How should we price our startup?
Hello Hacker News,
We need some help! We launched our startup Redline, http://www.redline.cc, into private beta a few months back. We are about ready to make it public and as part of that we want to introduce a pricing model. We have had some lively discussions about what to price it and how to determine if that is the right price but all our solutions feel like we are just guessing. The only thing we can agree on is that we have a free tier, a qa tier and a production tier. Beyond that, what should we set as the initial prices and how should we run pricing tests after that?
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http://www.maximise.dk/getting-product-pricing-right/
If you use the idea I'd love to hear about it.
When thinking of online services there seems to be a few ways in which to generate revenue. Advertising, Subscription, per-click or data selling are pretty much the main revenue generation mechanisms. If we break them down and assume that user experience is key above all else for your product and brand then Advertising take a back seat. It doesn't seem as though your product really allows in concept a good space for throwing an add or two in the mix. Doing so would create an annoying an ugly experience for users. I don't think that it is entirely out of the question, however, you have or will have a group of users who are using your product as a tool. There is a good possibility they might need other tools to help get the job done as well. Sending weekly emails with possible tools a particular user might need would help generate advertising revenue.
Charging Per click or per use would also be super annoying and I don't recommend it at all. A low priced subscription model which allows unlimited use gives the user the ability to interact with your product without the unpleasantness of ads or paying "per-click". The actual price for the service should be looked at closely and iterated over several times as adoption becomes higher.
The last item on the list is data selling. You can track what your customers are doing what they are interacting with and make some assumptions on why. I'm sure that there are a number of people who are super interested in that data and would be willing to pay for it.
I hope that helps answer your question.
Maybe the Wildbit boys would be open to some affiliate program pricing for you?