You might want to think about what kinds of customers you’ll get in the face of competition. If you allow people one “freebie,” while SticKK lets people use their site for free, for example, you might have trouble building traffic.
I guess the “free sample” idea is a good one. You don’t particularly want to keep customers who don’t want to pay.
I also think you may have trouble getting customers to feel loyal to your site if you stand to make money when they lose. People tend to like life insurance policies, but not annuities. The former pay out only if you die, while the latter pay out more the longer you live. (An annuity is an annual payment until you die, essentially an insurance policy against living too long and running out of savings. I think “life insurance” should probably be called “death insurance” and annuities should be called “life insurance,” but it’s probably too late to change that usage.) Anyway, I’ve noticed that a person tends to feel nervous about a company having a financial interest in their dying, and I think this helps explain why the annuity market is so small, despite the obvious benefits of getting insurance against outliving one’s saving. The analogy to your business seems pretty strong.
David
On Sep 2, 2011, at 8:26 AM, A.J. wrote:
Hi,
I have some comments on the phrasing of the pricing page. There are
some slightly confusing points that might need a little more
explanation.
For example, “If you’re disciplined and self-motivated to reach your
goals then Beeminder will be free for you forever.” Makes it sound
like there’s some kind of automatic fee that will be applied if you’re
NOT disciplined and self-motivated, which isn’t the case. And the “you
too” in the “free for you too” sentence is a bit confusing.
And this part could perhaps use some more straightforward explanation:
“You should be able to quickly find the amount of money and the road
steepness that motivate you to reach your goal.”
Also, perhaps the text could clarify whether or not you can put up
money on the initial attempt, or, if you first have to fail in order
to use the pricing scheme.
I made some edits playing around with the wording to the text and
pasted it below:
Pricing
What you can do for free
It’s free to create a yellow brick road and start following it, no
credit card required. If you’re unusually disciplined and outrageously
self-motivated then you’ll never need to put up any money to reach
your goal. As long as you stay on your yellow brick road all is roses
and ponies. If you do end up veering off your yellow brick road,
unable to reach your goal, you can always walk away and abandon that
goal with no further obligation. Maybe you decided that your goal
sucked and you don’t need Beeminder because you don’t want to reach
that stupid goal anyway. No problem! (INSERT HERE WHAT SUCH A PERSON
GETS FROM BEEMINDER)
What costs money
It’s not always easy to stay on our yellow brick roads to meet our
goals. Sometimes we need extra motivation. If you have a strong desire
to reach your goal and you want to try again you can do so by
committing to pay $5 if you go off the road again. So, for example, if
you reset your road and try again and fail to stay on the yellow brick
road you will lose $5. If you reset your road and decide to try yet
again the amount you commit increases exponentially each time.
Beeminder will always show you the amount you’re committing and each
time you have the choice to decide whether it’s worth another go. In
addition, with each reset you can choose how steep to make your yellow
brick road, which governs how quickly you have to reach your goal. You
can adjust this to make it easier than your previous attempt (<—
this is true right?). We’ll never charge your credit card without your
explicit prior consent and there’s never any obligation to reset and
try again. You should be able to quickly find the amount of money and
the road steepness that motivate you to reach your goal. (<— This
needs a bit more explanation).
You may be wondering “Why should I pay money to someone else to do
something I know I want to do?” The yellow brick road and the pricing
scheme are designed to show you your progress, the leeway you have to
stray from your goal and to motivate you to complete that goal.
Putting money at stake, even a small amount, helps most people to stay
on track to reach their goals. ETC (<---- I’m kinda of interested in
having at the end here a brief explanation of why putting money up
works, maybe not necessary. Curious what others think.)
Thanks,
A.J.
On Aug 31, 12:26 pm, Rob Felty robfe...@gmail.com wrote:
awesome.
On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Bethany M. Soule bso...@gmail.com wrote:
You’re totally right, Rob. It was way too wide. Done. (finally)
B
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 15:51, Rob Felty robfe...@gmail.com wrote:
the text width on that page is too wide. It is difficult to read. I
recommend putting more padding in.
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Daniel Reeves dree...@umich.edu
wrote:
We tweaked the fee schedule a bit and wrote out the general formula
for it at pricing – beeminder
Let me know if you think the schedule is not so well-suited to your
level of akrasia and/or wealth.
On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 23:07, Daniel Reeves dree...@umich.edu wrote:
I’m not sure it’s better than letting the user choose, but our
thinking was that we could remove the difficult choice of how much to
put at risk by using the right fee schedule.
This is the tentative fee schedule (we’re definitely looking for
feedback on this):
$0
$5
$10
$30
$90
$300
$900
The idea is that you very quickly reach an amount that motivates you
to take your yellow brick road seriously.
At first we thought we’d just double the amount each time but then
realized that that means that by the time you’ve found your Motivation
Point, you’ve actually wasted approximately that same amount in
previously paid fees. That sucks since by definition the Motivation
Point is a scary amount that you definitely don’t want to lose. Yet by
the time that amount is motivating you, you’ve accumulated that much
in losses! So we wanted it to increase more steeply. With the above
schedule you’ll always waste less than half of the amount that
eventually motivates you to stay on track.
We’re eager to hear if that fee schedule seems crazy (or wasteful) to
anyone.
Btw, we suspect that to realistically get to the high end of that fee
schedule we’ll need a feature where you can sell your contract to a
friend, ie, make a friend a beneficiary instead of Beeminder.
On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 19:51, Just555 muito...@gmail.com wrote:
It’s much clearer.
But I don’t really get this part “Each subsequent time you go off the
road, if you choose to reset and try again, the amount it costs
increases exponentially for the next reset”
What’s the logic behind this and why is it better than letting the
user choose the amount.
On Aug 12, 2:54 am, Daniel Reeves dree...@umich.edu wrote:
Thanks so much for the feedback on our pricing page! (Special thanks
to Julian.)
It’s a million times better now: pricing – beeminder
On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 17:46, Daniel Reeves dree...@umich.edu
wrote:
We’re trying to figure out how to explicate Beeminder’s new
pricing.
We’ve been told that on superficial reading it sounded too scary
(“more and more money at risk!” and whatnot). Here’s our current
version. Any suggestions?
It’s free to create a yellow brick road and start following it (no
credit card required). If you go off that yellow brick road, you
can
walk away and abandon that goal – no further obligation. However,
if
you really meant to stay on the road, and you want to try again,
you
first make a promise (we take your credit card info) to pay $5 if
you
go off the road again. Each subsequent time you go off the road,
if
you choose to reset and try again, the amount at risk increases
steeply for the next reset. You see the amount and decide whether
it’s
worth resetting, or how steep to make your yellow brick road,
given
how much will be at risk. You should be able to quickly find the
amount of money and road steepness that motivate you to take your
yellow brick road seriously.
–
http://dreev.es-- search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road –http://beeminder.com
–http://dreev.es-- search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road –http://beeminder.com
–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road –http://beeminder.com
–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road –http://beeminder.com
–
What are you beeminding?
http://beeminder.com
–
My home page: http://www.davidreiley.com
“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” – Abraham Lincoln