Should I collect payment info while validating the product (pre-launch)?
Hi all, I am validating my idea for a paid newsletter by doing landing page tests, my goal is to have 30 subscribers before writing any code.
My question is whether or not I should focus on collecting payment information or if I should just get email addresses. I wouldn't charge anything until the launch, of course. I'd prefer paying customers, I don't think there's any better signal than that, it's too easy to hand out an email.
I am also not too sure how I would delay the payment until launch, does stripe allow you to actively manage individual accounts if they have a subscription?
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Quick idea validation (by taking money!) was exactly the use-case that made me build Trolley!
I'd built a small site and I was trying to work out if anyone wanted to use it, but while Stripe integration is reasonably easy for a developer, it still took me a few hours to get it exactly right.
(Adding Stripe to your website means building a backend that handles key & token exchange, which means running a server, not just a static site - so hosting, security and so on are more of an effort than just throwing some static files into S3)
So I built Trolley. With this, you just sign up, link your Stripe account to it, then paste a bit of HTML into your website (or you can send payment links directly via email, SMS, WhatsApp etc).
Takes < 5 minutes from start to finish to start accepting payments, which is great for that quick-n-dirty validation phase :)
Very cool, I'm using Landen for the landing page, its pretty easy to setup but I may actually go with someone's suggestion and leverage a newsletter service for the MVP.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago.
Thanks!
I think you can do 15 days of free trial; many SaaS do this. i.e., Put your credit card information, and we will charge you after X time. That gives you time to test your product and then charge if you have something. The important thing is to be clear when and how much you are going to cost and maybe send an email days before you do it.
Stripe allows you to save the information for later https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards and https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/paying
Yes! I am offering a free trial, 14 days. 15 does sounds more attractive though. I may just use a newsletter service so stripe may not be necessary.
I believe the presumption people would pay for your product is also worthy to be validated. As such I would definitely try to make sign-on as smooth as possible.
I believe it's possible to collect payment information using Stripe, and setting up the subscription later on. By the way, using Substack you can set up paid newsletters, and as such there's nothing to code. Why not have your users sign on to a free newsletter right now, and try to convert them to a paid one later on?
I have been toying with the idea of using SubStack or Revnue just to get to Beta as soon as possible. I'll reach out to their teams to see if I can postpone charges.
The newsletter is a personalized collection of blog posts, podcasts, articles, etc, generated based on the subscriber's preferences. I am leaning towards acquiring paying customers because I think that's a very strong signal that this is a good idea, and if they like it enough but aren't sold maybe they'll reach out with a feature request.
The landing page is still being developed by you can check it out here:
https://thedownload.landen.co/
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
The newsletter is a personalized collection of blog posts, podcasts, articles, etc, generated based on the subscriber's preferences. https://thedownload.landen.co/
Planning on launching early next week
That's an interesting idea actually... Perhaps I can simply focus on blog posts for that week, then include podcasts, and other media? I'll give this some thought!