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Overall I really like the idea, for anybody that's done serious SEO, it's very nice to have this kind of service. My major issue is that the pricing system make

Overall I really like the idea, for anybody that's done serious SEO, it's very nice to have this kind of service. My major issue is that the pricing system makes me extremely nervous. We're one of those sites that has a "gazillion" keywords and when I see the price jumping from $50-$1000/month with just an increase of a few thousand keywords it makes me think that a few hundred thousand keywords will cost substantially more than my entire monthly revenue. I think you created the pricing schedule based on your costs. The more keywords being tracked the more "crawlers" necessary, meaning the more servers you need and thus more cost. However, I think you need to establish a pricing schedule based on the customer's math. i.e. something that's directly related to revenue (most likely traffic, or maybe number of pages) so that the ROI calculation is easier. Right now maybe I have a few hundred thousand keywords, is that going to cost me $100K/month? Even though 95% of them generate a small amount of traffic? So now I'm doing a blind ROI calculation. Essentially I have to use your system (and pay for it) before I know how much I'm going to be spending. If you make your pricing based on something I know (# pages, monthly uniques, pageviews, etc) I have an actual idea on how much I'm going to be paying and I can make an intelligent decision accordingly. I guess I could use the "personal" free service to see just how many keywords your system will find and be able to do a better calculation, but that seems a little obtuse. So I think the goal is to come up with a pricing structure that is easier to calculate, and on your end not have people crush your system with too many keywords. This can be done pretty easily I think: bucket keywords in priority (refreshed daily, once a week, once a month, etc). Priority is based off of a few factors: traffic and historical volatility. In this way you can intelligently and efficiently monitor hundreds of thousands, even millions of keywords with 1 cheap server (maybe $100/month) and charge out 500-1000/month. In that way you're still seeing fantastic margins, I'm getting great use out of the system, and everybody's happy.

ryankelly 16y ago
my guess on the pricing jump is because culling keyword suggestions from the Google API get's real expensive (if that's where they are getting them from). Going to get the rankings from the SE's is a free API call, but suggestions cost money. But the idea of adding incremental cost is also a good idea, but it has to be engineered into the merchant system and upgrade page, plus it really gives nobody an incentive to jump up to the next pay level. But I see your point.
byrneseyeview 16y ago
I think you created the pricing schedule based on your costs. The more keywords being tracked the more "crawlers" necessary, meaning the more servers you need and thus more cost. Customers don't care about your costs, though. If I buy a first-class plane ticket to fly a can of Coke from Belize to Boise, it's still worth as much as a regular can of coke. They're pricing what they think their customers will value, especially what they think their richest customers will value. If you have a few thousand keywords, what you probably have is about a hundred 'stem'-ish keywords whose fluctuations will tell you 90% of what you need to know. If you're selling a ton of products, you will probably need more, but if you're doing that, why not track keywords at the category level (instead of "Aluminum Widget," "Cast Iron Widget," "Plastic Widget," just "Widget")?
rgrieselhuber 16y ago
Thanks for this great feedback, Omar. (ProductWiki looks very nice, btw.) A few hundred thousand keywords would most certainly not cost $100K / month. :) Feel free to email me at ray@ginzametrics.com if you'd like to chat.

ryankelly 16y ago

my guess on the pricing jump is because culling keyword suggestions from the Google API get's real expensive (if that's where they are getting them from). Going to get the rankings from the SE's is a free API call, but suggestions cost money. But the idea of adding incremental cost is also a good idea, but it has to be engineered into the merchant system and upgrade page, plus it really gives nobody an incentive to jump up to the next pay level. But I see your point.

byrneseyeview 16y ago

I think you created the pricing schedule based on your costs. The more keywords being tracked the more "crawlers" necessary, meaning the more servers you need and thus more cost. Customers don't care about your costs, though. If I buy a first-class plane ticket to fly a can of Coke from Belize to Boise, it's still worth as much as a regular can of coke. They're pricing what they think their customers will value, especially what they think their richest customers will value. If you have a few thousand keywords, what you probably have is about a hundred 'stem'-ish keywords whose fluctuations will tell you 90% of what you need to know. If you're selling a ton of products, you will probably need more, but if you're doing that, why not track keywords at the category level (instead of "Aluminum Widget," "Cast Iron Widget," "Plastic Widget," just "Widget")?

rgrieselhuber 16y ago

Thanks for this great feedback, Omar. (ProductWiki looks very nice, btw.) A few hundred thousand keywords would most certainly not cost $100K / month. :) Feel free to email me at ray@ginzametrics.com if you'd like to chat.