One-time purchases for SaaS?
by Rick van HaasterenLike most SaaS products, my website audit tool SiteGuru has monthly and annual paid plans. Because we all want that MRR, right? But I was thinking: what if someone just wants a report once. Why wouldn't I let them buy a single audit for say $5? I'm guessing that some people would never sign up for a monthly plan, but paying $5 without worrying about cancelling would be great for them.
What do you think? All in on monthly plans (and longer)? Or let people make one-time purchases too?
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Feel like it's really just part of the narrative you want to tell. Do you want people to think that SEO is a "one and done" type thing? The landscape is always changing, I would say that improving messaging around the need for having regular reports and being on top of them would be better than succumbing to a market of one-off customers.
I've personally ran into this quite frequently with one of my services, and while I did explore the option of a one-off service, I decided to lean in on painting a significantly different picture specifically around WHY you wouldn't just want a snapshot.
Do you have a lot of people requesting this, or are you thinking that it may be a way to help boost your revenue a bit?
Checked out your site, looks good, but a lot of the words are related to the what of your business and not the why of mine (as a potential customer). A little bit of fear mongering can go a long way. What was the latest Google update, Panda 2 or Florida or something? Could see playing up the fact that XYZ Google update is coming and /that's/ why you need to have regular reporting
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Thanks, that's super valuable feedback! There's a bit of a conflict between my vision on SEO (it's not a one-off thing, you need to keep monitoring your website), and how part of my user base see it (just give me a couple of quick fixes).
Your answer made me realize I should stick to my vision, and focus on the audience that values on-going SEO activities.
Also thanks for the feedback on the wording!
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No problem. As mentioned, been through the same thing myself, and I tell it, it's definite kind of rough when you're going through it. All the soul searching involved, "is it my pricing?", "is it my product?", "is it me???".
A bit more to my story, when I did try offering one-off data feeds to customers (they emailed me, then I emailed them a price, all very manual as I wasn't ready to commit to it), I was ghosted 100% of the time.
That helped me come around to just leaning into my vision of how I intended for a system to work. By doing so, I've been able to improve my marketing a ton and appeal better to the type of customers I am looking for.
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that type of work is ongoing, but picture this scenario: I manage a website for a customer/my employer/etc. and I know that we need to invest in SEO changes. I've been selling this project for months to no avail. If I could inexpensively run a report from an impartial 3rd party, and hand this report to my decision maker, that might be the evidence that he/she needs to undertake a larger optimization project.
It might also be the evidence that I want before I commit to investing in a longer-term relationship with an SEO analysis tool.
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You make a good point, but I'm hoping that the free trial (which only checks a limited amount of pages) does a good enough job to get people to see the value.
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