I'm a bit of an analytics nut, and I can be a bit obsessed with price elasticity (which is basically how demand is affected by price).
An axiom that I would love to test is whether raising the price 10X would lead to only 10% of the sale volume you enjoy today. I would assume that more than ten percent would be prepared to pay $20 to remove the watermark. I assume a lot of people are using this for weddings? I would easily have paid $20 to get rid of that headache.
Also, do you have much repeat custom? Could you offer a $50 lifetime membership for party planners etc?
Edit: do you limit font's for the basic tier? Could you offer precise font selection as part of the premium tier?
3
Huh, it would never have occurred to me to charge that much, but it's not a crazy thought. You're right that the math/ROI gets really interesting if you adjust pricing by 10X and that $20 for no-hassle place cards is a drop in the bucket for a significant event's budget. I'm totally going to play with this (sometime... I just tweaked prices and have another test I want to run next month). Thanks for the suggestion!
Interesting thoughts re: lifetime memberships (or actually I'd be tempted to make them annual to try and get some of that sweet recurring revenue) and upselling for fonts. One thing that's given me pause is just introducing too much complexity in the pricing/product as a result of having too many offerings, but I think if I moved more towards a "free tier" / "premium tier" model instead of a model where you pay-per-design then those would both be great things to explore.
3
Canva's a la cart pricing is a good example of how you could price premium components like fonts.
1
Nice, thanks for the tip, I will check them out.
2
Just to echo David on this - considering how much money goes into weddings and how price inelastic at least some wedding parties will be ("everything has to be perfect"), I think you could maybe charge considerably more.
Would love to see the results of that experiment!
2
Ok, you guys have convinced me :)
I think I'll run it as a per-card experiment. For example, at 200 guests and 10 cents per card that would be $20. Will have to look at historical data to figure out how to price it per card to hit the right price point.
I'm first going to experiment with making everything free and charging only for watermark removal. That will inform which of the two sales models to apply per-card pricing to.
thanks for the thoughts! I'll be sure to report back when I have some results...
1
Awesome! Best of luck. :)
6
Hi Cory,
Great article. I like the product a lot. One very minor thing that I noticed is that the price of the place cards doesn't clearly state that it's the price for as many cards as you want. Some users may be confused and think that it's a per card price, which could deter them.
Maybe it's just me, though.
Overall, excellent product. I really like it. Good luck moving forward!
3
Thanks Sam! Good point about the pricing. Come to think of it I have gotten that exact question from customers before so might be good to clarify.
1
Exactly what I thought looking at the $6 price. "Is that per card? Can't be, I'll click to see what it means."
3
It's obvious, to me at least, that you should actually print and deliver the cards. Have you done the numbers?
3
I haven't done the numbers, though agree there's an opportunity there, which I have pursued unsuccessfully. Without getting into too many boring details, it's been quite hard to find a partnership with a printer who can handle cutting and folding and such that also doesn't charge a crazy amount, and it's not something I can do on my own efficiently or cheaply because I live in South Africa and most of my customers are in North America and Europe.
2
Hi Cory, thanks for sharing. Just a word of support. Great project, wish you luck in your endeavor.
1
Cheers, thanks!
2
Great read! To what extent have you examined how companies with a similar offering have been able to get traction to their sites and ultimately capture customers. Not sure if you've already used Similarweb but might be worth a look.
1
Good question! One semi-competitor/company in the space that is doing way better than me is Conference Badge, who have appeared on IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/bootstrapping-to-70k-mo-by-solving-your-own-problem-9c32486cd2. If I can reposition/break into the conference badge space there's obviously quite an opportunity there to expand revenue. Also their pricing is interesting in that they charge per-card instead of per-design (a test I hope to explore soon).
Thanks for the suggestion re: Similarweb. Sadly, I don't think my site is big enough to have any useful data yet. :(
1
Hi Cory,
Nice article, loved it!
I have two things:
You mention doing SEO. What exactly did you do? Content marketing? Something else?
You should implement Slack, Discord and the main others for Chat Stats, growing the compatible services mean growing the niche you are in :)
Good luck!
1
Thanks Cyril!
My approach to SEO was a couple different things. One was content marketing in the place card space (see https://www.placecard.me/guides/). The other was link building through writing and syndicating content (like this article!). I wrote a longer post about SEO here if you want to check it out: http://www.coryzue.com/writing/seo-for-developers/
Yep, definitely on my radar to support other chat platforms. Slack would be the obvious one to attempt but I haven't found the time to make it happen yet.
Hi.
I'm a bit of an analytics nut, and I can be a bit obsessed with price elasticity (which is basically how demand is affected by price).
An axiom that I would love to test is whether raising the price 10X would lead to only 10% of the sale volume you enjoy today. I would assume that more than ten percent would be prepared to pay $20 to remove the watermark. I assume a lot of people are using this for weddings? I would easily have paid $20 to get rid of that headache.
Also, do you have much repeat custom? Could you offer a $50 lifetime membership for party planners etc?
Edit: do you limit font's for the basic tier? Could you offer precise font selection as part of the premium tier?
Huh, it would never have occurred to me to charge that much, but it's not a crazy thought. You're right that the math/ROI gets really interesting if you adjust pricing by 10X and that $20 for no-hassle place cards is a drop in the bucket for a significant event's budget. I'm totally going to play with this (sometime... I just tweaked prices and have another test I want to run next month). Thanks for the suggestion!
Interesting thoughts re: lifetime memberships (or actually I'd be tempted to make them annual to try and get some of that sweet recurring revenue) and upselling for fonts. One thing that's given me pause is just introducing too much complexity in the pricing/product as a result of having too many offerings, but I think if I moved more towards a "free tier" / "premium tier" model instead of a model where you pay-per-design then those would both be great things to explore.
Canva's a la cart pricing is a good example of how you could price premium components like fonts.
Nice, thanks for the tip, I will check them out.
Just to echo David on this - considering how much money goes into weddings and how price inelastic at least some wedding parties will be ("everything has to be perfect"), I think you could maybe charge considerably more.
Would love to see the results of that experiment!
Ok, you guys have convinced me :)
I think I'll run it as a per-card experiment. For example, at 200 guests and 10 cents per card that would be $20. Will have to look at historical data to figure out how to price it per card to hit the right price point.
I'm first going to experiment with making everything free and charging only for watermark removal. That will inform which of the two sales models to apply per-card pricing to.
thanks for the thoughts! I'll be sure to report back when I have some results...
Awesome! Best of luck. :)
Hi Cory,
Great article. I like the product a lot. One very minor thing that I noticed is that the price of the place cards doesn't clearly state that it's the price for as many cards as you want. Some users may be confused and think that it's a per card price, which could deter them.
Maybe it's just me, though.
Overall, excellent product. I really like it. Good luck moving forward!
Thanks Sam! Good point about the pricing. Come to think of it I have gotten that exact question from customers before so might be good to clarify.
Exactly what I thought looking at the $6 price. "Is that per card? Can't be, I'll click to see what it means."
It's obvious, to me at least, that you should actually print and deliver the cards. Have you done the numbers?
I haven't done the numbers, though agree there's an opportunity there, which I have pursued unsuccessfully. Without getting into too many boring details, it's been quite hard to find a partnership with a printer who can handle cutting and folding and such that also doesn't charge a crazy amount, and it's not something I can do on my own efficiently or cheaply because I live in South Africa and most of my customers are in North America and Europe.
Hi Cory, thanks for sharing. Just a word of support. Great project, wish you luck in your endeavor.
Cheers, thanks!
Great read! To what extent have you examined how companies with a similar offering have been able to get traction to their sites and ultimately capture customers. Not sure if you've already used Similarweb but might be worth a look.
Good question! One semi-competitor/company in the space that is doing way better than me is Conference Badge, who have appeared on IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/bootstrapping-to-70k-mo-by-solving-your-own-problem-9c32486cd2. If I can reposition/break into the conference badge space there's obviously quite an opportunity there to expand revenue. Also their pricing is interesting in that they charge per-card instead of per-design (a test I hope to explore soon).
Thanks for the suggestion re: Similarweb. Sadly, I don't think my site is big enough to have any useful data yet. :(
Hi Cory,
Nice article, loved it!
I have two things:
You mention doing SEO. What exactly did you do? Content marketing? Something else?
You should implement Slack, Discord and the main others for Chat Stats, growing the compatible services mean growing the niche you are in :)
Good luck!
Thanks Cyril!
My approach to SEO was a couple different things. One was content marketing in the place card space (see https://www.placecard.me/guides/). The other was link building through writing and syndicating content (like this article!). I wrote a longer post about SEO here if you want to check it out: http://www.coryzue.com/writing/seo-for-developers/
Yep, definitely on my radar to support other chat platforms. Slack would be the obvious one to attempt but I haven't found the time to make it happen yet.
cheers