Dear Tastoid users,
It is with a heavy heart that I am temporarily shutting down Tastoid. The decision was not an easy one to make as I invested a lot of time and energy in this project since 2018 (so almost 6 years now). But at the end of the day, as a solo developer, I can no longer afford the server costs ($300 per month). I plan to take a break and hopefully start exploring ways to monetise the project at my own pace without the financial stress. So, there is a good chance that I will revive the project in the future. My deepest thanks to our wonderful community and to our supporters! 😢
You can learn more below. For any queries, you can contact me at support@tastoid.com.
Sincerely,
Having a great product is not the only thing that ultimately makes a company successful.
This is the hard lesson I learnt. What I missed when working on my project is envisioning it as a business rather than a hobby and seeking external sources of financing, as well as building a solid monetisation plan ahead of launching.
Despite opening last month a Patreon and seeking users’ financial support (as did successfully Backloggd), this was not sufficient to cover the server costs. During the lifetime of the project, the total revenue generated is ~30 euros (these are the ad revenues)… I tried to explore options to lower my costs (which are already low for comparable services) but high computing power is needed for the constantly growing database, the advanced search function and the recommendation algorithm.
I still believe in Tastoid and the positive testimonies received from users corroborates my feeling. So, as of now, this closure is meant to be temporary.
I have some ideas to find sources of financing. I plan to reach out to investors and explore B2B opportunities (like selling an API to services that needs accurate recommendations). If, by chance I’m able to generate sustainable revenues, please be assured that I will relaunch Tastoid. But, again, at this stage, I cannot make any promises. Also, another lead is launching a mobile app. 71% of Tastoid traffic is from mobile, and there is a big demand for mobile apps. I even managed to create a working prototype in two weeks.
Finally, I want to reiterate: I kept a backup of the database, so theoretically, I can revive Tastoid at any time.
I started my passion project back in college in 2018 and learnt by myself programming. My idea was to create a recommendation website for movies and TV shows. I was so passionate about that idea to the point that I dedicated countless hours coding and searching about algorithms.
After two years of development, Tastoid was launched in October 2020.
The main differentiating factors? A lot of effort was spent on honing the recommendation engine, to the point that I feel it is superior to the other similar popular websites. It assigns tags to movies and TV shows to accurately describe the mood, plot, etc. and based on that classification, recommendations are generated. Also, Tastoid proudly provided for free features that are paying on other apps (such as advanced search filters).
A lot of changes and enhancements were made with expansions to offer other categories (music and books). The traffic spiked in 2023, with more and more users subscribing to the website, which is a testament to the quality of the recommendations.
86,000
1m 28s
664,973 movies, shows, albums and books logged by users
131,402 movies
33,661 TV shows
50,754 music albums
19,146 books
47,417,076 tags assigned to movies, shows, albums and books
Thank you for being part of our community! Stay tuned for updates, and thank you for your understanding and continued support!