My Startup(s) Story. I hope it motivates someone.

Nope, no secrecy. I really don't believe in it for most situations.

It's mostly my tendency (weakness) to focus on developing new features than to update the marketing site. I'll be updating this with pricing very soon since I finally hired a great developer to help out in some of my coding responsibilities and to help shape ZZA's policies and future.

------------- Here's our current pricing:

10 cars or less $55. 70 cars or less $125. 200 cars or less $225.

No contract. No limit on features. No setup fee. --------------

Here's what we did/considered to reach these prices

0. We wanted to serve the startup dealerships. We know how hard it is to start one up (we did it, after all), so we wanted to provide a cheaper entry point.

1. We looked at what competitors were charging and what features they were providing.

2. We talked to more than 10 dealers to get their input.

3. We definitely don't want to convey that we are competing on prices. We're not! We're competing on understanding of domain, features and quality.

4. I read some blogs regarding this subject. Like Joel's and some others.

5. Had tons of discussions with people who's judgment I trust.

6. Estimated at what volume of vehicles would a given price make the most sense.

After doing these things, I simply wrote down 10 @ 55, 70 @ 125, 200 @ 225. It felt right.

As you can see, it's very non-scientific and many would disagree with this way of doing it. But it's what we did.

Maybe when it's time to rethink our prices, we'll have more time for surveys and research.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for this. Much appreciated.

Fixed.

Before giving out the advice, I had to ask myself whether things started getting better because of charging customers, or did charging customers coincide with an unknown event that caused some success?

Everything points to the former, in my case. But I do believe this particular advice applies to many other startups, not just mine.

Edit: I'd like to add, that after charging and studying usage more closely we removed some unused 'cool' feature that we thought were awesome. Charging customers also prunes your app. If you pay attention.

http://videocarlot.tv