I run https://aliveai.app a large uncensored (i.e. adult) AI image and video generator.

It started as a small side project but slowly grew every month and recently exploded to well over 50k USD revenue per month. It's fun to have a large community of paying users but honestly I never thought out of all my side projects this one will make it.

I am still a one man show managing everything from development, marketing, customer support and content moderation. If I am honest the money is nice but I am severely burnt out and not sure if I can or want to do this much longer. It is a 24/7 job and I miss the days where I can just sit down and code a nice feature that people will like. Also looking at NSFW content all day kind of messes with your mental health.

I had some discussions of potential buyers but selling something for less than its monthly revenue seems crazy so I am still here trying to do my best and waiting for the right exit.

Hey! Would you consider trialing some help, even part-time initially, and pro-bono, to see how it goes? As a developer since childhood, and product manager for most of my career, with (I dare say) some out-of-the-box, simplicity, "cheap is best" professional deviation, and sex-positivity in my personal and artistic life, maybe there's something we can get together on? Give me a shout! zenojevski at gmail dot com, or https slash slash zeno dot love. At the very least we can have some fun and maybe keep writing :D Zeno

Have you considered hiring someone to reduce the load of repetitive tasks?

For a while I was looking for a non-technical co-founder, but I found it difficult to find someone who is both skilled and motivated in the adult content domain.

I am currently rewriting the user role and permission system with the goal of introducing a moderator role in the future that has limited, moderator-only access rights. At the moment, there are only admin and regular user roles.

Even with this in place I am unsure where to advertise for an NSFW content moderator position.

That's interesting! I didn't know this could be such a barrier. Is this because of the potential impact on mental health? Or just because people wouldn't like to be publicly associated with NSFW content in any way?

While job hunting years ago, I got approached by a company running adult websites. They seemed to be pretty relaxed about it and they were multiple candidates for the position. There were advertising through LinkedIn as just any similar small business.

5 years working in adult on the tech side. Username at gmail.

Hi dubme1, ping me info at "eez" + "ness" dot com, re: convo on sale options.

wish you a good exit and return back to days when you did that: "I miss the days where I can just sit down and code a nice feature that people will like"

Thank you for the post. It once again reminded me how important it is to choose a pet project that aligns with your personal values.

I am looking at the content for moderation purposes and customer support. Not sure why saying that this affects me mentally should be a bad thing.

Also maybe you missunderstood what AliveAi.app is. It is strictly a on-platform AI generation. We do not allow editing of user uploaded content (i.e. deepfake) for obvious reasons.

“ I am looking at the content for moderation purposes and customer support.” Commendable to roll up your sleeves and wade through the mess you created I suppose.

“We do not allow editing of user uploaded content” Wait until you find out how these models are trained!

Why should he be shameful. Porn is considered entertainment industry. People use technology to do whatever they want dude. Its not like he is using it to kill someone.

Seriously, there are way too many Whiners on HN

Working on https://aliveai.app/. It is a simple wrapper frontend around a complex ComfyUI workflow. There is a lot of different things you can generate with StableDiffusion but I wanted to make it as easy as possible to create photo-realistic images of people.

The App is mostly being used for generating NSFW images though (which is ok).

If you imagine some people recommending this to their colleagues for work purposes, you might consider adding a 'hide NSFW' toggle, and having it turned on by default.

Paid Kagi user here. I REALLY wish Kagi would focus on it's core selling point: search. Building a search engine is hard enough. I use Kagi Search everyday and I am mostly happy with it but the product has a lot of room for improvment.

Stop launching new products (browser, summarizer, gpt, assistant) while your core product is still behind the competition in many areas.

To me it seems like that's what they're doing here. I don't see right away how this is not their core business.

> Kagi Assistant has the ability to use Kagi Search to source the highest quality information meaning that its responses are grounded in the most up-to-date factual information while disregarding most “spam” and “made for advertising” sites with our unique ranking algorithm and user search personalizations on top.

You have to pay extra for it, so it can't be part of the core business.

Paid Kagi user here. I love the AI additions, because to me it's an alternate interface to the core selling point: search.

Whether or not Kagi can achieve more than the "search alone is hard enough" point however is fair - though i've been happy so far.

Same. I love the AI additions and I think they've introduced them very thoughtfully.

To me, the best part of the AI additions is that it can (almost instantaneously) summarize information from the several top hits of a search. This is subtly but importantly different from having the LLM spit out an answer based on it's knowledge base, and also is able to quickly and easily cite it's sources! Extremely useful to me.

Agreed! To me LLMs as they stand now are a natural extension of the classic "Google". Which is to say a Natural Language -> Search Results list. People (and products lol) got hung up on LLMs returning the answers directly.. and while they've been a definite disappointment in that realm, they can be great for summarizing and aggregating imo.

I couldn't disagree any harder. When I can't find an answer, I turn to LLMs. I don't want to read half the docs on an AWS product, I want the snippet of code that I care about. Kagi, as best as I can tell, is the only search service which can answer these questions and also respects me as a customer.

I think of it this way: there's often not a single page (or even small handful of pages) that answer a query. The LLM features answer the question with text that links to the pages, rather than answering my question with pages that might contain pieces of answers.

The AI additions IMHO are search. Historically search gave us an ordered list of results, but there's no reason it needs to. The Kagi quick answer for example is phenomenal IMHO. Most of the time I am searching is because I need information for something. The "quick answer" and it's source citing can much more quickly tell me whether the results are worth a click. At this point I would hate to return to the old list of links output.

I think the problem is we're blending two different methodologies for finding information. When I search for something I want to get to the source. Others just want the answer. Ideally it should still be smart enough to figure that out, kinda what it does already if you search with a question.

If you hear Vlad talk it's very clear that he considers these things to be part of that core product. The summarizer powers the ability to summarize articles / search results (even video), the assistant and fastgpt power their answer to Google's snippets and quick answers, small-web is the minimum-useful thing to start their own index and not have to pay rent to Bing/Google, and they view Orion to be a long-term bet on the belief that this is the only way they'll get Kagi as a default search engine.

Great points. Though I think in order for any search to become a default in some browser app would take a billion or so in competing annual payment, or Google it will remain.

Also, AI aside, Searx has been around for many years as a very promising metasearch, even self-hosted engine, alas still little traction. Great to have all results, including re-ranked Google and Reddit in one place.

> while your core product is still behind the competition in many areas

IDK, I've been very happy with it. Just the ability to consistently pin/block domains is a massive upgrade over Google.

The move to AI stuff is why I don’t have a Kagi subscription. I really liked the idea of paying for search. I don’t want to give any money to an AI product.

I for one cancelled my Kagi subscription over this nonsense. I like paying for my search, but the AI "quick answer" integration is dangerously prone to incorrectly cited hallucinations, and I don't want to encourage this kind of irresponsible use of technology

I think this is very much about search. They just took on what Perplexity is doing with search. And I'm glad because I've been using it occasionally and now I can just keep everything in Kagi.

They're literally taking on competition here.

In my opinion, the results from Kagi Assistants are significantly inferior. I'm subscribed to both services and tried the Ultimate tier for a few days two weeks ago to test the new assistants. If they add the ability to search with multiple steps and allow the AI to digest more results, then they could be on par. It's more similar to ChatGPT at this stage, IMO.

> core selling point: search

The people I know who like to dictate into their phones and who have OpenAI's iOS app tend to open ChatGPT to "search" before they open Google or Ask Siri now.

They're going to go to one thing first, and this puts Kagi as an option.

Apple's alleged integration with OpenAI is presumably rolling in to Sherlock this though.

Why should they try to reach feature parity with some other engine that has more developers and more money? That's a losing strategy. They are running their own race and I think it's great. Kagi assistant is incredibly useful and there's no one else doing it like Kagi.

I think AI capabilities have been becoming an integral part of modern search. On the flip side you have the SEO optimizations.

Brave Search has offered an AI summarizer and assistant for a long time now. Bing with their OpenAI-powered Copilot. Google with the improved Bard/Gemini more recently. Amazon with the perhaps Anthropic-based Q for Business.

I think the end user is growing to expect the AI-augmented experience from all knowledge lookups. Feedback loop queries have become so natural to me, I’ve been finding it awkward to ask only one search query without a narrowing follow-up query, having the former discarded - kinda no longer adequate, particularly given the SEO-optimized flip side full of junk.

I agree that they should focus on their core product, but ironically while I use Kagi from time to time, I'm still mostly on DDG- via Orion, a browser I'm willing to pay for.

> while your core product is still behind the competition in many areas.

Care to explain what exactly do you mean by this?

paying user here and i love these new additions and am super grateful they have added them. these tools are a real boon to improving search and for getting information.

Mine too. Finance?

yes

SoundCloud does have a donate button. At least in the sense that an artist can setup a paypal button that shows up on their profile.

I have created something similar with SoundRat (https://soundrat.com) that connects more with the patreon-like features and makes listening of music free but gives fans an option to donate to artists and get some perks for doing so.

I meant like a patreon model, where I can donate $5 recurring and it bundles with my soundcloud monthly payment.

Hey you can browse the platform without registering. The "discover artist" button takes you to https://soundrat.com/discover where you can listen to some of the highlighted artists. Or you can also click on any artist profile on the landing page.

You can do and see most features without an account. Hope this helps

One of my core points is that listeners can enjoy the music for free and without requiring to sign up for something. I do not see myself enforcing a paywall after a certain number of plays on a song or album.

However, I could see adding a notification or achievement after listening to an artists music a lot. This way we could remind the user to support the artists work.

A notification seems like it would be a great idea. Users could ignore it and carry on with with the free listening premise. But the very existence of the platform seems to be based on the fact that listeners will choose to support artists, so a notification to support will probably appreciated and heeded by listeners.

SoundCloud has a great discover feature and I used to use it a lot. However, recently as a listener I find it unusable with all the constant audio advertisement I get. On SoundRat there are no advertisement.

The newly added support button on SoundCloud is just a PayPal button as far as I know and does not integrate within the platform. I want to integrate the support feature as a core part of SoundRat and let supporters stand out as loyal fans. Lastly, I have been working on this before SoundCloud announced their support button ;)

Can't believe I didn't notice this before. Thanks I fixed it :)

Hey HN

I listen to a lot of music from small and independent artists. People who just do music for the fun and love of it.

I have always wished there was a simple way for me to show my appreciation for their work and support their projects. Sure I can buy their digital music (which I do!) but I was hoping to support them in a more personal way.

That's why I created SoundRat. On SoundRat anyone can upload their own music and let their fans listen to it without requiring listeners to have an account or pay for something up front. Fans can stand out and support their favorite artists through payments. When sending a payment they can attach a personal message to the artist and supporters get some "perks" such as being able to download songs and get access to lyrics.

I was planning to highlight some more artists and add a couple more feature before announcing the website. However, seeing as Spotify recently announced their way of letting fans support artists (US & UK only) I thought I shouldn't wait longer.

Let's be upfront about the most important points of the terms and conditions:

- Artists own their music. I only need the right to host the music.

- SoundRat takes 6% on all payments. This is used to pay for the servers. I believe this is a fair number

I have been working on SoundRat for the past few months and doing it learned a lot from audio encoding to payment integration (It is way easier to accept payments than processing payouts to users!)

I hope to offer artists a different way of sharing their music and connect with their fans.

Let me know what you think!

> SoundRat takes 6% on all payments. This is used to pay for the servers. I believe this is a fair number

If you really want to be fairer than the competition, be transparent about costs and profit margin. Just stating that 6% seems fair reeks of rent-seeking. This might not be what musicians and fans want, and it won't differentiate your service from Spotify.

> perks […] get access to lyrics.

You will need to come up with better perks than that. The lyrics for any moderately popular song can be found on-line at a click.

Thanks for your feedback. I believe 6% is lower than selling on iTunes, Bandcamp and co. With this number I do not think I can run this (any time soon) as a full time business but that is not my goal right now. I hope to use this percentage to cover some or all of the costs.

I did this for fun and for my interest in listening and discovering small artists.

> I hope to use this percentage to cover some or all of the costs.

I don't think the commenter above was trying to make out that 6% is not fair, just that they'd like to see the breakdown of this percentage covering some or all of the costs.

iTunes, Bandcamp and co. might not offer that breakdown, so you're definitely not worse, but it would be a really nice differentiator.

I disagree about the breakdown. I think the vast majority of people are going to go with their gut feel in whether or not the cut sounds reasonable. Reasonable and fair being the goal but evaluation of what is reason and fair from consumers is almost always subjective. The breakdown is going to change when features of the service change, maybe quality is upped and costs rise or a host of other things change. I think from a marketing perspective "this is less than anyone else takes and it allows us to provide the service" is enough.

I agree with parent. If you do this "for fun" then approach it as a non-profit organization, i.e. with full transparency.

Kudos for delivering, very nice site. It's basically like Bandcamp? Maybe it would be good to tag artists by genre, to help discoverability.

Who are your competitors?

Definitely Bandcamp. I have used it a lot to support artists I like. However, the way I use Bandcamp I never think of it as a music streaming site. I usually download my songs and listen to it offline. On SoundRat I support continuous music streaming while browsing the site with the music player in the footer.

I also would like to experiment with some new ways for artists to connect with their supporters that is not possible on Bandcamp right now. Supporters can send a personal message to the artists when donating and leave comments on songs. I think there are some more "perks" that I can support in the future.

Comments on songs are not currently supported by Bandcamp, but I think their implementation of comments make sense: users can recommend songs at the album level rather than per song, so that all rave and rants about a particular album's contents can be found together rather than pieced apart in each song's download page. SoundCloud chose to go to an even more granular level and allow comments to be placed within a track's duration, and then also comments below each track. Both are interesting methods of offering a community.

Another form of community-building is what Beatport did, which encouraged remixes by offering stems and integrating with software that the artists used.

Another indie music site is good news; I remember fondly finding some good music on Amie Street before Amazon gobbled them up.

I would encourage you to check out the Bandcamp mobile apps. They allow the exact functionality you describe, of "continuous music streaming while browsing." You may be focusing on users like yourself who primarily interact with a desktop website, and download purchased music to a computer. I would urge you to consider the mobile-first use case, as this is how the trend in the market is going.