I was contacted by a large company last week asking for changes to be made. This prompted me to go check the DB, analytics etc and I see its being used a lot.
I've (as of today) stuck a sponsorship link on it. Any suggestions as to how else I can monetise?
That means you make the core software open, but you sell the features that businesses will pay for or that allow other people to make money. Think of it as two distinct products for two distinct userbases.
In effect, the open source software becomes lead gen; the closed software is your actual business. They're both integral, and obviously feed into each other, but most of your open source users will never, ever be customers.
Assuming that's a go, then decide how it should be paid for. You have the option of time based (hourly/daily/weekly rates) payment, where you should charge the higher of what's normal for your area or the potential client's.
Or a project-based payment. If you're new to this, and it sounds like you are, I would stay away from this. Done right, you can make far more than time-based billing, but it takes experience to get it right.
Never forget: profitable businesses have money and expect to use it to get what they want. Despite what other comments say, it's exceptionally unlikely that they expect you to do it for free. They expect a bill that's at least a month of a developer's fully burdened salary.
After you've gone through this experience, you may have a better idea if it's something other businesses are likely to ask for. If so, make sure you indicate on the site that customizations are available.
For this single large company enquiry, don't worry about monetising the app yet. Having a single license sold is not really monetisation.
Think about it as a consulting gig on making changes to an OS project. The fact that you are the maintainer is a knowledge and familiarity advantage, not a control one.
Work out how much time it will take to make the changes, double it, and send them a quote. If they buy, make the changes, push an update, and invoice.
Take your time to decide how to monetise the product. For now, just get a good fee for your time. See if you fall back into the project before focussing too much on the business side.
Another was what became Certify The Web, which is now the most popular UI for automated certificate management on Windows and is most definitely now a commercial product (but 90% of users use the free version). I originally had a donate button and did get a couple of donations, maybe 4 or 5.
It was getting thousands of downloads per week and the company I was working for went into administration, so on the same day I added a Paypal button to the website for people to buy a license key and got my first sale later that evening. It's now had around 10K customers over 7 years and they renew their license key each year. Some people/companies do indeed want support and updates (I offer email support only, or there is a community forum). Nowadays most purchase via Stripe,
Look up COSS and Open Core to get an idea of how others have monetized.
[^1]: https://polar.sh/
Community funding is a great starting point. Set up a GitHub Sponsors account or use platforms like Open Collective or Ko-fi. Many developers are happy to support projects they find useful. You can check the open source repo with Sponsors enabled.
I have seen a monetization case from a popular Chrome extension - I cant remember the extact name. While free for users, it displays sponsor logos in its GitHub repo and within the extension itself.
Finally, take inspiration from Tailwind CSS, which is a famous open source project. They offer Tailwind UI, a paid, advanced component library built on their free core framework.
From my personal experience, monetizing a SaaS project isn't easy, but it's certainly possible. However, establishing a steady income stream is a different case altogether.
Good luck! Look forward to hearing more your experiences from this!
" How does this product make money? It doesn't. Making money isn't the point of this product. "
Usually the case that people set out with lofty ambitions of being above the money, but this changes when something gets popular.
I wouldn't recommend you start selling support tiers and you don't need to start selling a "product" here. Just give them a rate you're comfortable with.
Where are you at in all this? Are you already a contractor with existing processes, relationships, and infrastructure for negotiating contracts, getting paid, and supporting large companies? Have you already paid the dumb tax beginning contractors pay for things learned the hard way?
How much money do you need to support the project long term? Does the person who asked for changes have a budget and the discretion to pay you? Good luck.
Companies will almost never sponsor you if they get the product for free. We're using open source DBs, analytics tools, libraries, etc. and we're paying nothing for them.
I have a small project that gets a few thousand hits per month, and get a few coffees every other month.