First batch of paying strangers
by Kirill ZubovskyWe are stoked to have signed up a few new clients that have actually came to us, as opposed to leads that were either friends, or have previously expressed their interest in our product.
It's nothing huge, and the road to profitability is very long, but it does sure feel good when total strangers are happily using your product, and paying you money for it.
Here's to more paying strangers, for us and for you!
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Congrats guys! Isn't it rewarding to have someone you don't know pay to use a product you built!? The example on your homepage is great, really shows off the quality improvement.
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Wooo congrats Kirill 🎉
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Cool idea. I am not a podcaster nor a podcast listener, so I don't know much about the space. The tech (and making it a single click) seems like a no-brainer for anyone who makes podcasts and wants their audio to sound the best it can.
I'll again couch this with "I know nothing about podcasts or podcast revenue", but I was surprised to see the Hobby tier at $30 a month. At that price, I would think a Hobby podcaster needs to be making at least $100 a month but probably much more. Is it your expectation then that your lowest-paying customers are still making $100+ a month? Or am I wrong to think that a customer of yours would compare the $30/mo for ClipGain against the revenue generated by their podcasts? In other words, maybe you envision (or know about) the Hobby podcaster scene and know that they are willing to spend money for great audio even if they are not making money with their podcasts?
The second thing that struck me about the pricing is that it's a monthly fee. For any non-professional podcaster who has a day job, for example, that kind of puts a fair amount of pressure on them to produce content and make the subscription worth it. That might be part of your thinking, of course, to have them create more content. It might also manifest as a churn problem just intuitively.
There might be an alternative pricing model where users purchase a specific Rate-Per-Hour. Users can buy total hours at some rate:
- Buy 5 hours of ClipGain for $20, which is $4/hr
- Buy 50 hours of ClipGain for $100, which is $2/hr
- Subscribe (and save) to 50 hours of ClipGain per month for $80, which is $1.60
- ... and so on
The "purchase a bucket of hours at some rate" doesn't carry MRR, which I know probably makes it a non-starter for you, and it makes billing a bit more difficult (but I think Stripe handles it).
Anyway, cool stuff. Good luck!
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It's great that you brought this question about pricing because we've debated this before with Brad and have gone back and forth, and have settled on the current plan for no better reason than to pick something that works, test and iterate.
That said, I would love to first focus on a tier of podcasters that treat this as their business. It doesn't mean they are making money with the podcast directly, in fact most probably don't, but they are producing their podcasts for leverage, for fame, for their business to grow ...etc. In other words, podcast as a whole has value far greater than the cost of its production and distribution.
If you are producing just 1 episode a month, and have a day job, then you should in theory be able to afford $29, and it is still a lot less than it would cost you to pay for a professional editor (hundreds of dollars per hour). Monthly can be cancelled at any time, so really you're only paying for 1 month at a time, but just the idea that you are paying, should push you to keep producing more episodes.
For instance, I am paying for Zencastr every month, but some months I interview 5 people, and some months 0. Overall though, it all works out.
Anyhow, that's just the logic behind how we priced it, since you asked. We may experiment with one-off, or pay-per-use like you suggested. I think the latter might work well, once I integrated Stripe into our tracking system.
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Best feeling. Keep rockin!
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Thanks! Indeed.
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haha I love when that happens and you're so surprised that you almost get the feeling that the "stranger clients" were mistaken or something. Congrats!
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Yeah. Of course, this is just the start. We gotta make sure those clients don't drop, have a great experience, and bring their friends. But it's good to feel good for a moment :)
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