Apify will sponsor your project: Sherlock Actor on Apify infrastructure

[netmilk]

Dear Sherlock maintainers,

I have wrapped Sherlock as an Apify Actor by adding the Actor definition in the .actor directory and published the Sherlock Actor on Apify Store a while ago. I've also added the Actor status badge and a brief usage description to the README, including the “Run on Apify” button that can drive further adoption.

The Sherlock actor is used by ~200 unique users per month, with a total of around 800 users. For the full description of the Actor, please see the README file in the .actor directory.

Sherlock can now be used in the cloud without installation, free of charge. Even less technical users can avoid managing Python environment locally. The Actor can be used either from Apify Console, API, or CLI locally:

apify call netmilk/sherlock -i '{
  "usernames": ["johndoe", "janedoe"]
}'

Please see another open-source Actor example in the Docling project for further inspiration.

Apify will sponsor your project

All the links to Apify in this PR are affiliate links under the Apify open source fair share program with id sherlock in the passive tier of the program. In the passive tier, Apify commits to sending a monthly commission via the GitHub Sponsor button from all new sign-ups that come through your link. In your case distributed evenly to @sdushantha, @ppfeister, and @matheusfelipeog. The only action required on your part is to accept this pull request.

You can earn a larger commission and gain insights into traffic by registering directly with Apify, claiming ownership of the Actor on the Apify Store, and maintaining the Actor yourself. Simply contact support after signing up and pass the ownership challenge. The Actor will then be transferred, e.g., to sherlock-project/sherlock, and you’ll see it under your Apify account.

To further increase your income from Apify, you can convert your Actor on Apify Store to the pay-per-event pricing model and join the active developer tier. We offer an individual competitive advantage for the active developer tier in the form of either a significantly reduced Apify margin or discounted compute unit pricing. Feel free to ask for it!

Benefits of the Actor Programming Model

The Web Actor Programming Model is a new concept for building serverless microapps, which are easy to develop, share, integrate, and build upon. Actors are a reincarnation of the UNIX philosophy for programs running in the cloud. Actors are web automation tools that are easy to integrate and scale up. The main benefit is that even a small piece of software can be turned into a public cloud service in a heartbeat.

Apify is the largest ecosystem where developers build, deploy, and publish data extraction, web automation tools, and AI agents. With over 4,000 Actors on Apify Store and 10 years of experience in the market, Apify makes Sherlock accessible to over 250,000 developers using the platform monthly. This also enables integration with other Actors on Store, custom Actors, and platform integrations that can create much more powerful workflows than just individual parts.

Full disclosure

I work at Apify. Apify doesn’t sell your software, but we sell the computing resources needed to run your software in the cloud to the end users. Your project is one of the first we selected to pilot Apify's open source fair share program. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you accept this PR! If you do, we’d be pleased to feature your project in our marketing communication.

If you have any questions or need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to me @netmilk, on LinkedIn, or just write us to open-source@apify.com. We're always excited to work with the open source community! There's definitely room for improvement regarding performance, error handling, coverage of the Sherlock CLI parameters and release management, Apify proxies usage.

[matheusfelipeog]

Hi, @netmilk. Thank you very much for opening this PR, providing detailed explanations, and for your interest in supporting the project. We truly appreciate it ❤️

I just read more about Apify and the Actors whitepaper, and it looks great, well structured and solid. Congratulations on the project, and I hope it continues to grow.

I find the possibility of using the Sherlock project in the cloud in a simplified way particularly interesting. It could expand the user base for those who don’t want to deal with the technical aspects of a local execution and reduce the number of related issues, even though it has already become easier nowadays.

I’m not sure if I missed something, but the sponsorship and user access part wasn’t entirely clear to me. Would it be based on user sign-ups on the Apify platform, for example, using the free tier (with $5 per month for free) to run the Sherlock Actor? Would that be the expected flow?

Also, I’m not sure if having a dedicated section for Apify in the README.md would be the best approach. Maybe just having a one-click button in the header, similar to what the Docling project has? And for more details, perhaps a section in the documentation named "Using in the Cloud", with Apify as an option? Similar to Docling’s documentation. This could also be a place to list other platforms where Sherlock could be integrated and used.

@sdushantha @ppfeister What do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

[netmilk]

Hey @matheusfelipeog, it means the world to me that you like the idea. Thank you for letting us know and for giving the whitepaper a read! I'm excited.

The passive tier of the fair share works similarly to general affiliate programs:

• The unique sherlock link will set cookies when users visit Apify from the Sherlock project.
• If they sign up, you’ll receive $0.10 for every $1 they spend during their first three months on Apify, and $0.20 after that.
• This does not include spending from the freemium $5 you mentioned as that is purely our cost. The commission is on the spending your project brings to Apify. This includes spending from the freemium $5 you mentioned (with anti-fraud measures in place).
• We'll send the commission through the GitHub Sponsors program each month. No action is required on your part other than accepting this PR.
• If you sign up for Apify, claim the Actor on Apify, maintain it yourself, and provide your business details, you'll receive a 10% higher commission via the payment method of your choice against an invoice.
• The referral works even outside of GitHub (e.g., YouTube, LinkedIn).

While I’m happy to revise the PR based on your preferences, I believe it's in your best interest to keep Apify prominently featured in the README. I’d suggest keeping the “Run on Apify” button and/or the copy-paste friendly code snippet, as they are self-explanatory and can drive the Developer Experience of your project. I'd suggest reviewing it after a few months when you (we) see how it performs and after we try to market it.

Please let me know if this explanation helps clarify how the Apify open source fair share program works. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need any additional information or assistance from me. I'm looking forward to it!

EDIT: I corrected my mistake about the commission on freemium.

[netmilk]

One more, slightly controversial thing. I've come across this super rude Reddit post mentioning the Sherlock project.

Apify solves that problem for them! Apify brings your software to non-developers (or non-coding developers) with a generated UI and results available to download. That makes the community of your potential users much bigger, making your software more accessible with close to zero investment. Maybe the UI might also be a way of promoting the Sherlock Actor in your documentation.

Based on my own experience with Apify’s user personas, members of the global OSINT community that often feature your project in their pipelines even outside of Apify, are often low/no-code users.

Input

Output

Export

[ppfeister]

After reading through everything, I can't think of any real downsides. I just tried the actor to feel things out, and UX wise, it can't get much easier. Far more welcoming and far less intimidating to low/no-code than the old Google Cloud method everyone used to use.

If one of us claim the actor and maintain it ourselves (with the extra 10%), would payment be directed to the account holder only, or could that person opt for it to still be dispersed via GitHub Sponsors?

[netmilk]

I'm very happy to hear the user experience was satisfactory! Thank you for giving it a try.

If one of us claim the actor and maintain it ourselves (with the extra 10%), would payment be directed to the account holder only, or could that person opt for it to still be dispersed via GitHub Sponsors?

The maintainer tier of the Apify open source fair share program is designed for payouts via standard payment methods (SEPA/SWIFT/PayPal), one payment per month, to minimize our overhead in favor of the larger commission. But, let me know what's your preference and we'll do our best to be as flexible as possible.

One more option to further monetize the Actor is to implement the Apify Pay per Event model and set the pricing yourself. You won't then earn the commission on that specific PPE actor anymore, but you'll still keep the commission on all the spending on other Actors that you bring to Apify via your sherlock fair share link. Maintainer and Active developer tiers aren't mutually exclusive. Think of it as in "Sherlock Lite" – this free, pay per usage trial, and "Sherlock Pro" – the super optimized, performance PPE versions of the Actor in the Apify Store.

I don't want to overcomplicate things, though. So, if the entire proposition in this PR sounds acceptable to you, I'd kindly ask you if we could go ahead and merge the PR in the passive tier soon and refactor it afterward. I'd just like to prevent the snowballing of the scope. I promise our instant assistance in case of future development – just mention me or @souravjain540 in any future PRs or send an email to open-source@apify.com.

[souravjain540]

Hey folks,

Nice to e-meet you.

So happy to see this moving forward. We can get connected on our discord to move this forward after the PR is merged.

I will make sure you are happy with the solution and will do my best to make it possible with the team!

[souravjain540]

hey @ppfeister, I'm just checking to see if you have any updates or questions for us. :D