Thoughts On Registrations
Everything I build, I build with three ingredients: care, quality and love. I care about the products I build. I began to turn them into SaaS when I realized, I needed help supporting these products, so I charge a small fee to use them, which in turn, helps pay to keep me interested in supporting it. I was thinking about releasing my products into the wild, but with very LIMITED REGISTRATIONS. And deleting inactive accounts. As.. I've got to make room for people who want to actually use the product. Or.. invite only?
I know that's like, "Wow, you think highly of your product, don't you?" As a matter of fact, I do! I spent months on it, perfecting it, getting it the way I wanted. I even use it myself! I don't want to see people abusing it and devaluing it to the point where I don't care to manage it anymore. Thoughts on this approach?
You should think very highly of your product! That is certainly how I think about mine (www.tribefive.me). Otherwise, why even build it, right?
One thing I've been getting over in my own head is how much to charge though. At the end of the day, if you charge very little, then you need a lot of customers. If you charge a lot, you don't need that many.
I'm curious to know why you want to only charge a small fee?
This is the conversation I'm having with myself: if the product is high quality, and it solves a real problem...wouldn't people pay $x for it? (where $x is some meaningful amount so I don't need to have millions of customers to be successful)
Very true, Jonathan. I had come from the mentality that I should undercut the competition, but I'm learning quite the opposite: If I can offer quality service like no one else, than why not charge for it?
A product I've been using for years now had raised their pricing the other day, after realizing that if they didn't.. they couldn't keep supporting it. They are getting rid of their free version and decreased the price of their lowest plan, just to convert those free customers over.
I have no qualms with their decision as i completely understood why they needed to do that. So it just reminded me of how many people hop on a free plan, and expect something for nothing, and unless your huge like one of the social media giants, it's not a real viable business plan.
Ghost has a similar business model! They cap their paying users at ~4000 and adjust the price up or down to keep it constant at that. That kind of blew my mind when I heard that but it means they can keep the team and the business the exact size they want it to suit their lifestyle.
I feel I only want X amount of registrations as I can keep tabs on that many, rather than unlimited. I noticed that companies that offer unlimited, realize "unlimited" registrations is always a mistake. I could see maybe an invite..and giving that person extra credit to this exclusive service, but I really want to cater to a very unique and specific audience, who see the value in it.
I really don't like keeping "inactive" accounts around as it confuses me to know who actually gives a shit vs. who just signed up to check it out and never came back ever again. Probably falls in line with GDPR.
Well if you run the service you make the rules I guess. I can see the value in purging inactive accounts for services where it makes sense. Though I'd personally be reluctant somewhat because I have an account with this one website that I must have signed up for about 10 years ago and I visit the site once every few years but when I'm on it I'm on it very heavily for months. Would hate if my account dissapeared.
I'm sure you can find a happy medium that suits you. There are no rules, only realities.
Fair and a very valid point.
The issue I face is this: Lets say I have a top notch platform. I really only want a certain type of audience using it. Like an exclusive club. But how do I know who that club is? How do I know how to properly price out my product? Should I even worry about this? Should I wait until I get bigger before I've incorporated some type of filter? Should I really believe that I can handle only a certain amount of customers (hundreds or thousands?) because I really can't afford to hire a staff.