Tell HN: Our Project, 365.io, is now $5 instead of $11 | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Our Project, 365.io, is now $5 instead of $11

13 pointsjmonegro15 comments

A week ago blehn and I launched 365.io, a website that allows you to undertake a Project 365 in a focused, organized, and elegant way.

Quite a few users signed up, but one piece of feedback we kept getting regardless was that people were hesitant to sign up because of the price, $11 yearly.

As a marketing move and experiment, we decided to lower the price to $5 (which is just slightly below cost per user) for the next few days, and increase the price by $1 for a week after January 1st.

Our reasoning is that feedback has been fantastic, but the app is not spreading well enough because of the price, so we're looking at this like a marketing move instead of a price cut. Our goal is to gather as many users as possible during this time of the year (whether we make a profit on them or not) so the app can spread more easily organically after this period is over.

Let us know what you think of our move!

I'm not sure this is a good pricing move. Most people who don't mind paying for this probably don't mind paying $11 vs $5. Those who say they have a problem paying $11 probably want it for free. They will say it's just a photo app, there are a billion others out there. Why use yours?

If you are just trying to have a massive user base, make it free. Or do something whacko like make the price really high. The middle road will probably lead to nowhere.

I'd say raise the price to $365, donate half the proceeds to something like http://www.charitywater.org and sell, sell, sell.

Those are good points.

I don't think the goal is to have a massive user base or make a lot of money right away. It's more about signing up enough users so that the app can start marketing itself (by word of mouth). We were doing ok at $11, but we think there's a psychological difference between $11 and $5, with $5 being within the "sure, why not" territory.

If you want to spread by word-of-mouth, you do need to give your users something worth telling about to their friends. Any constraint is ok. Look at Instagram (filters) or Path (limited number of friends).

From my perspective, you are a DailyBooth which costs money.

Why not tap into all the photo apps already out there? Hook into their APIs and automatically generate albums for people. This is a great time to sell "My life in 2010" albums.

Once you get people to pay you money for something, you can ask them again and they will gladly pay for other stuff too.

Another idea that's been stuck in my head for a long time: A photo app which allows people to add speech bubbles.

Please make this and you will be a hit.

I'm also unsure about the new pricing and wanted to throw another wacky pricing model into the mix.

The reason I would consider 365.io instead of simply using an album in my flickr account is primarily because I feel like paying money (even if it's just a few dollars) is a commitment and I'd be more likely to keep up the photo-a-day habit having put some money behind it.

So bearing that in mind, how about this.

When signing up, the user can choose between two price plans:

1. Flat fee of $11

2. User pays $20 upfront but if they submit a photo for 90%+ (or whatever) of the days then they will be refunded $15 at the end of the 365 days.

What do you think?

That sounds too complicated.

What if you let users sign up and use the site for 1 month free? They would be more invested in the site after a month and be more likely to part with some money. I would guess that you would make more money with one month free + 5 dollars for the rest of the year vs 5 dollars up front.

I really like the dropbox model of subscriptions. I would never had paid money when I signed up for dropbox, but now I'm right at my free limit. They have me in a win/win for them - I either pay to increase my storage or refer friends. For 365.io I think users would really get the concept after they see their "free" 30 pictures.

Great job on the design.

Thanks! Yeah a trial period definitely makes sense.

As an added note, we refunded the difference to all existing users.

Looks very nice. Do the 365 days start from when you sign up and pay or is it from Jan 1st 2011?

You can start your 365 any time after you sign up. But, once you start, you can't stop!

i would probably suggest $4.99 vs. $5.00 -- there's a reason people do the silly 99 cent thing, or so i've read.

I would suggest making it $1 a month, and billing monthly.

How about supporting Project 52 too?

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