Now I'm done with the easy part (code) and working on the substantially harder part (getting users). Any advice?
I'm wondering if you would actually make more money by only having free accounts.
You already stand to make a ton of money from affiliate commissions AND heavy cash on hand.
The value of a customer is way over $7/month just based on these two income sources alone.
Free accounts might help getting the on the fencers to sign up, while you still capture the users that would have signed up for $7/month.
Something else to think about -- If you decide to definitely go freemium, consider having a third option. There is a ton of research showing people are most likely to take the second best option given a menu of choices. Three plans makes the second best option still one that gets you paid each month.
Assuming 1000 piggy banks at $10/week allowance puts your monthly take at 40k. Virtually all of that money eventually gets spent.
At the lowest level of amazon commissions (4%), you're looking at $1600 per month. If you were at the highest level (8.5%), you're at $3400 per month.
It's not awesome at 1000 users, but it pays some bills.
Unfortunately I don't know anything about their conversion rates, but it looks like they've got pretty good numbers on compete.com (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/coolmaterial.com/). Maybe someone on here knows?
I'm just making a suggestion - don't put all of your eggs in one basket. If you depend on one company for 100% of your revenue (Google, Paypal, Amazon etc)that's a huge risk.
Suggestion: I'd want the service to allow kids to claim things they've done to earn points, for which they'd get their piggy bank filled. Eg. did homework, cleaned room, washed car would translate to x piggy dollars, which I'd then translate to real money in their bank.
Can you whitelist or blacklist products? I imagine many parents won't want their kids saving up for a hello kitty vibrator: http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Kitty-face-Massage-Roller/dp/B00...
Getting users... yup, thats the hard part. Talk to some moms you know, give them some free accounts. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, can beat the value of word of mouth from a happy mom, and that's who you are targeting anyway.
This may seem crazy, but go to your local coffee shop, grocery store, restaurant, and see if they have a bulletin board that you can put flyers up on. Another prime mom location.
Check itunes for mom or parenting podcasts. Contact the hosts and ask if you can come on their podcast to talk about your site. Offer some free accounts for listeners.
Target geek moms?
I think you're getting the point... target mom!
Congratulations on your launch. I hope you're wildly successful.
Impressive concept and execution even without you being new to web development and only working on it full time for being a month. Look and feel is great for the target audience, though I'd lose the script fonts though due to inconsistent rendering across browsers (they look awful on Firefox/Win for example) and I can't see you losing anything by changing them to something standard like italicised Georgia.
My gut feeling is that parents might baulk at the paid plan unless they're particularly generous with their allowances, but the great thing about your business model is that you should still earn off free accounts in active use via affiliate programs.
Nice design and layout by the way. Works well on the eyes.
Out of curiosity, could you explain the different services/apis you're using to get the list of products the kids search for? Are you just using the Amazon Product API or are there other services you're hitting too?
some hopefully constructive criticism, i think the name is a bit tongue in cheek and could offend some people, not that big an issue, perhaps it has value to help you remember the brand.
the yellow banner doesn't stand out enough on the front page, perhaps find a larger font that doesn't blend into the page so well, this is your focus point for describing the service, make sure it stands out.