11
17 Comments

Free community is a different game from paid community

When we started Pubb.at, we aimed at paid communities. I wanted to make a good platform for community builders to host their members. With some hustling, it did gave us some MRR. Not a lot but was able to make couple bucks.

It gave us a sense of feeling that things are moving forward. You didn't need a million users to feel that, since the money talks itself.

But lately I have been working on a new app. It's called Gumdrop.ai, a dating app that matches by humor. I am still in the validation phase. I did tons of customer interviews, I got some really cool data. I was able to get a lot of people sign up for the waitlist.

But it felt weird because it will be a free app. Money doesn't translate my growth anymore. It gets very tricky. MRR/Rev is very direct, but user number is not. Depends on different industries and apps, user numbers can be very different. And if it's a free app, most likely you will face a lot of competition, because if there was no solution ever before, you will charge them.

Paid and unpaid is two different games. IMO paid is an easier one to validate, if you don't make money then it doesn't work. But unpaid is tricky, harder to validate.

  1. 3

    I agree with unpaid being tricky. I am seeing the same with rentersvoices.com.

    Why is your app free?

    If you think your idea is solid and unique, I will suggest to not make your dating app free. There are a lot of free dating apps with a lot of users.

    Free dating apps make dating worse and difficult.

    Paid app means the users are serious about dating.

    I am also looking to build a paid community for my consulting services.

    1. 2

      Lol I don’t wanna make it free. But dating is different from saas. It’s very different from what I had done with saas customers.

      Ppl who use dating apps have too much options nowadays. And they are not business, it’s hard to get them to pay first. Too much choice created a barrier to enter itself, anyone who wish to enter must overcome that barrier already.

      Dating is a mysterious business man lol. I need to get in to it more lol

      1. 1

        Yes, dating is definitely different. You can let early users be free (like the first 5000 users). Once you've 5000 users, you can make the app paid to improve the quality of people who sign up.

        1. 1

          Lol that sounds interesting! I think u have the point hahah.

          Where did u get the number 5k from tho?

          1. 1

            5k was just a random number. You can decide what you want to allow.
            Dating app is a long game if you continue to work on it. Online dating is only going to be more and more important in coming days.

            1. 1

              lol yeah that number is hard to come by.

              Have u done anything similar?

              1. 1

                Not in dating space.

  2. 1

    Yeah agree! I think sometimes it's all about setting expectations up-front...like if you plan to charge in the future, making sure that's part of the initial community-building conversation. People seem to be cool with either scenario as long as they know up front what they're getting into.

    1. 1

      It's more than expectation IMO. From my personal experience, free app made me more anxies, bc the progress is hard to determine.

      Money is simple to observe, but user numbers are tricky. It doesn't translate straightforward. You get a sense of feeling that you are trapped often lol

  3. 1

    Absolutely yes, paid and free communities require a different approach, and maybe even how we measure success varies.

    1. 1

      so different lol.

      I kinda like paid better, bc it's more direct. unpaid is hard to measure. It offers less comfort to my emotion lol

      1. 1

        😂 Yeah, I could understand.

        1. 1

          r u working on a free project lately?

          1. 1

            I am working on habitate.io, so working with brands who are building communities around what they do (more often free communities, haven't encountered a paid community yet). But I have received request on integrating the product with member space or something.

            1. 1

              That's a very similar product to my pubb.at.
              Funny most of my clients are building paid community.

              I found people who does unpaid community has less drive to set up their community. How do you onboard them?

              1. 1

                I think why they want to build a community varies. For example; SaaS companies, want to share their road-map, encourage users to write feedback, exchange notes on using the product better.

                E-commerce, Edu-tech all of them having very different reasons and purpose, that's something interesting I learned in the last few weeks.

                1. 1

                  Good luck lol. I tried that route, hope it works out for u! Genuinely do. It didn’t work for me. There are too many free options already.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments