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How did you craft your messaging each time you had to raise the price?

rozenmd 5y ago
I didn't - existing users stayed at the cheaper price, some ended up churning (as the direction the product was going in was different to their expectations), new users only ever saw the new price.
- hinkley 5y ago
  I think if you think about it as 'I could be making more money off of these people' it can be a bit of a mistake. In my old neighborhood we watched a restaurant break away from a franchise, go through a bunch of upheaval, triple in size, take building damage from a freak accident, and open a second location. Practically every time we went in there, if the owner was in the building he would come out to say hi to my partner, myself, and anyone we were dining with. Occasionally he brought an appetizer. We were some of his oldest regulars. He didn't make more money off of us than anyone else at a table (maybe his staff got slightly higher tips), but we helped get him to here. So did your old grandfathered customers. Without them you wouldn't have your business loan or your VCs. You've made plenty of money off of those people. Stop thinking of them as a number. You can't measure your old customers purely by $/request/s.
  - rozenmd 5y ago
    100% agree - gotta pay back the folks who got you there in the first place, they effectively beta tested the product for you.
warent 5y ago
Most of the time you want to grandfather your original customers in so they keep the same price. Once strategy I did was I broke my product "Original" into two parts "Primary" and "Add-on" with their own prices. My customers got the old pricing on the new "Primary" service, so they were happy. But did not get the new "Add-on" which included lots of new features and updates to a slice of the "Original" product that they loved. They could continue using "Original" but it was no longer maintained and generally poorer quality. So many people added the "Add-on" to their subscription too. My revenue doubled.
- simplestats 5y ago
  You're saying "Primary" was a downgrade from "Original" at the same price? What works best here may be field-dependent. "Poorer quality" is not acceptable in some applications, where it directly affects their bottom line. So once the degratation and reliability issues start, the older version might as well be cancelled. Until I give them the hard "break-up" message, these are the people bugging me constantly. Once they have a solution that does what they need at a price they love (which becomes a permanent price ceiling for some), there's on graceful way out. I also have the problem that "no longer maintained" fairly quickly (matter of months perhaps) progresses into "no longer working" without some level of maintenance (which grows as components become increasingly changed and deprecated). So it's a delayed cancellation anyway.

I didn't - existing users stayed at the cheaper price, some ended up churning (as the direction the product was going in was different to their expectations), new users only ever saw the new price.

hinkley 5y ago
I think if you think about it as 'I could be making more money off of these people' it can be a bit of a mistake. In my old neighborhood we watched a restaurant break away from a franchise, go through a bunch of upheaval, triple in size, take building damage from a freak accident, and open a second location. Practically every time we went in there, if the owner was in the building he would come out to say hi to my partner, myself, and anyone we were dining with. Occasionally he brought an appetizer. We were some of his oldest regulars. He didn't make more money off of us than anyone else at a table (maybe his staff got slightly higher tips), but we helped get him to here. So did your old grandfathered customers. Without them you wouldn't have your business loan or your VCs. You've made plenty of money off of those people. Stop thinking of them as a number. You can't measure your old customers purely by $/request/s.
- rozenmd 5y ago
  100% agree - gotta pay back the folks who got you there in the first place, they effectively beta tested the product for you.

warent 5y ago

Most of the time you want to grandfather your original customers in so they keep the same price. Once strategy I did was I broke my product "Original" into two parts "Primary" and "Add-on" with their own prices. My customers got the old pricing on the new "Primary" service, so they were happy. But did not get the new "Add-on" which included lots of new features and updates to a slice of the "Original" product that they loved. They could continue using "Original" but it was no longer maintained and generally poorer quality. So many people added the "Add-on" to their subscription too. My revenue doubled.

simplestats 5y ago
You're saying "Primary" was a downgrade from "Original" at the same price? What works best here may be field-dependent. "Poorer quality" is not acceptable in some applications, where it directly affects their bottom line. So once the degratation and reliability issues start, the older version might as well be cancelled. Until I give them the hard "break-up" message, these are the people bugging me constantly. Once they have a solution that does what they need at a price they love (which becomes a permanent price ceiling for some), there's on graceful way out. I also have the problem that "no longer maintained" fairly quickly (matter of months perhaps) progresses into "no longer working" without some level of maintenance (which grows as components become increasingly changed and deprecated). So it's a delayed cancellation anyway.