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All the free users are screaming about how this destroys RapidShare's reputation and how they'll never use RapidShare again. Here's the thing, though. RapidS

All the free users are screaming about how this destroys RapidShare's reputation and how they'll never use RapidShare again. Here's the thing, though. RapidShare used to care about free users when lots of folks were using it to host illegal files since it would encourage people to pay for faster downloads. As RapidShare is focused more on legitimate files, they don't care about these free users since the free users cost RapidShare money. Even if only 1% were to pay, RapidShare will make far more money off 100,000 paying users than they will off 10,000,000 free ones.

StavrosK 14y ago
Okay, data time: I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious (http://historio.us http://historio.us). It started out as free for everyone, since I just built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge, after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had 80 THOUSAND). I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well. Then I changed it to 300 free, then to 50 free. The reason why I did this is this: As per my analytics package, on average, it takes less than two minutes for 95% of my users to upgrade to paid. Basically, from what I can see, users register, try it out with one or two bookmarks, then upgrade immediately if they like it. If they don't upgrade then, they are not very likely to ever upgrade. Thus, it doesn't make sense for me to support free users (this is very expensive, since it stores the entire page for everything you bookmark, twice), so the free tier is more of a "trial" tier now. I'm not sure how many people who would have upgraded if they'd tried it saw the limit and said "I won't use this, the free limit is too low", but, based on the data (and it sounds reasonable to me as well), they are not many. People reasonably want a short trial run, and then they either upgrade or don't.
- whyleyc 14y ago
  Thanks for providing an interesting data point. I had a few questions I was wondering if you might be able to answer ? 1. How did you deal with existing free users already exceeding your new limits ? (and how did they react) ? 2. Did you see a measurable increase in upgrades after doing this ? 3. Did you see a measurable decrease in free users of the service after doing this ? Thanks.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    1. I store the limit as a field on each user's profile, so you get to keep the limit you signed up with (grandfathering). Users don't mind (obviously), and if I ever increase the limits, I just increase them for everyone. Storage is expensive, but it's not that expensive that I need to retroactively reduce old users' limits. I have also needed to cull unused accounts (of free users who haven't logged in in months). This provided a great boost to the service (saved me from needing to keep upgrading the server for the past few months), but it has also produced a few false positives of people who hadn't used their accounts for a few months and came back. Luckily, I keep backups they can just restore. 2. The last limit change was a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to gather significant data on this. I guess we'll know in a few months. 3. I will also track this, that is a good question. I anticipate that a few users will be deterred from using the service for free, but that might not necessarily be bad (I am not sure).
    - whyleyc 14y ago
      Thanks - and good luck !
- mkeung 14y ago
  Do you mind sharing the average and standard deviation for the number of bookmarks? I know this sample is not representative of the general public but I'm still curious.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    That would take a bit of coding, so I can't right now, but I'll see if I can hack something together later.

StavrosK 14y ago

Okay, data time: I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious (http://historio.us http://historio.us). It started out as free for everyone, since I just built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge, after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had 80 THOUSAND). I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well. Then I changed it to 300 free, then to 50 free. The reason why I did this is this: As per my analytics package, on average, it takes less than two minutes for 95% of my users to upgrade to paid. Basically, from what I can see, users register, try it out with one or two bookmarks, then upgrade immediately if they like it. If they don't upgrade then, they are not very likely to ever upgrade. Thus, it doesn't make sense for me to support free users (this is very expensive, since it stores the entire page for everything you bookmark, twice), so the free tier is more of a "trial" tier now. I'm not sure how many people who would have upgraded if they'd tried it saw the limit and said "I won't use this, the free limit is too low", but, based on the data (and it sounds reasonable to me as well), they are not many. People reasonably want a short trial run, and then they either upgrade or don't.

whyleyc 14y ago
Thanks for providing an interesting data point. I had a few questions I was wondering if you might be able to answer ? 1. How did you deal with existing free users already exceeding your new limits ? (and how did they react) ? 2. Did you see a measurable increase in upgrades after doing this ? 3. Did you see a measurable decrease in free users of the service after doing this ? Thanks.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  1. I store the limit as a field on each user's profile, so you get to keep the limit you signed up with (grandfathering). Users don't mind (obviously), and if I ever increase the limits, I just increase them for everyone. Storage is expensive, but it's not that expensive that I need to retroactively reduce old users' limits. I have also needed to cull unused accounts (of free users who haven't logged in in months). This provided a great boost to the service (saved me from needing to keep upgrading the server for the past few months), but it has also produced a few false positives of people who hadn't used their accounts for a few months and came back. Luckily, I keep backups they can just restore. 2. The last limit change was a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to gather significant data on this. I guess we'll know in a few months. 3. I will also track this, that is a good question. I anticipate that a few users will be deterred from using the service for free, but that might not necessarily be bad (I am not sure).
  - whyleyc 14y ago
    Thanks - and good luck !
mkeung 14y ago
Do you mind sharing the average and standard deviation for the number of bookmarks? I know this sample is not representative of the general public but I'm still curious.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  That would take a bit of coding, so I can't right now, but I'll see if I can hack something together later.