How many first users should I give free access?
Hi frens,
I'm working on an app for crypto-marriages and I'm planning to charge users for creating marital agreements through the app. Considering that a marriage is a relatively rare event, I think it's the best way to earn from the app.
But for the launch, I would let first users create agreements for free, so users could test the app and give their feedback. Something like a focus group.
I'm now thinking of how many free users to accept, and I'd appreciate community advice here.
I would suggest you must give your app a free trial for sometime for people suggestion and also you will get a clear picture of your app working and feedbacks of users for your app. As after publishing your app this would be difficult for you to reach to your audience. For that you can go for free listing on best platform called AppsHive where you can reach to your target audience on basis of location, profession and category. one must list there app on this platform: https://bit.ly/3Fl2C6m
Thanks Dustin. Makes sense. Will look at the platform.
Personnaly, i would go for free at maximum at the beginning to expand my client base. Then your happy free clients have friends, brother and sisters, and will talk to them about your app...
Thanks @eple0030. Yes, after discussing it here, I'm planning to use time instead of number for giving free access. I need some free users to see how it goes and collect feedback.
I’m tackling a similar issue at the moment with my mvp for Initask.com
I’m opting to give free access right now to gather feedback and right market for. AfterwardsI be leaning towards market and cost analysis to see what pricing makes sense for this product- how much is a user willing to pay? Why and why not?
Thanks Sam. After a few discussions here, I'm about to make it possible to change the fees based on user feedback and my market exploration too. It's not out-of-the-box feature with Blockchain but it's good I realized it before the launch and not after.
Best of luck with launching your app!
It really depends on the product/service. I would not give you a fixed value as a reference.
We develop ERA, a note-taking and documentation tool with focus on privacy. We give free accounts to open alpha users and users, who helped us with providing valuable feedback, promoting ERA, etc.
For open beta users, we will have a huge discount on the release version (cheap LTD).
I think that is a good balance and everyone will get some benefits.
Thanks Alex. I like your scheme. Free for friends (alpha stage), discount for early adopters (beta sage), standard price for others.
Best of luck with ERA! Just shared my code note taking experience through a Twitter DM.
I would probably take it on a case-by-case basis. If someone is interested in the product and is willing to provide good feedback then you could offer them your product at a discount or for free.
Keep in mind that by giving it away for free, you are validating that its something people will use, but you aren't validating that its something people would be willing to pay for (which may be more important if your goal is to make money).
If people aren't willing to pay for it - try to get a good understanding of why. Is it just too expensive? Do they not see enough value in it? Is there a specific feature they would pay for but you don't have? - Getting feedback on this will help you to improve your product and turn it into something that people will be willing to pay for.
Hope this helps :)
Yes, it helps indeed. I didn't look at the validation from these two perspectives: validating whether people need the product and whether it brings enough value to get paid. But if I decide to give free access, it's what I should take into account, so thanks.
I definitely need to collect user feedback somehow. Currently I don't ask users for any contact details because it's enough to have their blockchain addresses to provide the service. Need to think about it too.
It's difficult to give a specific answer to this question without knowing more about your business and your goals. However, there are a few general principles that you can consider when deciding how many users to give free access to your software.
First, it's important to consider the cost of providing free access to your software. If giving free access to a large number of users will significantly impact your bottom line, then you may want to limit the number of free users. On the other hand, if giving free access to a large number of users will not significantly impact your costs, then you may want to consider giving free access to more users in order to grow your user base and gain exposure for your software.
Another factor to consider is the value that free users will bring to your business. If free users are likely to provide valuable feedback, generate positive word-of-mouth, or otherwise contribute to the growth of your business, then you may want to give free access to more users in order to take advantage of these benefits.
Ultimately, the number of free users that you give access to will depend on your business goals and the specific circumstances of your software startup. It may be helpful to experiment with different levels of free access and see how it affects your user growth and business metrics.
Thank you @Neuromantic99 for such a thoughtful comment.
From your profile, I got that you are interested in AI, may I wonder if you somehow utilized AI to answer my question? Because of the style. Sorry for me being paranoid about AI-generated content these days :) Your answer is helpful anyway.
In my case, I will be able to charge most users only once, assuming that people get married not very often, so it's a sort of a life-time deal. That's why I'm trying to be careful about how many people I should give free access and what should be my fee.
Another factor of why I ask around for advice is because if you once set things on Blockchain, it's hard to change them because of the blockchain nature. But after reading your comment I came up with a solution for allowing myself changing my fee any time. That way I will be able to set the fee to 0 for the launch and set it to a positive value in a month for example. It will let me experiment with pricing anytime instead of being bound by the number of free users.
Thanks again for your advice.
I think it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the free users.
What are the benefits of doing a crypto marriage as opposed to a non-crypto one?
If the benefits are large but not readily apparent, then I would recommend getting some free users on.
Since marriage is such rare event like you said, I think it would help to have a few free users but then delve really deep into how the product solved their issues by conducting customer interviews.
Doing this you can build far more traction for something that's not a common occurrence.
If the benefits are apparent, then free users may not be needed, or at least detailed info from each free user is not needed, and a simple short testimonial will do.
Speaking of feedback, I would like some for my AI API app as well. It's an API that allows developers to connect their products and apps to AI.
You can follow my twitter for more info: https://twitter.com/therealetch
Good luck on your product!
Thank you very much @RichardGao for your valuable advice. It makes a lot of sense.
The benefits of registering marriages with MarrySign (my app) are that it's open to any couple regardless of their age, location or gender, and it's quicker than other available options. Hard to say if these benefits are obvious at the first glance, so it may need some marketing anyway. I also hope for some viral effect - that's also why I think having free users may help. But you never now.
Followed you on Twitter. Best of luck with your API service!
I think what's important to note are the reasons why someone gets married.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think marriages done with MarrySign would be legally valid.
So in this instance, people who marry for tax purposes or want the feeling of a legally or religiously valid marriage will be left out. Not only that, but distribution of property upon divorce becomes much more legally murky if the contract signed was not a legally valid one.
Furthermore, what's the reasoning for incorporating crypto into this business?
My friend's boss, who started a successful crypto company, has stated that if there is no special value added to the customer nor cost reduction for you, then you should not incorporate crypto, as it only complicates things.
Best of luck though!
Those are very valid points. Let me address them one by one.
You're totally correct that our marital agreements don't have legal power, at least yet. But as far as I know blockchain is already used to sign some real estate contracts in UAE, so I think it's not a utopia. It may become legal at some point in the future.
As for the wealth splitting, etc., we have a concept already implemented, called termination cost (penalty). If one partner decides to break up, they should pay the pre-agreed amount to the opposite partner to compensate for possible inconveniences.
For the MVP, however, I'm planning to target the entertainment niche. People who can't get legally married for some reason, may do so with us and brag about it on social. Later on, if we have some traction, we will be able to start collaborating with governments in order to make the agreements legal.
As for the blockchain necessity for this particular project, thanks to the Ethereum blockchain which we're building on, our marital agreements are verifiable (blockchain is a public permanent database anyone can access) and indestructible (never disappear). So yes this project definitely benefits from using the blockchain. I agree with your boss, however, it takes some more work, but I personally think it's worth it.
That clears things up quite a bit! Thanks.
It makes sense this is targeted towards those that can't get married. If this is the case, I recommend making it more permissive.
I remember seeing a couple of articles on people in Japan marrying objects, or some people marrying animals.
If you could essentially have something like that, and market the indestructibility and permanence it would be great.
It might also be great to market for countries that don't have gay marriage legalized, or maybe allow it to be a marriage contract with multiple people as well for those in polyamourous relationships.
Good luck!
Thank you for your great ideas Richard! Truly valuable.
Although we don't restrict our users on what union they want to create (same sex, animals, objects or anything), we don't yet accept more than two participants. It would be a good next step I think.
As for Japan and other countries, you opened my eyes - I think we may need a multilingual interface.
Definitely. A multilingual interface is important.
FYI, the AI model I'm working with (BLOOM) is fairly good at translation since it was trained on 46 languages.
You can read more about it here: https://huggingface.co/bigscience/bloom
Be warned, the one on the website is greatly neutered, so results may be worse than what's to be expected.
Thanks. Will take a look!