Comment by kgtm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kgtm | Hacker News Reader

First of all, I would like to thank you very much for your posts, they are informative and have great value for emerging entrepreneurs.

Some thoughts I had:

* You are spot on in concluding that this is a tool that would be used a few of times in a year. A lifetime payment is the solution, with an appropriate price bump of course.

* Regarding the users that signed up for free: You should have allowed them to keep using the service for free. They are your implicit marketing team. They got in early, they deserve gratis access for that.

* Regarding the recurring scheme of cancellations: Do contact the users, ask them why they are leaving. This will help you either validate my first thought above, or iterate on the service to become what they expect to get out of it.

And thanks for your thanks - and also such great advice! :-D

A lifetime payment is the solution, with an appropriate price bump of course.

I'm now hearing comments like yours a lot, I think I might give this a try this weekend.

You should have allowed them to keep using the service for free.

You know what, you are totally right. I hadn't thought of it that way, and if I do something similar in future, I'll take the same point of view.

Do contact the users, ask them why they are leaving.

I'm right now figuring out a nice email with a "don't worry, this is the only email you'll ever receive from me" bit in it, to send to the relevant users. I think I'm being silly by not having contacted previous users about this.

Thanks once again for the awesome advice!

Maybe a lifetime payment would be too expensive? Perhaps a $5.99 one month pass, and a $4.99 subscription would be better?

I'd let the user choose in such a way that they think they get a bargain with the lifetime pass. Something like $2.95 for one time, $3.95 for a month and $4.95 forever.

I guess you have to be careful in your terms and conditions when you say "lifetime", right? Obviously, you mean the lifetime of the product, not the client's

I am afraid of the statement of "lifetime payment". May be because I am a newbie to Internet entrepreneurship but I think the ability of providing the opportunity to users to small payments for a specific time would result in more sales rather one time huge payment.

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