Regarding the utility of it, hopefully it will prove itself. The idea is to make the whole process of replicating someone else's project as frictionless as possible and to encourage designers to properly document their bill of materials in a standard way.
Kitnic.it is completely funded by me for now. Here is a break down of costs I put in my
presentation at FOSDEM.
| Item | Cost |
|--------------------+-------|
| Google Web Store | $5 |
| Contractor's time | $2500 |
| Free PCB promotion | $500 |
| Domain names | $20 |
| Hosting | $0 |
| Kaspar's time | ??? |
As I add features the hosting costs are going to go up (they are actually already a few bucks a month now as I am experimenting with more server intensive things). To make it more sustainable and try and compensate myself for the time spent I will firstly be adding referral tracking to PCB batching services: alongside the "download gerbers" links you will see "order at OshPark" or "order at PCBway" links and Kitnic.it will get a cut of the sales price if you order through those.
Longer term, if there are enough people using the site, it could be worth tracking referrals on individual component purchases as well. Aside from that it might be worth offering, paid for, private hosting for company internal projects.
On the whole I have designed Kitnic.it to have a low maintenance burden and I think I have a pretty good track record of maintaining these projects, even without pay. The first commit to the browser extension was in June 2015!