I'm building it... should I monetize? How?
I've got a problem, I'm solving it. For me.
I run a small video gaming club. The club has 8 members. For one evening, every couple of weeks, we meet online and play a video game. It's a blast.
Problem
As you can imagine, we don't all have the same tastes in video games. Some of us are fans of action games, some of real-time strategy games and others of turn-based grand strategy.
Solution
We hold "elections" every once in a while to choose the next game we will be playing. We use a very clever election system that usually results in us playing a game that will maximize the amount of fun all members will have.
Every member usually has a few days to submit game "candidates". After that, members vote by rating each game. Once the voting period is over I tally the results. All of this is currently done by hand, with instant messaging, emails and Excel spreadsheets.
I've decided to automate the process and build a small app. It will be different from generic voting systems applications (which are a dime a dozen) in that it will make it easy to see information about games (descriptions, reviews, trailers etc.) in the app itself. I'm a professional software developer so I know it won't be a tremendous amount of work (famous last words) and is going to be a fun, useful, side-project.
Potential
Now. That being said. I know for a fact that there are a fair number of similar video game clubs around the world and they likely face a similar problem and could benefit from my solution. My solution can also be adapted with minimal effort for board game clubs.
At the same time, I question how much small groups of individuals would be willing to pay for my solution. I don't intend to do any formal pre-launch research. I'm building it regardless. My current thinking is that I should make the service available for free and super frictionless (no need for signups and logins) and collect data on how it is used for a while. I could then use that data to make a determination as to potential monetization strategies. Is that a bad idea?
For instance, it could be that there are some larger groups that find the app useful. I could then introduce a paid tier for larger groups. Or maybe I should just try to monetize it with ads and affiliate partnerships with online game stores. I really don't know at this point.
Any suggestions on how to proceed on that front will be appreciated.
I agree with the idea of just releasing it and making it free and frictionless.
If you were dead set on building a business out of this and had to make sure that it was validated before you invest time into it, then that might be a different story. However, since you know you're going to build it anyways, and it sounds like a fun side project, I say just get it out there as fast as you can and see if people even use it at all.
Those monetization strategies all sound plausible, but I don't know that demographic well enough to say for sure. I think you'll have a much better idea when you have real users to talk to. In my experience, anything you can do to just push to app out there and not overthink it is probably the right move.
I also love the idea of not requiring signups, it makes it much easier for users to jump right in and see the value and also simplifies things for you on your first version. It could make sense to collect emails at some point in the app, even if it's not required, so you can follow up with some engaged users down the road if you decide to monetize. Never hurts to throw up a quick landing page and collect emails there while you build it too.
Or maybe consider embedding a short feedback form to collect thoughts from users, somewhere further down in the funnel where it won't add a lot of friction up front.
Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of finding a way to collect emails at some point in the app. I'm gonna have to think of a good way to do that.