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Two things: 1) In the same breath you say they're willing to pay and not willing to pay. If they're not willing to pay $40/month, it seems either they're too l

Two things: 1) In the same breath you say they're willing to pay and not willing to pay. If they're not willing to pay $40/month, it seems either they're too low on resources to afford even $40 software or your software doesn't provide enough benefit to justify the cost. You have to find a solution to this first or you'll have a long, uphill struggle - regardless of this customization problem. 2) How much do they really, really require the customization? If you talk to the users of any SaaS software, almost every single user will mention a customization they wish they had. But yet they're still using and paying for the software. Your job isn't to provide the 100% complete solution. Your job is to provide enough of a benefit to justify the cost of the software.

cdcarter 13y ago
My experience has led me to hold the belief that the organizations I am targeting are more interested/willing to pay a person (and community member) for one time services than they are for ongoing maintenance costs and subscriptions. This may well be my own misunderstanding and lack of marketing knowledge, but that's what it feels like I'm faced with. This is software that I can only really see reaching at most 40 institutions. All of whom are cutting budgets and are as resistant to change as a not-for-profit tends to be. And it's software that I want to make and want to give them for as cheap as possible. I'm not worried about my own take on this, I just want to give them the solutions they need and make it affordable. I think I'm just getting too worried and heady. I need to buckle down, trim the fat on the deployment, get it to fit on a low-rent VPS, and spend my time from there really working with companies to make it work.
- avenger123 13y ago
  How much revenue can you be generating from this if it went really well? What's the cost of that revenue? Based on what you have been saying, your total potential revenue doesn't seem to be very high (less than $100K,$200K,$300K??) and the cost to get these clients seems to be involved.Especially considering each instance is effectively its own mini-product with development effort. Personally, I would suggest you consider this an incredible learning experience and start focusing on another product that can be more profitable. Going after a niche market is great but the niche market also has to have the money to pay. For example, you may consider oil and gas a niche market, even a small segment of it, but, the money flows like water for them so getting them to pay and pay big (if the ROI is there) can be done. Anyway, maybe not what you want to hear but worth thinking about.

cdcarter 13y ago

My experience has led me to hold the belief that the organizations I am targeting are more interested/willing to pay a person (and community member) for one time services than they are for ongoing maintenance costs and subscriptions. This may well be my own misunderstanding and lack of marketing knowledge, but that's what it feels like I'm faced with. This is software that I can only really see reaching at most 40 institutions. All of whom are cutting budgets and are as resistant to change as a not-for-profit tends to be. And it's software that I want to make and want to give them for as cheap as possible. I'm not worried about my own take on this, I just want to give them the solutions they need and make it affordable. I think I'm just getting too worried and heady. I need to buckle down, trim the fat on the deployment, get it to fit on a low-rent VPS, and spend my time from there really working with companies to make it work.

avenger123 13y ago
How much revenue can you be generating from this if it went really well? What's the cost of that revenue? Based on what you have been saying, your total potential revenue doesn't seem to be very high (less than $100K,$200K,$300K??) and the cost to get these clients seems to be involved.Especially considering each instance is effectively its own mini-product with development effort. Personally, I would suggest you consider this an incredible learning experience and start focusing on another product that can be more profitable. Going after a niche market is great but the niche market also has to have the money to pay. For example, you may consider oil and gas a niche market, even a small segment of it, but, the money flows like water for them so getting them to pay and pay big (if the ROI is there) can be done. Anyway, maybe not what you want to hear but worth thinking about.