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True, and we hope that if we do a good enough job we can provide more value for the 10% than you get by switching even as you grow. We’ve seen writers doing th

by cjbest 9y ago

True, and we hope that if we do a good enough job we can provide more value for the 10% than you get by switching even as you grow. We’ve seen writers doing this report that they spend up to 40% of their time messing around with the platform - if we can improve on that by a chunk and let them focus on writing it adds up!

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
I'm positive that that's true when you're making $1k / month. When you're making $10k or $20k or $50k per month? No way. There is no way that it's a better use of your time and money to pay thousands of dollars per month vs. just switching to a flat rate provider. You're not providing much more value for someone making $10k / month vs. someone making $1k / month (the email sending costs here are super negligible), so why am I paying 10x as much? So again, it's just an incentive to switch as soon as you start making real money.
- cjbest 9y ago
  I agree with you. I just think it’s the right challenge for us to solve for: how do we continue to deliver that much value (or as much as possible) vs. being the lowest cost option for email + payments + website.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    Have you considered charging 20%? Think of the value you'd be forced to provide! :) In all seriousness, this is a good attitude to have, except that switching from you guys to someone else is going to be genuinely painful. The provider I use now has an API and provides full CSV and JSON exports of everything, and then all the actual payments live in Stripe. Switching should be a snap, right? But it's still a pain to migrate over the user accounts, force users to reset their logins, setup new subscriptions with the same different billing amounts (prices have changed over time), discount codes, and billing dates, ensure that everything continues smoothly so I keep getting my money, switch over all the integration points with my site and analytics, etc, etc, etc. It's such a pain to switch that many just won't bother to pay that big upfront cost in order to save money every month going forward and will just put it off, which is why I find this pricing model to be particularly aggravating. They wouldn't have signed up for it in the first place had they known, but they didn't know and now they're "trapped". I hope you're just underestimating the difficult of switching away and not counting on it!

by cjbest 9y ago

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

I'm positive that that's true when you're making $1k / month. When you're making $10k or $20k or $50k per month? No way. There is no way that it's a better use of your time and money to pay thousands of dollars per month vs. just switching to a flat rate provider. You're not providing much more value for someone making $10k / month vs. someone making $1k / month (the email sending costs here are super negligible), so why am I paying 10x as much? So again, it's just an incentive to switch as soon as you start making real money.

cjbest 9y ago
I agree with you. I just think it’s the right challenge for us to solve for: how do we continue to deliver that much value (or as much as possible) vs. being the lowest cost option for email + payments + website.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  Have you considered charging 20%? Think of the value you'd be forced to provide! :) In all seriousness, this is a good attitude to have, except that switching from you guys to someone else is going to be genuinely painful. The provider I use now has an API and provides full CSV and JSON exports of everything, and then all the actual payments live in Stripe. Switching should be a snap, right? But it's still a pain to migrate over the user accounts, force users to reset their logins, setup new subscriptions with the same different billing amounts (prices have changed over time), discount codes, and billing dates, ensure that everything continues smoothly so I keep getting my money, switch over all the integration points with my site and analytics, etc, etc, etc. It's such a pain to switch that many just won't bother to pay that big upfront cost in order to save money every month going forward and will just put it off, which is why I find this pricing model to be particularly aggravating. They wouldn't have signed up for it in the first place had they known, but they didn't know and now they're "trapped". I hope you're just underestimating the difficult of switching away and not counting on it!