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Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $). You've probably thought of this, but it might be easier to c
by insane_dreamer 2y ago
Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $).
You've probably thought of this, but it might be easier to charge a very small amount -- say $1/month, which most people even students, could afford, rather than rely on donations. If you get 1% of users paying that, it's still $20K month which is more than you're getting now. (Of course managing the payments themselves costs money).
It can still be non-profit (which is a great thing), so no one is getting rich off of it, and it doesn't poison the mission. But it could pay the bills.
Update: Processing fees are a problem as posters have pointed out, so you'd probably want to make it $10/year, or $5/six months. It's still an easily decision for a very large number of people.
Patreon has $1/month options, not sure how they do it though.
- charlie0 2y agoWould $1/month even be worth it? It seems payment processors would take a big chunk out of that $1, which is why I very rarely see monthly subs of that amount.
- whatevaa 2y agoYeah, if you want that little, do Bitwardens $10 a year. $1 transactions are ripe for abuse, checking if cards are active.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYou'd probably want to charge $10/year (once) rather than $1/month. It's still an easy choice for many people (of course still inaccessible for students in some countries).
- zip1234 2y agoAnother option is to make deals with universities or schools for access for their students where they pay a certain amount per year and the students can all have access
- rammer 2y agoUni sales cycles are horrendous. take forever and fickle
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYeah, that would be a __lot__ of overhead. Not worth it. I'd instead focus on trying to find sponsors ("$100 / month allows us to give a free account to 100 students in X countries!")
- emseetech 2y agoI've always wanted to experiment with a $5 a month or $10 a year model for low-cost subscriptions.
- gradyfps 2y agoSome payment processors have "micropayment" fee structures, where they take a higher % (5% in PayPal's case) for a lower fixed fee per transaction. PayPal's traditional fee (for USD)[1] = 3.49% + $.3, for $1 = $0.3349 PayPal's micropayment fee (for USD)[2] = 4.99% + $.09, for $1 = $0.1349 Using that model would make sense in OP's case. [1]: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statement-11 https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statemen... [2]: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#micropaymentfixedfee https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#micropay...
- nnurmanov 2y agoI did not know if Paypal had micropayments fee, thanks fir sharing!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- datavirtue 2y agoWell, it's $12 a year. I always pay a sub for a year or two if it's that low.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYou could use crypto for micro-transactions (it's one of the main problems that crypto was meant to solve). LiteCoin, for example, apparently has quite low fees[0] ($0.03-0.04) Monero much less than that. But enabling this in a frictionless manner for users is probably difficult (I don't own crypto myself). [0] https://coinwire.com/cheapest-crypto-to-transfer/ https://coinwire.com/cheapest-crypto-to-transfer/
- paulryanrogers 2y agoHasn't LiteCoin mining largely subsided and therefore is subject to 51% attacks?
- BlackjackCF 2y agoI think this makes a lot of sense. Same model as TryHackMe.
- chris_pie 2y agoDon't most payment platforms have a constant minimum fee per transaction? That would hurt you at a $1 price.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoYeah their minimum is $10, which for me, I can only justify if I daily your project, or use it frequently. I love the site, but I don't use it nearly enough to justify this cost. $5 I might forget about. There's a site I rarely use that I pay $3.99 for, because its <= $5. I'm guessing fees make it not worthwhile, maybe they should negotiate lowered fees from their payment service, or figure out someone else who would give them drastically lower fee rates.
- dartharva 2y agoThere will still be plenty of students (mainly from outside of the West) who will immediately lose access if anything gets paywalled by even a cent because of various reasons.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYes, for sure. You could make it free for users in X countries, based on IP. Yes, people elsewhere could use a VPN to get around it and use it for free but you're charging so little that anyone who can afford or has a mechanism to pay won't go through the trouble.
- wslh 2y ago> Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $). Most organizations aim to survive as long as possible, so financial sustainability ($) is crucial.
- smt88 2y ago> Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $ What? No. If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure. Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.
- thinkr42 2y agoThis entirely. You can't eat using "good feelings" / "impact" alone.
- madamelic 2y agoAlso the whole non-profit angle is immature in my opinion. Non-profits denote nothing about their financial good-standing or moral good-standing. You can be an amoral non-profit, a moral for-profit or vice-versa. Your profit structure has nothing to do with the morals of the people inside of it. Additionally, there a lot of non-profit executives that are profiting very healthily off of their work.
- twojacobtwo 2y agoNon-profit simply tells people what the incentives/motivations are or are not. The average for-profit company can't be trusted/expected to do what's best for anyone outside the profit structure (e.g. users or the public at large). Of course you can have exceptions in either direction, but on average for-profit orgs will likely be willing to fuck over anyone else to increase profits - intentionally or not - because profit growth is literally their purpose. 'Non-profit' advertises that you don't have to worry about that specific, powerful motivation of the org contending with your best interests.
- mlyle 2y agoUnfortunately, in practice, this isn't really true. It's a less powerful motivation, in that there are not shareholders who will benefit from growth. But in practice, executives and managers end up making more, which provides an incentive for growth.
- dmurray 2y agoHow does it not "poison the mission" if it means 99% of users drop the platform?
- MrDresden 2y agoDoes that even matter if the mission is dead?
- paxcoder 2y agoIt matters for integrity. They promised 100% free forever. But anyway, death and betrayal aren't necessarily the only options. As others have suggested, they can try soliciting donations more forcefully. If that doesn't work, they could introduce premium features. Stuff that obviously has to cost money would make the pill easier to swallow, for example, features that depends on third party services (only LLMs come to mind right now), or human assistance (real-life instructors). Admittedly, this would be a compromise. One could argue it fails on the 100% part, but another could argue that 100% of existing features remain free.
- Barrin92 2y agothat's one percent more success at the mission than you have if you're forced to turn the servers off because you can't pay the bills. Money's to an organization what's oxygen is to a body, before you go and plan any missions you need to be able to sustain yourself.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoFair point. I used 1% at the very low end -- if the amount is small enough (in the $1/month range) I think the opt-in rate would be much higher. I would then give a free account to anyone who asks. ("We know that even $1/month is a big ask for some folks in certain countries or they may even have a method by which to pay it. If that's you, let us know and apply for a free account here.") Then basically auto-approve (with some bot-screening mechanism) accounts that apply. Sure you'll get some abuse and people lying, but not that many people are going to lie just to save $1/month.
- jessriedel 2y ago
- fsckboy 2y ago>(Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $) measuring success by how much people are willing to shift scarce resources in your direction is a perfectly good way to measure success. It's "weighted usage+reach". the remarkable effectiveness of markets in allocating resources this way is a huge achievement for civilization. I really had to scratch my head at their surprise that a non-profit oxymoron model, i mean, business model wasn't viable.