hacking and gonzo since 2000

Todoist is profitable

In the web today there are different business strategies to follow, these are:

Build a very popular site and get revenues through ads (MySpace, Facebook...)
Build a popular site and sell it (del.icio.us, Feedburner, Reddit...)
Build a profitable site (37 Signals, Mint, Shopify, ...)

Running a site without a business model is dumb, so I had to find a business model for Todoist. What should my aim be?

I choose to make a profitable product, why?:

I don't believe in ads for web applications (for example, I haven't once clicked or looked at any ads in Gmail)
There is too much luck involved in selling out

1 week ago I worked very hard to pull out Todoist Premium, an extended version of Todoist that cost 3$ pr. month. And you know what, it's been a success. Todoist is now profitable, i.e. hosting expenses are paid :)

There are few things more satisfying than having people find enough value in your ideas and products to trade their earned money for what you’ve produced. It’s primal and wonderful and every vendor should experience it. It’s great business and it makes your business great.

from Fleeing free by 37 Signals

Announcements · Todoist • 17. Aug 2007

6 comments so far

Al 17. Aug 2007

Congratulations. I'm very much a small-time user of Todoist so I haven't yet made the plunge to the premium version (I don't use many of the free edition's features (labels, due dates), let alone the premium ones (pretty much extensions to the aforementioned ones I don't use)). Still I've tested out labels and the due dates, and I can see me getting into them.

Having said that, I don't necessarily need to use the premium features to upgrade to premium. I like to support people that do things to make my life easier. I've donated to Firebug, and I may well do something with Todoist if the fancy takes me one day.

Still, keep up the good work, you've blown my idea right out of the water. I was halfway through planning my own todo list app in PHP/MySQL with AJAX when I stumbled across Todoist, and I've since not bothered.

Catherine 18. Aug 2007

Congratulations, that's great news! I've signed up to the Premium plan and am loving the extra features.

I'm continually blown away by how elegant Todoist is but at the same time is so very powerful.

Keep up the good work!

amix 19. Aug 2007

Al:
I think due dates and the "calendar" system is what makes Todoist really powerful, so you should dig into this. I mostly put dates on any task that I plan to do (sometimes I am really optimistic, so I have like 30 tasks for one day :) - that's where postponing comes into the picture).

Labels work great if you're premium, but they still need one more feature: auto completion ;)

Catherine:
Thanks! :)

Aaron Griffin 22. Aug 2007

I'm iffy about the route you're going to take this. I really really hope that the premium and free versions stay the same. I mean, I can understand paying for things like SMS messages, and the like, but if the _web app_ forks, I feel you will lose more users in the long run.

On a personal note, I love the "here's some ads, pay money to make them stop" thing. I mean, of course you'd have to workaround AdBlock and the like, but still.

I really do hope that you keep the premium and free versions inline with each other, as far as the webapp goes.

Ameya 17. Sep 2007

I really like ToDOist and I might upgrade to the premium version for the Reminders.

One thing i wanted to say is that you need to make it easier for people to know there is a Premium version.

A problem I had was the link to "Upgrade now" only works if you're in the popup and not if you've opened the page to a new tab. It took me a while to figure out that the upgrade option is hidden in Preferences.

jon 23. Mar 2009: congratulations, i hope i can find my own business model and be profitable too :)