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How would you monetize this web tool?
I run https://colorsandfonts.com, a free tool for exploring color palettes. I launched it in 2019 and have kept it free ever since.
The site gets consistent organic traffic and is frequently shared among designers and frontend devs. Over the years, a lot of people have told me “you should monetize this,” but the suggestions are all over the place, ads, subscriptions, one-time purchases, templates, etc.
My hesitation is that the tool is intentionally simple, fast, and no-nonsense. I don’t want to ruin it with dark patterns, aggressive paywalls, or useless “pro” features.
For those who’ve monetized dev/design tools:
- - What models actually worked for you?
- - At what point did monetization start hurting the product?
- - Would you even monetize something like this, or keep it free and build around it?
Looking for practical takes, not theory. Happy to hear hard truths.
Thank you in advance and have a good day!
/mike
/mike
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Haven’t monetized such a tool but perhaps non Intrusive banner ads from a network not Google may be best. Or sponsored ads, meaning you work with individual advertisers directly.
Other ways are to use it as a traffic funnel for other paid apps or services, or affiliate links like Amazon.
i am using for a funnel actually to
#lexingtonthemes, it comes traffic but not a big deal.
if I add ads they wont pay much anymore...
Traffic funnel for this particular one. Send people from this site to a paid product. I would never pay for a color palette generator thing on its own, screams "free tool"
I think the best you can do is add ads if it has traffic
This. You use it as a source of traffic for another product. Don’t monetize it directly
currently doing that, takes traffic to
#lexingtonthemes but is not much, is too little
hey Ben, yes I am doing to that, the traffic comes to
#lexingtonthemes , but is not significant...
Take this with a grain of salt because I'm more of a brand, content, and SEO strategist + copywriter more than a product maker (though I'm learning!). I'd recommend not actually monetizing the tool, but monetizing the audience.
If you add friction to using your tool, people will just go elsewhere because there are tons of free palette generators so why wouldn't they. But if you already have something people trust, you could add something like "get the full UI kit" button that leads people to a paid pack of Figma components, Framer templates, or CSS themes already styled with those exact colors. This requires knowing your audience and knowing what they use the palettes for, though.
I'm not sure how or if that's possible to automate this, but I'm thinking of ways you can take an existing audience and continue to remove friction for them by using your tools -- in this case, removing the necessity for them to apply the palette they've generated for free by themselves.
Hey Cat, I currently have that, a link to
#lexingtonthemes , but there's not much traffic coming from there sadly...
I did decide to not monetize it, I mean, its been since 2019 free anyways, also because I came to same conclusion, there's 1000s of free tools and makes no sense...
Something I did do is double down on value, I added an MCP so people can use it in their IDE, is a local MCP so far... it's also ready for mcp apps, which it shows a ui where supported and ppl can click on the ai chat....
Thank you for comment, appreciate it!