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17 Comments

I need help with the pricing 🙏

Hello dear IH!

I would love to hear your insights on the pricing. I am experimenting with a few things with Unbundling Reddit - and I would love to get your opinions / or shared experiences.

Here is what I intend in doing/testing for Unbundling Reddit analyses :

  • [Current] - Pay what you want
  • [Alternative - batch increase prices] - Seats with set pricing. Price increase in time. For example: 10 seats at $50, then 10 next seats at $100, etc...
  • [Alternative - price divided by seats] - Analyses at a fixed price - Seats divide the price. For example: an analysis for a given subreddit is at $100, if 5 people are in -> each pays $20.
  • [Alternative - Fixed price] - Analyses at a fixed price. Might be the simplest of all.

One thing to take into account: the analyses are entirely manual and take a long time to do (100 Reddit submissions to read one by one and qualify - which needs a strong focus). It is hard right now to shorten the delay to give the analysis results.

What do you think? Are there any of these that you have tried yourself? I would love to get examples from your experience.

  1. 2

    With 'Pay what you want' most people will pay nada.

    3 sounds a bit complicated.

    4 is solid.

    I like 2 but I think you'd have to get it just right to be effective. If after time it gets too expensive you might miss out on sales and you may give some early places away to cheap.

    1. 1

      So on point! Thanks @ryanGlass!

      This is true, about 1 (already happened 😅).
      But maybe a good way to reach a fixed price would be to go for 2 at first checking when demand really decrease 🤷‍♂️. So 2 then 4. Plus the guarantee money back. It starts to get clearer. Thanks to all of you!!

  2. 2

    I would go with either with 2nd or with 4th. I think the 2nd could generate some FOMO, and probably will get you closer to your desired price.

    Also, figure out exactly how long it takes you to generate each analysis, figure out if anything can be improved time-wise, and then multiply that by the price you'd like to be payed.

    P.S. I'm definitely no expert. I've designed my pricing by the value I think my app provides. Time will tell if it's good or not.

    1. 1

      Thanks, John for your feedback!

      Yeah, I agree, I honestly think it can be fun to experiment with the 2nd option.

      Also what you describe (compute price based on time) is not really designing a value-added-based pricing, right?

      Can you tell me how you designed your pricing to align with the value generated?

      1. 2

        Also what you describe (compute price based on time) is not really designing a value-added-based pricing, right?

        You're right. I ended with "I'm no expert" :) It's a bit tough to come up with pricing for you, since as I understand, you will be doing this manually (of course, at some point, you might want to hire someone?).

        One thing about your service is that you may actually get to resell the same analysis to several people, which is clearly a good gain for you. But you will have to figure out if indeed people will want the same subreddits over and over (that may well not be the case).

        Can you tell me how you designed your pricing to align with the value generated?

        Here's my thoughts when I came up with pricing:

        • If you're a video editor, and with my app, you get to edit your videos 2x as fast, say you used to make 25$/hour. With my app, you'd get an extra $250 in 10 hours of work. Assuming you work 40h/week, that's an extra $4000/month
        • Say you're a small business that wants a social media presence. You might hire someone (waaay too costly), but realistically, you'll either do it yourself or have someone from your staff do it. In this case, my app will probably save you even more (3-4x), so if you were to pay someone $25/hour to get the job done, if that person, then instead of 25 hours/month, they'd do it in 6-7 hours, which translates into $420 saved per each month
        1. 2

          Haha, no worry, the statement "I'm not an expert" made me want to listen to you even more.

          OK, I understand, you try to have a good rationale about the time saved to your users and you put a price tag on it. One could argue that video created is meant to generate views online, and design pricing based on this would be interesting... but also super complex ^^. I understand that simplicity is great when it comes to pricing.

          About the hiring part. Power lurker here, so I am actually enjoying qualifying the subs I read. I don't want to have someone without any passion to do it. It would lose a lot in quality. Maybe, I'll need to find power lurkers ^^

          But yes, let's see how this can translate into fun and understandable pricing. Plus, you ordered a good amount of analyses yourself, so I'd be stoked to get your feedback once you'll have the reports in your hands!

          1. 2

            One could argue that video created is meant to generate views online, and design pricing based on this would be interesting... but also super complex ^^. I understand that simplicity is great when it comes to pricing.

            Yeah, I did not want to go it that deep -- not to mention the number of social media platforms out there 😁

            About the hiring part. Power lurker here, so I am actually enjoying qualifying the subs I read. I don't want to have someone without any passion to do it. It would lose a lot in quality. Maybe, I'll need to find power lurkers ^^

            Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One thing I can certainly tell you -- you'll never find someone with the same passion as you :)

            [...] Plus, you ordered a good amount of analyses yourself, so I'd be stoked to get your feedback once you'll have the reports in your hands!

            Hehe, can't wait! 😁

  3. 1

    Thanks a lot my IH friends - sharing this and getting your insights definitely helped me see more clearly about what would be the next step in terms of pricing.

    I feel still new to IH - but man, this community is golden. I 🫀 you people.

  4. 1

    OG @StefanVetter, @rcruz, @andreboso, @brettwill1025

    If I could have your views on this topic, I would be sooooo grateful 🙏

    1. 2

      Hi Ben!,

      I think "Pay what you want" could work fine if it's something that could scale well, like an ebook (https://natureofcode.com for example). In this case I'd probably go for the "Fixed price" option, with a money-back guarantee if you want. It's easy as you said, and you can increase the price whenever you want, make deals and so on.

      CodeKit (https://codekitapp.com/) uses kind of flexible amount, but not for free.

      And, as a last one, you could keep going with your current option, but attaching to your report a link to your Buy Me a Coffee profile / Gumroad / PayPal donation if they consider it's useful.

      Hope this helps! 😇

      1. 2

        Nice! It does! I had not even thought about the money-back guarantee, I think that it could be a good option.

        Thanks for the example, I love that. It is interesting since their range of pricing is in fact super limited (-5 +5). I am not sure why they are doing this.

        Yes, this is what I am currently doing! So that if they want to tip, it is super easy for them.

        Cheers mate, I appreciate your input!

        1. 1

          No problem Ben, best of the lucks!

    2. 2

      I’m definitely not an expert on pricing, I’d probably just pick a price I’m comfortable with and gradually increase it over time until conversions slow down too much.

      1. 1

        Thanks! I take it - have you been increasing the price of your product? How well this is received? I guess it depends on the increase and the timing, but if you had an example of a past experience, that would be golden!

        1. 1

          It really depends, it’s impossible to draw conclusions from a single example.

          1. 1

            It's even harder from no example (kidding 😅)

            I have been personally a bit annoyed by the repricing of Lastpass. It is totally justified, but you know... when you are used to having something for free and it becomes not free anymore...

            1. 2

              I know… if it’s a subscription consider grandfathering early adopters.

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