community knowledge about using and tuning it for web applications. For example, I'm using it with SvelteKit and there's not much written online about deploying multi-threaded SvelteKit apps with SQLite. Also, not many example configs to learn from. By far the biggest performance improvement I found was turning on memory mapping for SQLite.

Happy to answer any questions you might have!

I made https://extensionpay.com to monetize my own browser extensions and between that and free distribution on the extension stores it’s really easy to try making extensions that make money. So far devs have made over $300k with ExtensionPay. That said, it still take some skill to find a niche that works.

Just want to put a plug in for https://extensionpay.com/ - I've used it in extensions in the past. It takes away the headache of setting up a backend for payment. They do take an extra 5%, but it's worth it especially. for smaller projects

Have a go at looking at this: https://extensionpay.com,

That's fair. Right now my payment processor (ExtensionPay) doesn't support multiple pricing tiers. However, in the future I'm considering rolling out my own logic so that I can provide a lifetime license option for some users.

Oh nice! Maybe you'd be interested in the tool I built to take payments in extensions: https://extensionpay.com

If your concern is about security of the extension, you may right click on top of the extension's icon and select "Inspect popup". Select the "Network" tab and type CTRL-R to force a reload of the extension. Verify there are no external network requests (except to extensionpay.com for paid features).

First $100: Thirty copies sold of Video Hub App

First $1,000: Three hundred copies sold of my Video Hub App

https://videohubapp.com/

Though I do donate $3.50 of every sale to a cost-effective charity so in theory I made no money for a while until I bumped the price to $5 / copy.

semi-on-topic: I created Video Hub App that is like YouTube for local files: shows you a gallery with scrub-able (preview on hover) thumbnails. But does not work streaming videos to TV / tablet - only for local consumption. Hope someone finds it useful.

https://videohubapp.com/

MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I created Video Hub App which is MIT License

https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I also sell it for $5 and have sold just over 5,000 copies last month (5 years old app). Importantly, $3.50 of every purchase goes to a cost-effective charity, GiveWell recommended Against Malaria Foundation (see website for details).

https://videohubapp.com/

"The problem" might be that people in this thread and others get frustrated because others have different goals than them.

Of course Electron is overkill for a single-button application. But Visual Basic is absolutely going to be a headache if you want a custom GUI.

Pick the tool that's right for the job!

I build this with Electron: https://videohubapp.com/

Simplest File Renamer - https://www.yboris.dev/renamer & https://github.com/whyboris/Simplest-File-Renamer

I wanted to be able to quickly rename files with my text editor (using keyboard commands), so this lets me do it. Plus I share the app online for free.

Video Hub App - https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I started it just for myself, but it ended up so good I spent several more years improving it as people kept buying it (up to almost 5,000 purchases since I started).

Also wrote a couple of dev tools for myself (sharing via NPM too) - https://www.yboris.dev/

I created Video Hub App: https://videohubapp.com/ - it shows screenshots from videos as you scrub/hover across the thumbnail.

I've been so frustrated that FFprobe functionality is not part of FFmpeg.

My app extracts screenshots from videos to create a beautiful gallery of videos. But even though I include FFmpeg already, I need a 50mb FFprobe executable to be bundled with my app just so that I can determine the width, height, duration, and fps of a video file! What is it that FFprobe does that FFmpeg couldn't do with a few extra pieces of exposed API?

https://videohubapp.com/ - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/blob/772b25bbd4b41...

Created Video Hub App (that will be 5 years old next month). I sell it for $5 and $3.50 of each purchase goes to the cost-effective charity Against Malaria Foundation (See GiveWell.org for details).

It was averaging around 100 purchases per month, though it's lower over the last year as I've not had time to release new updates (moving to another state is challenging).

https://videohubapp.com/ - Think of it like YouTube for videos on your computer. Browse, search, and organize your videos

MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Built Video Hub App that almost 5,000 people have purchased. I was a math teacher, became a web dev 6 years ago, built this 5 years ago. Most proceeds go to charity. Very minor by comparison to others, but I'm just starting out ;)

https://videohubapp.com/ && https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

What I did that is most impactful is that I've been giving at least 10% of my income to cost-effective charities for over 10 years now (see Giving What We Can - thousands of others do the same). This amounts to almost $100,000 given to charity which translates to thousands of people protected from malaria for many years of their lives.

My personal model for my commercial software: charityware - require a payment but made most proceeds go to my favorite (cost-effective) charity.

I'm getting about 100 purchases ($500/month, donating $350 of that) with my Video Hub App - https://videohubapp.com/ - which is also open source - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

I wrote about charityware a few years ago: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...