Great post, I've blogged a bit about my personal realization with this as well. I didn't believe people would pay for things at my first startup two years ago.

Great post, I've blogged a bit about my personal realization with this as well. I didn't believe people would pay for things at my first startup two years ago. I thought we had to convince big companies that had huge budgets to pay for our product, not regular people. Then, I went to work at a startup that actually made good money on a "virtual" product for regular people. I was just blown away that people would pay for something like that, and I learned in aggregate how much value a small purchase or monthly subscriber could have, even if the segment of users that paid was small. With my new startup I knew if we put a price on it and charged, enough people would pay to keep us alive. Here we are just a few months in, able to pay ourselves and go full time on it. It's so empowering. I will be hesitant to do "free" or even "cheap" ever again after this.