ReaderFunded: https://readerfunded.com The idea: almost everything on the web is free, and most of it is worth about what it costs. A site that a stranger has paid for, even a dollar, has cleared a bar almost nothing online clears. So I built a search engine where that is the main ranking input. How it decides a site is "funded": the site has to link to its Patreon, Ko-fi, Substack, Liberapay, Steady, GitHub Sponsors or similar page, and that page has to name the site back. Both directions, with a source and a date, re-checked monthly. One direction alone is not enough, which is how I keep people from claiming a site that isn't theirs. Ranking is normal text search with the funding on top, so a page still has to be about what you typed, and a site with more paying readers gets a bounded nudge up, never a free pass. Every result links to the site's page with the evidence: which funding pages, verified when, how many people pay. Where it is now: 4.6 million pages across 35,000 funded sites. Buy Me a Coffee 15,500, Patreon 13,500, YouTube 7,900, GitHub Sponsors 4,200, Substack 1,700, Ko-fi 1,600. Stack: Kotlin and one SQLite file, about 68 GB, on a desktop under my desk, Cloudflare tunnel in front. No LLM in the ranking, no ads, no accounts, one person. Running cost is electricity and a domain. What it is not good at yet: paywalled sites with no public funding page, sites funded only by ads or sponsorships, and queries about this week's news, where it can hand you a good site's 2021 article. Try a topic you know well and tell me what you would change in the results, which sites are missing or which should rank higher. That helps me more than hearing what already works.ReaderFunded: https://readerfunded.com The idea: almost everything on the web is free, and most of it is worth about what it costs. A site that a stranger has paid for, even a dollar, has cleared a bar almost nothing online clears. So I built a search engine where that is the main ranking input. How it decides a site is "funded": the site has to link to its Patreon, Ko-fi, Substack, Liberapay, Steady, GitHub Sponsors or similar page, and that page has to name the site back. Both directions, with a source and a date, re-checked monthly. One direction alone is not enough, which is how I keep people from claiming a site that isn't theirs. Ranking is normal text search with the funding on top, so a page still has to be about what you typed, and a site with more paying readers gets a bounded nudge up, never a free pass. Every result links to the site's page with the evidence: which funding pages, verified when, how many people pay. Where it is now: 4.6 million pages across 35,000 funded sites. Buy Me a Coffee 15,500, Patreon 13,500, YouTube 7,900, GitHub Sponsors 4,200, Substack 1,700, Ko-fi 1,600. Stack: Kotlin and one SQLite file, about 68 GB, on a desktop under my desk, Cloudflare tunnel in front. No LLM in the ranking, no ads, no accounts, one person. Running cost is electricity and a domain. What it is not good at yet: paywalled sites with no public funding page, sites funded only by ads or sponsorships, and queries about this week's news, where it can hand you a good site's 2021 article. Try a topic you know well and tell me what you would change in the results, which sites are missing or which should rank higher. That helps me more than hearing what already works.   submitted by   /u/geogeorgi [link]   [comments]