I’ve been working on this VPN website for about 2 weeks now. I’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s taking a lot longer than I thought.
Initially, I thought I could make a simple webpage, add some Stripe functionality, and share it and start collecting payments.
However, the more I think about the business model (and potential reputation always risk if this doesn’t work out!), the more I realize I need to accomplish.
Also, on deeper examination of the tools and knowledge required, I’ve had to do a lot more catching up.
I’ve come up with a lot of various functionalities for this VPN business that I think are required for it to be fully functional. However, in the interest of shipping fast, I’ve split up the tasks into 3 launch phases.
Beta launch for close friends
- Setup my own VPN through GCP (done)
- Create landing page for $9 VPN – burningvpn.com (done)
- Add Stripe payments (done)
- Add a way to contact me (done)
- Add promo codes functionality
- Buy domain – about $25 for 2 years (done)
- Setup email address with domain (done)
- Build confirmation page (done)
- Automate distribution of VPN credentials and downloads after a user first subscribes
- Save subscription data onto Google App Engine
- Learn how to use Google Cloud SQL
V1 launch
- Add account management capability
- User sign up and authentication – email
- Subscription cancellation
- Add clarity that user will be charged monthly, in perpetuity
- Build a way to automatically switch IPs
V2 launch
- User sign up and authentication – other methods:
- Alipay
- Phone number
- Add more payment abilities:
- Different currencies
- WeChat + Alipay
- Let users see subscription history