Chess for Slack
Chess for Slack
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June 1, 2019
shut down
not enough paying customers.
Tried to at least reach break even but no dice.
Turns out people were willing to play as long as it's free, but not willing to pay $1/month.
Lesson learned: don't compete with free alternatives.
April 26, 2019
Started charging users to play
No more free games. Started charging $10/year per Slack team.
Got two paying users!
January 10, 2019
1250 Games played - 330 installs
Linear steady growth - however no upgrades to premium yet.
December 26, 2018
Premium version is up!
Users can upgrade to premium to get their choice of board and pieces themes.
8 Comments
Well, you could try some other way to monetize, for example:
no. I believe in the product being the product (for which you pay), and the users being users (not to be monetized).
I am a simple man: you use the product/service, you pay for it - that's it!
Why did you choose this app, out of curiosity? There are some well entrenched, free options for online chess.
What kind of products are you looking at next time?
Paid B2C is a tough racket for two main reasons.
The average user is already overwhelmed with a multitude of subscriptions. And they are very sensitive to more incoming monthly expenses.
The average user is used to free applications, that leverage their personal data for revenue instead. You can blame all the deep-pocketed VC backed startups for this one.
I'd like to hear from you what you have learned, some kind of retrospective about good points of this experience and bad points. Helps a lot
Sorry to hear that too. Hope it won't discourage you. I myself failed many projects. But one works at least and it's worth the ride imho.
Sorry to hear that.
Was the journey worth it?
🤷🏼♂️