> "Have you experimented with different pricing models?"
No, I kept the pricing model very simple. The price increased a bit throughout the years. I charge what feels fair.
There's a trial period and if you like the product, you pay for it. If not, then not. There is no freemium, I never give discounts, I don't sell ads or data or make money in any other way. It's a simple thing :)
Some people claim that it's easy to test prices. But this is not true.
If you serve a niche, people talk. If one person pays more than another for the same product (and signed up for the same version at a similar time), you'd lose trust.
The nice thing about making more money than you need is that it frees you from thinking about "making even more money". Yeah, I like making more money, because all of this could be over one day, but there is no need to stress myself about it.
Another thing probably is, that a subscription price of a niche product can be considerably higher than of a mainstream one?
For a single person, it must be much easier to support 1,000 users paying something like $25 / month than 5,000 users paying $5 / month.
I have over 10,000 paying customers. I receive maybe 5 emails per day. There was never a time when I received much more than 10. I have three explanations for this:
1. I have a really good FAQ that answers almost any question. On my contact form, I urge people to read the damn FAQ. If they still send me an email, I usually reply with a specific link to the FAQ item. If a question comes up a couple times, I add it to the FAQ.
2. Since my product isn't free (and not cheap compared to a 0.99 one-time-fee app), there's a lot of self-selection. I don't have to support freeloaders with their stupid questions. If people pay for something, it seems to help to reduce the support burden.
3. I wonder if this is a mentality thing and Germans are more likely to help themselves through reading FAQ than others who rather send an email like "yo, shit is broken, fix asap". Most emails I receive read a lot more like a letter and not this one-line blurp bullshit some have to deal with.
In essence: Build a product with a somewhat sophisticated target group. They are more likely to pay, more likely to help themselves by reading FAQ and more likely to send no stupid emails.
As a B2C SaaS product it actually seems to be relatively cheap: 10,000+ paying users and 370,000€ in yearly revenue points to around 2.99€ / month and 29.99€ / year subscription fees – similar to Instapaper Premium[1].
Also the fact that you don't sell at discount likely filters out the bulk of self-entitled users that tend to stress support with trivia.
And your summary is 100% spot on - catering to a more savvy audience and aggressively culling other users is a good way to keep support manageable (and even pleasant!)
Is your business focused on the German market or the US market? Or is it multi-lingual / international? What percentage of time is spent answering support requests?
> The subscription model helps you to stay afloat. People will pay for a product they use every day (and thus, derive value from every day).
Have you experimented with different pricing models? Is Duolingo / Tinder model (1 month / 6 months / 12 months) the best choice for B2C subscriptions without Spotify / Netflix-like licensing costs?