That seemed fairer to me - no point in buying a sheet of 21 stickers for one aircraft when you only need a single sticker.
So stickers can be printed out (and stuck on via clear tape) or purchased pre-printed for unlimited aircraft now, provided a £2 monthly subscription is in place.
I'm open to ideas on it though - but how else would I ensure people keep paying.
The system will still act as a proxy though, sending a SMS and email to the owner if the finder submits that they've found it.
It's relying on honesty at the end of the day - I like to think most people are honest enough that given the opportunity to help someone get their property back they'll do so.
But perhaps you should have a system where there's a recovery fee for a lapsed account. If your service costs 24 a year or so, perhaps it's 150 or 200 for you to connect up a recovery on a lapsed account. So the risk of not paying is having to pay a lot more if you lose your drone and aren't subbed.
I'll think of a way to queue the notifications to the owner so that they get sent once a subscription has been set back up, and a warning to them that someone has their drone in the meantime.
Upfront: Pay to cover a given device once, and it's covered for the life of the device. (Upside: No subscriptions to worry about and you get more cash right at the start. Downside: You need a steady source of new registrations (or you need to save a good chunk of that upfront fee towards ongoing operations).
On recovery: Pay a much higher amount only when someone tries to return your drone to you through the service. (Upside: People can join for free since there's no reason not to! Downside: If people don't lose their drones, you may go out of business.)
Subscription: What you've got. (Upside: Revenue is extremely consistent. Downside: You end up in situations where you could help someone recover a five grand drone but aren't because they didn't pay you two euros this month.)
There is scope for offering a higher specification service to commercial operators but I'm not sure I want to get involved with the liability aspects - I did build this for my own purposes in the first place and I figured I could provide a cheap, reliable service to other hobbyists.
Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate the time you spent.
Oh, one more question: It's a .co.uk address. Are you able to do this for UK customers only, or is it a global service? If you're just putting people in contact with others, I'd think that there'd be no reason people in other countries couldn't use it, but I don't know.
Nothing? A note about how the owner can't get his drone back because he didn't pay? Do they contact the owner and offer to make the connection for a larger/burdensome finder's fee as a penalty for not paying?
The old "service" I remember back in the day for stickers on your devices in case they got lost was a one-time fee: When you purchased the stickers. And then presumably as long as the company was operating, they'd help you get your stuff back.
This is probably a better model, and the business could be sustainable on the fact that people's new devices will generally need new stickers. (In addition to stickers being generally non-transferrable things, you could prevent the item description from being changed and the like.)