I'm thinking of converters, niche tools and more, where there's not enough flesh to cut out a "pro version" and whatnot.
What are your experiences with monetizing these kind of things? What works, what doesn't?
I'm myself working on http://pingr.io and struggling to find customers. But gosh, how many products like currency converter or something exist which have a lot of users and revenue.
My points:
1. If your project is useful for people some of them will use it
2. It doesn't matter if free versions exists. People by coffee in stores (cheap) and in Starbucks (expensive). People order taxi (paid), when they can use autobus (might be free or very cheap).
3. But your product should be a bit better or at least the same as others
4. Now, one crucial moment is pricing. Once I posted my product on reddit and was surprised that people started comparing my pricing to competitors, and they were complaining about it. But still. I know a guy whose prices are literally x3-x5 higher than others, while his app is not that good, and he still has ~$4000 revenue per month
BUT
Keep in mind, that if you're not going into "business way" meaning instantly paying ads/watching conversions/investing/taking risks etc, it may take a LONG time (1-3 years) to get exposure
In a nutshell: just make a good app, put pricing (average among competitors) and start talking about it everywhere for a year. If the app is good, it'll bring you money (at least there is probability)
- What is a monitor? Is it a site? Or is a thing that can monitor multiple sites?
- Can I monitor multiple pages of the same site?
- I'm generally put off by time based trials, I get irrational fomo, maybe now isn't the best time to trial it, I can wait until when I am going to use it more (reading from work).
I honestly wouldn’t really consider a service that didn’t offer this for uptime monitoring, as I’ve used some before with loads of issues or false negatives etc.
Even featured on PH, yet no breakthrough, I almost don't want to believe you...
A slightly more ethical / more profitable / safer option would be to make websites in related niches (tech reviews, for example) which are easier to monetize, and then link to those. The costs of running the free websites would be paid by the profitable website.
Apple does a somewhat similar thing. iOS and macOS are free, but they are covered by the cost of the device. Or an open source library (free) paid by a book (charging for the documentation).
I think also this is an evaluation based also on what is your product and what is your target. Lot of business work is around this topic