44000 Users! How to monetize?

Hello IH,

A few months ago I created widgetbox.app as a fun side project. In last few weeks I saw an explosion in the user signups and just crossed 44000 users as of Oct 19th.

This is a free service and it is increasingly becoming difficult for me to keep it up and running because of API and infrastructure costs.

I'm writing this post to request some ideas from the community on how to keep it up and running.

Couple of options I'm thinking about:

1. Ask users (send a survey) if they are willing to pay a very low monthly fee (say 0.99$ / month) from here on to keep the service up and running - Make it premium, set a cutoff date for upgrade.

2. Build premium widgets and make only those paid - This might be hard to do and I'm not sure how many would signup.

Any feedback and ideas are appreciated. What would you do if you're in this situation?

Thanks