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Great job, I admire you for sticking with for so long despite the (slower than expected?) growth. You must be really passionate about what you're building, whic

Great job, I admire you for sticking with for so long despite the (slower than expected?) growth. You must be really passionate about what you're building, which is what counts most. I'm an avid language learner myself. Here are a few things I'm thinking. You probably have thought about these yourself, but anyway: - Have you ever thought about increasing the price? I find $5/month to be at the very low-end for something that a language learner may be using regularly. If I find the product useful I'd be happy to pay $25/month or more for it. Increasing the price also has the side effect the you'll get "serious" language learners to sign up, which is probably what you want. - Have you thought about recommending appropriate texts your users based on their difficulty? I don't know anything about Chrome plugins, but I assume that you can collect data about which pages and texts users are browsing, how often they're clicking on stuff, and so on. That sounds like very valuable data that you could use to add more value and data network effects to your product. - Have you thought about selling to organizations (schools, classes, meetup groups) instead of individuals?

steveridout 11y ago
Thanks very much. - Increasing price. Yes, it started at only $10/year, and I've gradually increased it as the product has improved. It's very difficult to know the optimal price. I use split testing for some things but it feels wrong to do this for price, and with current conversion rate it would take ages to get meaningful results anyway. I'm hesitant to push price too high because lowering it back down would be tricky. Existing users paying a higher price would be annoyed. Also, at this stage I think increasing the user base would be more valuable long term compared to milking the current users for more money. I've been wondering if I could add a higher priced tier in future for more advanced features. - Yes! I definitely want to recommend texts to people based not only on difficulty, but also on interest. This is something that will become more valuable with more users and a larger, higher quality library of texts. It isn't highest priority right now, but hopefully in future. - Yes. I developed some features to target at teachers managing a class of students: http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-teachers.html http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-teachers.ht.... I got a bunch of teachers using it with real classes but decided to abandon the idea because: 1. The response was positive but usage wasn't what I'd hoped. 2. Focus. As one guy I've got enough on my plate making an awesome product for self motivated individuals. Diluting my focus and the focus of the product seems like a very bad idea.
- andrestc 11y ago
  > I use split testing for some things but it feels wrong to do this for price You can do the A/B testing only on the pricing page. For ex, A would display $5 and B would display $10. When the user get to the checkout display always the lower price and tell the user he got a discount. You can measure the % that get to the checkout and the bounce rate at the checkout.
  - tempestn 11y ago
    That's a simple but great idea! I've pondered the difficulty of A/B testing price before and had not come across it (or thought of it myself). Thanks.
    - andrestc 11y ago
      Glad I could help, its not my idea tho... credits to: http://www.abtestingbook.com/ http://www.abtestingbook.com/
- benlambt 11y ago
  Why not grandfather current users in at the current price and only increase the price for new users? If you need to drop the price back down then drop the price for all existing users too. If you're charging monthly this is easy.
  - Vivtek 11y ago
    Yeah, this would be my recommendation as well. Others have taken this approach and it just makes people like you even more because they get to feel like early adopters who are being rewarded - and you actually then lose nothing at all.
  - steveridout 11y ago
    I always grandfather users. And it's easy when raising prices. The old users get to keep the old cheaper price and are happy. I was referring to the difficulty when I: 1. Raise prices too high 2. Conversion rate and revenue is harmed, so I then revert to the lower price 3. I now have a bunch of old users paying a higher price, and they might be annoyed when they see the price has gone down. At a minimum I'd need to alter their payment plans to give them the new cheaper price in future I guess it wouldn't be that difficult. Still, it wasn't long ago since the last price rise and for now I'd rather focus on growing and retaining the customer base.
eterm 11y ago
> I assume that you can collect data about which pages and texts users are browsing If a plugin tangential to browsing history collects all my browsing history, then I'm not going to install that plugin. If it was changed to do that, then just outright making the plugin free and selling browsing histories might be more profitable than trying to sell the plugin.
- steveridout 11y ago
  I agree. Just to reassure people, Readlang does not collect your entire browsing history. It does store all the URLs for the words you actually clicked on to translate. This is probably more useful for my use case anyway, since these are the URLs which would likely be interesting to other language learners. Note that I consider these individual words and URLs to be private, but in aggregate, if multiple people visit the same URL, that anonymous data is sharable. I currently rank the most popular domains that people translate words from for each language within Library -> Web Sites: http://readlang.com/links http://readlang.com/links (it isn't completely automatic, every now and then I need to manually approve new entries in the list - that reminds me - I haven't done it in a while!)
halviti 11y ago
Your price points are out out touch with reality. I've been using readlang for about a year now, and while I love the product, would never pay $25 a month for it. It's a great product, but $25/mo is 3x more than a netflix subscription, over 2x the cost of 1TB on Dropbox, etc. This not to mention that the vast majority of users are students and people trying to train themselves to be able to work or study in new countries. Hundreds of dollars a year might not be a lot to you, but I assure you it is for the vast majority of people who would want this product.
- charlesdm 11y ago
  Total revenue from the users who are willing to pay this might still be higher than the amount of users he loses who are not willing to pay $25 a month. I'm not saying $25/mo is a good price point, however, personal experience has taught me that (at least on products I've launched) increasing prices has always led to more revenue and profit.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Please don't expect an indie software developer to be able to compete price-wise with Dropbox or Netflix. There's (still) plenty of space in the market for boutique software offerings. I think it's his marketing that needs tweaking, not the pricing. Getting better copy and better targeting could mean 10x more revenue, at which point he can think about cutting prices.
  - halviti 11y ago
    I'm not expecting him to compete with dropbox and netflix, I'm just giving examples of what consumers are thinking when they compare the money they are spending to the value they are receiving for it. I'm also merely giving my feedback as someone who (1) has a very good salary (2) enjoys readlang and uses it nearly daily (3) enjoys supporting indie software developers, that even I personally would balk at paying such a steep price, as the value would not be worth it to me. I think feedback from consumers like myself can be valuable, as I also know others who use readlang, and none of them have anything more than a part-time job or PhD stipend which would price all of those people out of the software as well. Also, I did not say to tweak the pricing, I was responding to the suggestion above to raise prices 5x what they are currently, and that I thought it was a bad idea.
hotcool 11y ago
I'd never sign up for $25 a month. That's ridiculous. The value isn't there. Where his pricing is now is good, and I'm seriously considering getting on board.
- trg2 11y ago
  Steve - For the love of god, do not listen to any of this! You should 2x or 3x your prices. Focus on the users that get the most utility out of the product, and relentlessly focus and optimize for them. There's plenty of value there for people that truly want to learn another language. These price comparisons to Netflix are comically misleading.
  - kentt 11y ago
    Agreed. At an absolute minimum, they should be doubled. If someone is going to buy this, it's worth at least that.
- danneu 11y ago
  If you're serious about learning a language, and it's a tool that you're going to use every day that actually helps you learn, then $25/mo is a good deal. I pay $30/month for FluentU.com just to watch embedded Youtube videos with the Spanish transcription beneath it as it plays: http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/videos/#difficulty http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/videos/#difficulty ReadLang.com ($5/mo) has much better tech for video transcriptions (Google Translate API can translate idioms and phrases like "lo que ..." instead of only individuals words). For example, check out http://readlang.com/library/538e3607eef55e3f75000e2c/scroll/0 http://readlang.com/library/538e3607eef55e3f75000e2c/scroll/... (Extr@ - Episode 1) An idea for OP is to split apart text and video as a first-class distinction in the Library UI. I didn't even know ReadLang had videos until I was already a subscriber - I thought it was purely for text and websites. If you can boost the amount of video content, I imagine you can boast about your video transcription offering like FluentU.com does which is the reason they got me to pay $30/mo to them. One thing I like about the language-learning field is the subscription model. Living in Mexico, I was paying $15/mo for Fluencia.com without actually using it. "Why would I cancel? Surely I'll start learning Spanish any day now!" I finally buckled down and starting hitting the Spanish hard and ReadLang is an essential part of my kit.

steveridout 11y ago

Thanks very much. - Increasing price. Yes, it started at only $10/year, and I've gradually increased it as the product has improved. It's very difficult to know the optimal price. I use split testing for some things but it feels wrong to do this for price, and with current conversion rate it would take ages to get meaningful results anyway. I'm hesitant to push price too high because lowering it back down would be tricky. Existing users paying a higher price would be annoyed. Also, at this stage I think increasing the user base would be more valuable long term compared to milking the current users for more money. I've been wondering if I could add a higher priced tier in future for more advanced features. - Yes! I definitely want to recommend texts to people based not only on difficulty, but also on interest. This is something that will become more valuable with more users and a larger, higher quality library of texts. It isn't highest priority right now, but hopefully in future. - Yes. I developed some features to target at teachers managing a class of students: http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-teachers.html http://blog.readlang.com/2014/02/12/readlang-for-teachers.ht.... I got a bunch of teachers using it with real classes but decided to abandon the idea because: 1. The response was positive but usage wasn't what I'd hoped. 2. Focus. As one guy I've got enough on my plate making an awesome product for self motivated individuals. Diluting my focus and the focus of the product seems like a very bad idea.

andrestc 11y ago
> I use split testing for some things but it feels wrong to do this for price You can do the A/B testing only on the pricing page. For ex, A would display $5 and B would display $10. When the user get to the checkout display always the lower price and tell the user he got a discount. You can measure the % that get to the checkout and the bounce rate at the checkout.
- tempestn 11y ago
  That's a simple but great idea! I've pondered the difficulty of A/B testing price before and had not come across it (or thought of it myself). Thanks.
  - andrestc 11y ago
    Glad I could help, its not my idea tho... credits to: http://www.abtestingbook.com/ http://www.abtestingbook.com/
benlambt 11y ago
Why not grandfather current users in at the current price and only increase the price for new users? If you need to drop the price back down then drop the price for all existing users too. If you're charging monthly this is easy.
- Vivtek 11y ago
  Yeah, this would be my recommendation as well. Others have taken this approach and it just makes people like you even more because they get to feel like early adopters who are being rewarded - and you actually then lose nothing at all.
- steveridout 11y ago
  I always grandfather users. And it's easy when raising prices. The old users get to keep the old cheaper price and are happy. I was referring to the difficulty when I: 1. Raise prices too high 2. Conversion rate and revenue is harmed, so I then revert to the lower price 3. I now have a bunch of old users paying a higher price, and they might be annoyed when they see the price has gone down. At a minimum I'd need to alter their payment plans to give them the new cheaper price in future I guess it wouldn't be that difficult. Still, it wasn't long ago since the last price rise and for now I'd rather focus on growing and retaining the customer base.

eterm 11y ago

> I assume that you can collect data about which pages and texts users are browsing If a plugin tangential to browsing history collects all my browsing history, then I'm not going to install that plugin. If it was changed to do that, then just outright making the plugin free and selling browsing histories might be more profitable than trying to sell the plugin.

steveridout 11y ago
I agree. Just to reassure people, Readlang does not collect your entire browsing history. It does store all the URLs for the words you actually clicked on to translate. This is probably more useful for my use case anyway, since these are the URLs which would likely be interesting to other language learners. Note that I consider these individual words and URLs to be private, but in aggregate, if multiple people visit the same URL, that anonymous data is sharable. I currently rank the most popular domains that people translate words from for each language within Library -> Web Sites: http://readlang.com/links http://readlang.com/links (it isn't completely automatic, every now and then I need to manually approve new entries in the list - that reminds me - I haven't done it in a while!)

halviti 11y ago

Your price points are out out touch with reality. I've been using readlang for about a year now, and while I love the product, would never pay $25 a month for it. It's a great product, but $25/mo is 3x more than a netflix subscription, over 2x the cost of 1TB on Dropbox, etc. This not to mention that the vast majority of users are students and people trying to train themselves to be able to work or study in new countries. Hundreds of dollars a year might not be a lot to you, but I assure you it is for the vast majority of people who would want this product.

charlesdm 11y ago
Total revenue from the users who are willing to pay this might still be higher than the amount of users he loses who are not willing to pay $25 a month. I'm not saying $25/mo is a good price point, however, personal experience has taught me that (at least on products I've launched) increasing prices has always led to more revenue and profit.
vinceguidry 11y ago
Please don't expect an indie software developer to be able to compete price-wise with Dropbox or Netflix. There's (still) plenty of space in the market for boutique software offerings. I think it's his marketing that needs tweaking, not the pricing. Getting better copy and better targeting could mean 10x more revenue, at which point he can think about cutting prices.
- halviti 11y ago
  I'm not expecting him to compete with dropbox and netflix, I'm just giving examples of what consumers are thinking when they compare the money they are spending to the value they are receiving for it. I'm also merely giving my feedback as someone who (1) has a very good salary (2) enjoys readlang and uses it nearly daily (3) enjoys supporting indie software developers, that even I personally would balk at paying such a steep price, as the value would not be worth it to me. I think feedback from consumers like myself can be valuable, as I also know others who use readlang, and none of them have anything more than a part-time job or PhD stipend which would price all of those people out of the software as well. Also, I did not say to tweak the pricing, I was responding to the suggestion above to raise prices 5x what they are currently, and that I thought it was a bad idea.

hotcool 11y ago

I'd never sign up for $25 a month. That's ridiculous. The value isn't there. Where his pricing is now is good, and I'm seriously considering getting on board.

trg2 11y ago
Steve - For the love of god, do not listen to any of this! You should 2x or 3x your prices. Focus on the users that get the most utility out of the product, and relentlessly focus and optimize for them. There's plenty of value there for people that truly want to learn another language. These price comparisons to Netflix are comically misleading.
- kentt 11y ago
  Agreed. At an absolute minimum, they should be doubled. If someone is going to buy this, it's worth at least that.
danneu 11y ago
If you're serious about learning a language, and it's a tool that you're going to use every day that actually helps you learn, then $25/mo is a good deal. I pay $30/month for FluentU.com just to watch embedded Youtube videos with the Spanish transcription beneath it as it plays: http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/videos/#difficulty http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/videos/#difficulty ReadLang.com ($5/mo) has much better tech for video transcriptions (Google Translate API can translate idioms and phrases like "lo que ..." instead of only individuals words). For example, check out http://readlang.com/library/538e3607eef55e3f75000e2c/scroll/0 http://readlang.com/library/538e3607eef55e3f75000e2c/scroll/... (Extr@ - Episode 1) An idea for OP is to split apart text and video as a first-class distinction in the Library UI. I didn't even know ReadLang had videos until I was already a subscriber - I thought it was purely for text and websites. If you can boost the amount of video content, I imagine you can boast about your video transcription offering like FluentU.com does which is the reason they got me to pay $30/mo to them. One thing I like about the language-learning field is the subscription model. Living in Mexico, I was paying $15/mo for Fluencia.com without actually using it. "Why would I cancel? Surely I'll start learning Spanish any day now!" I finally buckled down and starting hitting the Spanish hard and ReadLang is an essential part of my kit.