<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: mogrinz</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mogrinz</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:51:09 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=mogrinz" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mogrinz in "I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The site is localendar.com (you can reach me through the Contact Form there and I can share more financials). Short version: I started back in '99. There were no good calendaring engines back then so I had to build my own (with wicked performance btw ;)). The site is Java/SQL Server. It's sticky b/c it targeted webmasters who needed an easy-to-update calendar for their own site.<p>The original goal was to aggregate all these local events into a single searchable index and serve up local ads alongside. I never really got that part to take off, though I did get a very early patent for local search on the web. Since then, calendaring libs have come along which allowed many site-builder tools to offer a built-in solution.<p>The primary reasons for declines are 0) Not as many people build raw sites anymore; people migrate to things like Wordpress or Wix) 1) Google showing less profitable ads and 2) Webmasters w/ a popular site can remove ads via a subscription (which are drastically underpriced; some are still on a legacy $9.95/year). Everything is exportable (and importable) via iCal if desired. Buyer gets everything, w/ no residual royalties to me. I'd have to have an active role in the handover since it's all bespoke code. The buyer would need some level of Java+T-SQL since I don't want to teach coding from scratch.<p>I love my users and many rely heavily on the site - it's meant to be very simple to use and I tend to draw an older demographic that doesn't need a lot of fancy bells and whistles. 26+ years is a lot of time and I don't have the passion for it I used to. I had a recent health issue and my wife is concerned that she wouldn't know how to close this out gracefully if the worst ever happened.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:13:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925177</link><dc:creator>mogrinz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925177</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925177</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by mogrinz in "I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have a calendaring site (won't mention it here b/c I don't want to be seen as plugging it) that has been generating revenue from ads and subscriptions for 26 years now. At its peak, well over 100k/yr but now more like 15k/yr for the past 5 years. Still a very steady income b/c the site is sticky. The only expense I have is about $3k every 36/mo for VPS hosting. At this point the code base is so mature that I only do minimal user support. I've looked into selling but people only want to offer 2x annual revenue. Why would I do that when I can just hold onto it for another year? I wish more people saw the math your way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:41:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921448</link><dc:creator>mogrinz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921448</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921448</guid></item></channel></rss>