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How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

blog.idonethis.com

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Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#31

Post by wmboy »

louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

I reckon $1-2 per month is way too low if they already have paying users at the $5 per month rate. ...but perhaps they could offer discounted pricing of say $4 per user if it was paid annually ($48/user/year instead of $5/user/month).

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#32

Post by clarky07 »

louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

I think a much better solution would be to not charge per user, and to make it tiered. This is the type of thing that could be useful to teams of different sizes, but it doesn't add more value for more users really. Paying $25 a month for 5 users seems ok. Paying $100 a month for 20 users seems absurd.

Just do 3 tiers for like 1-5, 5-20, > 20 users on the order of $19, $29, $49 or something.

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#33

Post by kansface »

asanwal wrote: post #18
louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

Dear iDoneThis team - do NOT lower your prices [1]. As a fellow subscription revenue biz, we've found that lower priced plans invite customers whose support requirements are much greater. And you won't make it up in volume. Real businesses that value their time will spent $50/month for a service that saves them time without thinking twice. Your early traction proves this out. The graphic you had in your post about de…

Clearly some price point is too high. Why do you think the current pricing is below that threshold?

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#34

Post by rgrieselhuber »

asanwal wrote: post #18
louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

Dear iDoneThis team - do NOT lower your prices [1]. As a fellow subscription revenue biz, we've found that lower priced plans invite customers whose support requirements are much greater. And you won't make it up in volume. Real businesses that value their time will spent $50/month for a service that saves them time without thinking twice. Your early traction proves this out. The graphic you had in your post about de…

Couldn't agree more.

With all due respect to louthy, making a decision to lower your prices based on the notion that a customer finds it to be a good use of their time to save $600 / year to build a copy of your service indicates that the amount of time it takes him to build it is worth less than $600.

That might not be a great target market.

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#35

Post by tghw »

louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

Your time must not be worth very much if you're really considering rolling your own. How long will it take you? A day? You might think so, but no. A weekend? Possibly, but you won't handle all of the corner cases. A week? Getting closer. How much would you pay yourself for a week of work?

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#36

Post by [deleted] »

clarky07 wrote: post #32
louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

I think a much better solution would be to not charge per user, and to make it tiered. This is the type of thing that could be useful to teams of different sizes, but it doesn't add more value for more users really. Paying $25 a month for 5 users seems ok. Paying $100 a month for 20 users seems absurd. Just do 3 tiers for like 1-5, 5-20, > 20 users on the order of $19, $29, $49 or something.

[deleted]

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#37

Post by akbar501 »

kansface wrote: post #33
asanwal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear iDoneThis team - do NOT lower your prices [1]. As a fellow subscription revenue biz, we've found that lower priced plans invite customers whose support requirements are much greater. And you won't make it up in volume. Real businesses that value their time will spent $50/month for a service that saves them time without thinking twice. Your early traction proves this out. The graphic you had in your post about de…

Clearly some price point is too high. Why do you think the current pricing is below that threshold?

Test higher prices, like you've done so far.

Some price point is too high, but you won't now what it is until you've found it via testing.

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#38

Post by zach »

flylib wrote: post #30
zach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I've used http://www.snptz.com/ off and on since it debuted on HN some years ago for weekly snippets. I've since developed my own daily forward-looking/backward-looking format, essentially a simple text-based mashup of David Seah's inspiring productivity forms: http://davidseah.com/productivity-tools/

interesting never seen http://www.snptz.com/ before, did it work pretty good?

It did for my needs. It's super-simple, yet you can choose to use it just via the weekly emails or the web interface.

It's open source as well (in Python for App Engine): https://github.com/tedpower/snptz

Looking at the code, I noticed it actually supports teams, a feature I've never used but that looks quite functional.

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#39

Post by graeme »

Some major feedback: send out a "yay, you're signed up" email.

I signed up on my iPad, and forgot about this, assuming an email would remind me. If I hadn't checked hacker news again I would have forgotten about your service entirely.

You can use this email to orient new users too.

Edit: might have been a bug due to a clumsy signup I had on my iPad. Couldnt input well on the keyboard. Just changed my password and instantly got an orientation email.

Re: How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue

#40

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

asanwal wrote: post #18
louthy wrote: post #11

Please take this as constructive: I pay for your system for a team of about 10 people. It works and it's been useful to us - but as soon as I get some free time I'm very likely going to roll my own, because I slightly resent the $5 per user per month price-tag for such a simple service; I think it's pretty expensive for the features compared to other single-purpose cloud tools. I'm not asking for more features, becau…

Dear iDoneThis team - do NOT lower your prices [1]. As a fellow subscription revenue biz, we've found that lower priced plans invite customers whose support requirements are much greater. And you won't make it up in volume. Real businesses that value their time will spent $50/month for a service that saves them time without thinking twice. Your early traction proves this out. The graphic you had in your post about de…

> As a fellow subscription revenue biz...

I think it's hard to group all "subscription services" into the same bucket. Selling proprietary data in the financial services market (like CB Insights) is very different from selling a simple tool (like iDoneThis).

Also, it should be noted that price is just one component of a pricing model. If you don't look at how you charge, and only consider how much you charge, chances are you're not going to maximize revenue.

$5/user/month looks good on paper, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that the perceived value scales with a flat-fee-per-user (no tiers) model. Example:

1. If my company has 10 people, sending iDoneThis $50 each month probably isn't a big deal.

2. If my company has 10 teams of 10 people, iDoneThis is now a $500/month expense. That's $6,000/year. I might not dispute that there's value to the service, but my perception and consideration of its value is likely to change as the total cost increases.

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