You don't have to be rich to invest in innovation

What if a little site you love doesn't have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn't take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero.

via blog.pinboard.in

I came across this post by Pinboard guy Maciej Ceglowski via Marco Arment's blog. It's a great post, because it's 100% true, at least for me. Let me explain.

I pay $5 per month for Evernote Premium. The free, basic version of the service is more than enough to do what I need. The extra features are wonderful, but I don't really need any of them. In other words, I don't pay for Evernote Premium to use Evernote Premium.

I pay for Evernote Premium because Evernote in general adds so much value to my daily life. I use it for short-term stuff like grocery lists to long-term stuff like backing up my blogs in real-time. That's just the beginning. I have filters in Gmail that automatically forward bill notifications and e-commerce receipts into my Evernote account. I record bits of guitar and piano music so I can go back later and decide if they're worth pursuing. I collect research for blog posts and school papers in it for easy cataloging. The list goes on and on and on.

I pay $5 every month because Evernote is worth that much, with or without its premium feature set. I love seeing stories about the company's profitability, subsequent hiring spree, and their expected return to profitability. I consider the subscription fee my way of investing a tiny bit in a tech company provides users with so much value.

I pay because it makes me feel good, I guess. It's a strange thing to think about, but it's true. That $5 goes a long way in aggregate, and it's an easy way to show my support.

What otherwise-free service are you willing to pay for?

This was originally posted to joeross.posterous.com.