Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#1

Post by nikhils » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 2:07 AM UTC

Anyone know where I can get hold of useful stats on % of users who upgrade to premium/paid for accounts on services like Flickr and Last.fm.

Need some decent stats for benchmarking and have had no luck getting anything of use.

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#2

Post by e1ven » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 2:18 AM UTC

One link I can give is http://nabeel.typepad.com/brinking/2008/09/theres-been-som.h...

Overall, Freemium conversion rates are way down right now. I might suspect that users are feeling less wealthy, and not opting to pay for anything that's not absolutely necessary.

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#3

Post by patio11 » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 2:32 AM UTC

Google for SXSW Webapp Autopsy. (Oh, heck, I'll do it for you. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_web_app_autopsy.ph... ) There is a lot of good in there.

Personally I think the data is of limited use even for benchmarking but, eh, your funeral. Users of my downloadable app convert to the paid version at about 1.8%~2.2% most months. There is a bit of guesswork involved there as counting downloads is not quite as reliable as "select count(*) from accounts;" .

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#4

Post by vaksel » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 3:27 AM UTC

You can't really compare yourself to those guys. Sure they might have ~2% conversion rates...but thats because their users trust that they pay for quality, You on the other hand will be an unknown, so they'll be more hesitant to give up the credit card info. To be on the safe side, put your conversion rate at .5%.

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#5

Post by timcederman » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 6:13 AM UTC

Where's Andrew Chen when you need him?

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#6

Post by catone » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 6:28 AM UTC

Ryan Carson shared stats for DropSend a couple of years ago on Vitamin: http://thinkvitamin.com/business/will-your-web-app-make-mone...

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#7

Post by pierrefar » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 8:49 AM UTC

Don Dodge from Microsoft had this post a long time ago: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/05/freem...

Money quote: "The average is less than 3% conversion."

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#8

Post by zokiboy » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 9:12 AM UTC

To cheer things a bit, here are some higher numbers:

Flickr: 5-10% Ning: 3% Online free-to-play games: up to 25% TurboTax Online: 70% (!!)

Source: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/11/freemium-math-...

My opinion: it depends on a lot of factors. From my experience without much effort you can get 1% users convert. But like I said there a lot of variables that can mess it up or down.

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#9

Post by Jem » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 10:16 AM UTC

Not flickr or last.fm, but... 16 out of 757 users on one of my sites. I work that out to be 2.1%-ish? (The site opened in November 08)

Re: Ask HN: Stats on freemium services

#10

Post by nikhils » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 1:12 PM UTC

timcederman wrote: post #5

Where's Andrew Chen when you need him?

Here's Andrew Chen when you need him!

http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/01/19/how-to-create-a-profita...

Great post.

And thanks for all the other links guys, very useful resources. The SXSW Web App Autopsy deck is very interesting.