Ask HN: How to monetize the one-off service?

[sph]

I have built and launched an automated broken links service in January (https://bernard.app). The goal was to scratch my own itch: I do not want any broken links on my website, now or ever. A quixotic fight against digital entropy you can call it.

I had a lot of free and enthusiastic users during the beta that I have been completely unable to convert to paying a monthly fee. I have made a lot of strategic mistakes along the way, sure, but now I find myself with a good piece of tech that I don't know how to sell to people that might actually need it.

The problem is that most people see link checking as a one-off problem. They want to scan their website once, and be done with it. They might later be convinced that they should stay on top of the problem with an automated service, but until then, people come, scan, and move on.

The other issue is that it is clear now that free tiers kill one-off services. There is a limited demo scan accessible from the home page, and a lot of users don't go past this stage. There is a 7-day trial, which takes care of the few that sign up. After the trial is over, basically 0% needs nor wants to pay.

So, how do you monetize the one-off service?

I see two potential avenues:

1. Focus on the "free scan" demo, make it even more limited, and ask people to pay $X to see the full-report. i.e. the WP-Scan approach. Feels slimy, but it's probably the most profitable.

2. Try to expand the scope of the project to entice people to keep paying month after month. Basically "create a problem, then sell the solution". Requires a ton of time and effort with unknown potential.

I originally wanted Bernard to be a one-stop shop for website owners, that takes care of uptime monitoring, broken links, vulnerability scanning, etc. But it's a big ask of me to spend a lot more time on something that might be a financial dead-end.

What do you suggest?

[eajr]

It sounds like you're in the price discovery phase of the business. If you can't get people to convert there's a few questions you need to ask... 1. Is the price too high? If you truly only need to scan once a quarter or once a year, it's going to be hard to ask for a monthly charge. 2. Sites are different sizes so do you charge a flat fee regardless of how big the site your scanning is? Would seem unfair if I was a tiny site and I was subsidizing larger sites because we're charged the same rate. 3. How efficient is your checkout process? Is there any friction you can remove?

Out of your potential avenues 1 seems most probable for higher revenue and what you should do.

I would ask the question why am I charging a monthly fee. Personally, your service sounds like you need more a credit system. Buy credits (could correspond to pages scanned, or just raw executions), with a minimum number of credits ($10 = 10 credits), and allow people to setup schedules to scan when they see fit. Maybe you'll see people mostly schedule once a quarter. You can have credits automatically top-up when it reaches a certain threshold (ie 5 credits).

Hope that helps, and good luck!

[sph → eajr]

Thank you for the very constructive advice. I slept on it and I think I will go for the second option instead: as you say I'm in the price discovery phase, and if people don't want to pay, what I can do is offer more value for the price.

The credit system is an excellent idea that would need some infrastructure to support but I already had a couple beta customers mention they dislike subscription model and would rather pay once when they need the product.

Thanks again!