Dude this is fantastic. Also you really need to charge more. Start by doubling the prices for all the plans. It's easily worth it and people will pay.
I also don't know if including storage in the pricing is helpful. It might make more sense to represent that in time. If this is being sold to users too inexperienced to use AE, then the idea of bitrates and pixel resolutions probably will be foreign to them. But time is something everyone knows and can easily reason about.
You might also experiment with completely removing that restriction. Storage is cheap and hosting video isn't really a huge value add. The features and functionality are the real selling point, so price on those things and the real value you offer to users.
First you are right, pricing will go up. As I add more assets (animated text 100+, templates 100+, progress bars and other elements 100+) I will raise the price. Early adopters will be grandfathered in for life.
I think adjusting the pricing based on your feed is very appropriate, makes a lot of sense and its giving me a lot of ideas.
However, to increase revenue capture, charging for templates or other assets could make up for it.
Swapping in a temporary trial plan instead of a free plan and using a low cost plan for the occasional casual user will probably keep your support costs lower too - free users can eat up a lot of your time/money, and also tend to be more negative about the product than paying customers.
Maybe the more expensive plans get more templates for free, and the cheaper plan is more a la carte.
Great job and congratulations on this release. This is a good market to be in and I can already see uses for this in my own budget product promo videos.
In fact - if you can scale easily - you might be better off lowering the price and going for those that can’t afford / can’t be bothered to learn After Effects.
Make it something that an average 16 year old can afford, and you’ll create a loyal customer base.
Like that you may be able to make more money selling template bundles and stuff as add-ons, as that’s an audience used to paying for skins and similar while gaming.
I've considered doing a one time fee with up sells. Pricing is not entirely fixed. Still working out what the market wants and what the company will need to survive over the years.
Ill need to run the numbers and possibly bring on some advisors. This model does make a lot of sense to me.
It absolutely should be. This has a lot more value to large social media teams who have to iterate on content daily to test conversion than it does to just an individual who wants to make nice posts for their side hustle.
I know you want to encourage, but After Effects is "only" $20/mth.
- what is the market willing to pay - does this solve the core problem - how much is this problem worth (hint time is the most valuable thing in the world)
I don't think it should be more expensive than adobe products at all. My goal is to make it cost efficient for most folks who don't have large budgets. However here are a few points.
- hiring someone could cost a non adobe user $800 for 2-3 videos (this is way more than an adobe product because you are paying for time and skill) - assets and templates depending on usage can easily cost $100 for a few videos on envato (this also enables non creative users to create professional looking content which solves the problem above). - if users can move faster and can iterate faster then they make more money (this applies to serious users who know what they're doing and agencies with a higher budget)
Just some of my thoughts. There is no magic bullet for pricing but I think the number one rule I have found with pricing is that it's relative. If Tiffany & co can sell a $1.5k paper clip https://www.popbuzz.com/internet/viral/tiffany-everyday-obje... then pricing is really what you make of it.
There are variables and you have to know what your target audience is willing to pay. My idea on pricing is that I want to 10x your investment. So if I am charging $20 per month. I want you making at least $200 from the service.
If you're an agency making $10,000 from the service I am going to charge $1k
I have considered a one time fee with upgrades.
One time fees lead to bloated software, most of the money is in making upgrade versions and forcing users to pay again, which means there is a huge financial incentive to constantly add features that sound cool whether or not users actually use them.
For pricing IMO your starting sweet spot will be around $10/month. There's a benefit in charging something and getting people signed up with their card details. At some point in the future you may find it beneficial to charge $5/m to get more users through the door and make money through extras. Just my 2 cents.
Or this vs spending time learning to use a professional video editing tool
I agree. I'm puzzled why this is getting so much excitement, it's hardly in the ballpark of "After Effects".
I spent years learning to code. Dropped everything to live in a car in Silicon Valley so I didn't have to work at a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
I then worked my way up to a $200k salary. Quit that to pursue being an entrepreneur.
Last year I made $20k and risked it all for this.
Thanks for your time and energy checking it out though. I'm looking forward to your version and if you have a role then I will gladly come work for you.
Cheers
People who create and put things out into the world deal with these sort of comments all the time. I think it's fair to be critical of them.
You're in your emotions whereas you should be making calculated moves to increase your chances of success, off of free exposure you're getting here on HackerNews.
Your project looks really nice, it is nowhere close to the feature set AfterEffects offers and that's a fact - it has nothing to do with you as a person or your journey.
Furthermore, your project is not competing with AfterEffects, it is competing with Fiverr or not bothering with adding 'effects' to videos at all.
You had a well paying job which would allowed you, in only 5-10 years to basically buy a house for half a million and then retire with the other half million.
What motivated you to build an Online Service?
What are your thoughts on your competitors? Like i do like your product from a first view perspective, butwhen i google 'online video editor' i do find a lot of alternative products.
Are there any long term plans when you would say you made it or where you would pull the plug?
It's been a burning desire of mine. I truly fear regretting not doing this. If it fails, I am happy to try again.
I am ok with making $20k per year for the rest of my life if it means every year I can wake up shooting my shot to build something useful to others.
In regards to competition I am not afraid in the slightest. I do not fear others, they are just flesh and blood like I am.
That said I am reasonable when someone has a certain position, the good thing about space and time is that with proper course correction you too can find your own position. With correct defensibility you can own a certain position for as long as you have a good stance.
Video has been around since the first animators drew images in a flip book. It's not going anywhere. I believe there are gaps and this game is not zero sum.
I will continue to expand my knowledge on physics, computers, marketing, engineering, human/consumer psychology. I will continue to build relationships and find ways to leave people better than I found them. These are my principles and in these principles I feel confident.
I would suggest, if I may, that you are going to get a lot of people dismissing your product, both now and in the future. If this is your first time being in the seat of both the creator and the public face for something you've worked so hard for, it's going to feel uncomfortable, and you will want to be defensive about their comments -- it won't seem justified that someone could make what feels like a low-effort, flippant comment about something you put so much time into.
In general it will be better to let it slide. They were not going to be your customers anyway. Lots of people will misunderstand who your target customer is. Power-users will say "why would I use this?" Or people who don't need any videos will say "there is no market for this." It doesn't matter, so long as people who are your target market see the value in it.
But more importantly, focusing on dismissive comments will take a psychological toll on you. You'll be sitting at dinner and feel angry about the jerk on the forum who said your work had no value. You've done great work, and letting those comments gnaw on you may make you doubt yourself, or think less of what you've built.
It's OK that not everyone sees the value in your product, nor should they: it just means you intelligently defined who you're going after. And that's great.
It'll take some practice and time to not feel the sting of negative comments, and the desire to argue with them -- to prove them wrong. See if you can be aware of your own emotions about them, and why they make you feel the way they do. As you do, you'll become fairly immune to it, and it'll help you truly enjoy the fruits of your entrepreneurial labor. This is a normal experience a lot of people go through.
Congrats again on a fantastic release, and for the dedication to give up so much to make this happen.
Its always interesting to see that a lot of people see things different :)
And sure thats probably slightly easy calculated but personally for me, living 5 years very frugual and then buying a house and then doing another 5 years and then stop working, is very reasonable when you have a salary like that.
The first 5 Years might mean saving a lot, but then you own a house. Payed, mortgage free; Very low base costs.
Depending on how big that house is, you are now able to invest even more longterm: Solar Power for example to keep your utility costs very low.
When you can charge a mid-sized e-commerce company $2500 a month for social media output, $99/mo is nothing.
What you want is to learn if your product is something people are willing to pay for. Once that is established, you can tune the pricing to increase the revenue.