How do I know if I'm *not* ready to start charging?
I've built Dytto, an offer management service. Ever since the first attraction the website received from IndieHackers (was like 200+ visits and 20+ registers in a few hours), my cofounder and I have been discussing when to start charging to see if people are just being nice or curious, or if they are actually interested.
I say that we should start very soon, like in 1 to 3 weeks. And maybe start with charging half of what we will charge after official launch. This way we can know for sure if we will actually have some traction. And the payments upfront will provide us a little more runway.
He says we should wait, and validate and iterate more. His biggest reasoning is that the entrance costs to starting a business is a little too much for us right now. Turkish Lira/USD ratio has recently gone pretty high, and Stripe Atlas costs converted to TRY are like double the amount of what most people in the country make in a month.
I'm ready to take the risk of losing some money but of course wouldn't want to aggressively step over my partner, so I decided to get some public opinion.
What do you all think? When did you start charging and how did it turn out for you and the product?
The best advice I've heard is charge a nominal fee early. The main benefit is this:
I'd view the cost of Stripe as the cost of getting feedback and then ask how important is user feedback for your business?
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
@youce Thank you!
Setup pricing immediately. When people see that you are charging for stuff, it becomes more serious and real for them as well. Your product may have bugs or some incomplete features but that doesn't matter since you will always have those issues even after being established.
I am sorry to say but your partner's idea of "lets wait because entrance costs are too high" is a bad one. You are either doing this or you are not. There is no perfect time to do it. Do it now. The entrance cost should be an "investment" and not "cost". Spend that money. Be lean. Cut costs. But invest to start taking payments now. In 2020, it is not that hard or even costly.
Hey Yash! Thanks for chiming in. You are totally right that the product will always have some issues. I've been a developer long enough to see a lot technical pitfalls. Hopefully we will avoid them as they come.
You test it out - data will always have the answer
That's what I think as well.
Start charging immediately. You'll never know if your product is good enough until you talk to paying users.
get a paypal account
or a gumroad account
or even escrow.
Just find a way to accept cash. even if it's not in your pocket. it means your users have to pay.
Heck... have them mail you cash. (or not.. just a crazy idea)
All sounds good. I don't want to mess around with other solutions though because setting up Stripe is pretty straightforward but I'll have to do a lot of manual stuff with others. How would one go around escrow-ing a Stripe account? Any pointers would help a lot.
Then use stripe. no need to get fancy.
just start charging.
Thanks for posting this! The discussion here helped me a lot!