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Comment by angryasian | Hacker News Reader

why wouldn't you try to release it for free, and figure out another business model. I can think of a few off the top of my head. Your only issue should be to gain users first, as you have an adoption problem or more like how do I show people the long term benefits of doing something different and new. Its about educating your users, which is hard by itself. Maybe we didn't ruin the web, we just weeded out those that are not creative enough to figure out how to make money from it.

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What business model would you suggest? No business model or creative monetization strategy is going to change the audience's predisposition against paying.

I'm a bootstrapper looking to build a profitable business, not someone chasing an acquisition or an IPO.

Ending up with 1000 users who aren't paying me is no better than where I am now, is it?

you've already admitted to doing freelancing while keeping the project going. You could of kept doing that. Theres companies that will pay for sponsorships if you have a 1000 dedicated teachers using your application. You said teachers pay for supplies, well you could make affiliate money. You could figure out how to get deeper discounts on bulk supplies teacher's are regularly buying and take a cut. You could ask for donations.

Once you have a 1000 people hooked on it, I have no doubts that you could think of a premium feature that opens new features to these users that they'd be willing to pay for. Again its about getting those users and showing them the benefits first.

It's an opportunity cost issue. The choice isn't go big or go home. The choice is work on this some more or [insert-new-project]. Which is more effective: to plan, host, and field support requests for a product that has no monetization strategy? Or to roll the lessons learned into a new project instead? The fact that there might be some value in 1000 users down the road doesn't mitigate the fact that he's learned a bunch of lessons that will inform his next product from the beginning.

Your audience will happily pay for software. See http://www.bingocardcreator.com : over $100k sold to teachers. They even happily paid for your software: 10 paying users out of a hundred is a pretty nice conversion rate. Your problem is the denominator there. You need to scale it up to the point where the numerator becomes meaningful to you.

A related problem is, on watching your presentation, I don't think you solve a problem teachers actually have. No teacher gets up in the morning and goes "Dang, but for my crushing lack of simple data tools, I'd be ready for today."

Honestly, your success throws me for a loop—it's the exact opposite of what I've encountered. Every teacher I speak with objects to the very idea of paying for software—without even seeing the app.

In another comment, I wrote this about Bingo Card Creator vs. Knack: I think the difference is that he's providing something teachers already use, need, and look for, as opposed to a "new" kind of software solution. (Online gradebooks aren't that new, but they still are not in use by the majority of teachers.)

I really wonder if the difference is just in what we're selling. If I understand your product correctly, you offer instructional materials teachers have been using for a long time: customized cards to play bingo. This is something teachers are familiar with. As I mentioned in the post, teachers already buy classroom materials like pencils, letter charts, and decorations. They've been buying these for years and actually enjoy buying them. Bingo cards are a familiar need and expense. However teachers do not, generally speaking, regularly use software, much less pay for it every month. The concept of paying for an online gradebook is foreign, regardless of what the software looks like.

If you don't mind, I'll send you an email to follow up. I'd really like to continue discussing.

I'm always happy to help folks, particularly folks helping teachers. A bit busy this week but will get back to emails eventually.

I think the difference between your two products can be expressed much more simply: When teachers buy BCC, they can go to bed earlier, when they buy Knack, they've just opened the door to more clerical work.

Completely agree that is the perception, even if the net effect is less time spent working. And to be honest, I'm sure in some cases it would cause more work.

Do you have any other ideas for small personal educational software? Or do you know any websites where I can find problems teachers are having that can be addressed with software?

There may be other ways to package it before releasing it for free as well. Remember, patio11 manages to charge mostly teachers $30 (although not monthly) for bingo card software, but it took him 4 years of learning and optimizing to get there.

I'm familiar with the Bingo Card guy (Patrick McKenzie). I read his blog. What he's accomplished is definitely impressive.

I think the difference is that he's providing something teachers already use, need, and look for, as opposed to a "new" kind of software solution. (Online gradebooks aren't that new, but they still are not in use by the majority of teachers.)

Maybe I didn't hit on this hard enough in the blog post—teachers just are not a ripe audience for software in general.

I have to second Patrick. I sell a Mac app to alot of teachers for $20, and sell about 100/month. While not big bucks, not bad either.

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