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6 Comments

Over 1,000 users! Sorta.

I just realized something. eventOne has only 5 customers. But over 1,000 users.

The difference between customers and users being:

  • Customers are the events that pay for eventOne.
  • Users are the attendees that go to those events and use the eventOne app and/or registration.

I'm in a very interesting business where I have two classes of customers like that. And I have to support both.

Who else is in a business with two "classes" of customers like that? Have you had any challenges supporting that kind of dynamic?

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    I have 2 types of users as well and it does make things harder. I have Creators and Makers. Creators are the ones who actually make the tutorials and youtube videos and makers are the ones visiting the site looking for the parts they saw in the video.

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    We have a slightly similar dynamic although we have not yet decided on which angle to monetize as there are a few options.

    Our app is connecting business owners with customers. But we learned quite quickly that the business owners are not interested unless we have the audience first, so we needed to figure out how to get the customers on board to create some momentum. Once we have the audience, we can find ways for businesses to benefit from that insight that we can offer.

    In the meantime we are putting together information in a way that is useful to the customers. Since we consider ourselves as part of this group, it helps us in identifying what that information might be.

  3. 2

    I seem to keep making businesses where there are users and customers. B2B2C I think the designation is. It is super tricky, always doubling the work load :)

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    I run a jobboard, so it's also a two-sided market (jobseekers and employers). Going one step more "meta", the jobboard software is white-labelled. So I could theoretically rent out the platform to customers, who then themselves have customers and users.

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    I think it's pretty normal to have free and paid users. You can then work on trying to convert the non-paying users into paying ones. Marketing through things like onboarding, emails, communications, content, community, etc. The challenge is that all these things take time and money!

    1. 1

      Yeah, it's quite expected that I have these non-paying "customers." They aren't exactly non-paying, though. They are the attendees, who pay the conference, who pays me.

      I don't intend to directly monetize my indirect class of customers.

      They are a different class of indirect customers. They have no choice on what conference app to use because it's the conference that chooses. They just use it.

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