

How to price: Lessons learned from our first attempt - liyanchang
http://blog.filepicker.io/post/31472601361/how-to-price-lessons-learned-from-our-first-attempt

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insickness
Here's how I priced my product:

A few months ago, I was launching an information product I had been working on
for a few years. I was trying to decide how to price the product. I was
planning to price it anywhere from $17 to $97.

In order to come up with pricing, I did some testing before the launch. I put
up a sales page that wasn't linked from my main site. The 'Buy Now' didn't
work on the page (It sent them to an e-mail sign up page instead).

Then I sent a ton of targeted adwords traffic to the sales page. I used Google
Website Optimizer to split-test the page with a range of different prices: 17,
27, 37, 47, 67, and 97. Google Website Optimizer allowed me to see how many
people clicked 'Buy Now' when they got to one of the pages. What I found
surprised me.

The highest number were at 17 and 97, and were almost equal in number. The
other prices 'sold' less. This to me meant that people were willing to pay 97.
(I could have possibly gone higher but didn't want to charge my readers more
than that.)

So I ended up selling the product for $97. It's been selling pretty well.
After the launch, when the product was actually for sale, I did find out that
people who click 'Buy Now', don't always buy. In fact sending targeted traffic
to the page hardly sold any at all. A certain number would click 'Buy Now',
but no one ever bought. Only people who came from my website bought the book.

Does this mean that my tests were off? No, I still think it was the best way I
could have tested. A few weeks after the launch, without announcing it, I
split-tested the real sales page for two weeks with my readers by selling it
for 47 and 97. So at random, buyers would see 47 or 97 and could actually buy
the product. The product sold almost an equal number at each price.

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creativename
Sort of meta, but I thought the blog post was really effective at bringing the
new pricing to my attention. I had looked at filepicker before, but with the
new Free plan not tied to bandwidth I'm really excited to give it a try.

Not to mention, the added benefit of the pricing plan as it stands is that I'm
literally thinking in my head "I hope I have to pay for this someday soon!"

~~~
D3nver
I signed up for filepicker a few days ago, and when I saw this topic I was
afraid free would be gone, but I actually really like the changes, and I had
the exact same feeling. I calculated it out, and I hope I can afford to pay
for the $99/mo in the future.

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pbreit
This strikes me as SaaS as having gone too far. Are people signing up for it?
Isn't some sort of Jquery plugin more appropriate?

~~~
liyanchang
We think that good file handling is important for the future of the web. When
we first started, we weren't planning and didn't want to build a company.

However, as we went on, we kept needing server side components to make things
work smoothly. For instance, we handle large files upload by chunking them up
and reassembling them, retrying parts as needed. Image conversion baked in and
other components in the pipeline that we want to build also require servers,
something that you can't do with a plugin.

We fully support plugin developments and we fix bugs or add features as we see
them.

When we first launched, we had people emailing us asking to pay and we've been
growing week on week so the developer need is there. Part of me is just as
surprised as you are, until I write some code dealing when multipart form
uploads or box's inconsistent error codes. Then I remember.

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jqueryin
Just so someone else from your staff hears this, you guys are a bit too in
your face with your repeat emails. I'd stop at one and if you don't get a
response leave it at that.

You're sending messages without an opt out which could get your domain
blacklisted in the long run. I'm not saying I minded, but just be wary :)

~~~
brettcvz
Definitely- we're revamping it right now, look for another lessons learned
blog post soon

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ananddass
Thanks to RideJoy, Fitocracy, Boutine, WeVideo, Vidcaster, and Ridepost for
guiding us through the pricing change and offering valuable feedback.

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carlsednaoui
OT: You may want to validate email addresses too during signup (not only
password) - this will ensure that visitors can't leave the email field blank
by mistake (and will avoid serving them your error page).

Great article btw.

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DanielRibeiro
Another very good source on pricing experiments:
[http://conversionxl.com/pricing-experiments-you-might-not-
kn...](http://conversionxl.com/pricing-experiments-you-might-not-know-but-can-
learn-from/)

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mayanksinghal
Just in case you are not aware already, there are errors on
<https://filepicker_static.s3.amazonaws.com/ce7b147/*> requests which means
missing CSS and bootstrap.js at least for me.

~~~
liyanchang
Hi there. Looking through server logs and all services look a-okay. Feel free
to send me an email at liyan@filepicker.io and we can keep digging.

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HyprMusic
Wait, do I have to provide my own Amazon S3 bucket? Also, do you do any
security checks on filetypes - namely content sniffing? That's my biggest
concern when it comes to handling files, given IE's use of content sniffing to
determine MIME type.

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creativename
<https://www.filepicker.io/faq/>

_Where are the files stored? We automatically save all uploaded files directly
into your Amazon S3 bucket. To make it easier to get started, if you haven't
put in your S3 credentials we will store them on our servers, but as your
usage increases we will ask you to move to your own storage._

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citricsquid
Does filepicker support restricting file types and validating file types? For
example can I use Filepicker to bypass my own need to validate if a file is an
image of a specific type (eg: png) or not?

~~~
gobengo
I believe you can filter by mimetypes.

~~~
liyanchang
Correct. We currently do mimetype verification.

People have been asking for extensions as well, so that's on the roadmap as
well.

~~~
tlrobinson
File type and size limits are specified in the JavaScript API, no? Is there
any way to enforce it server-side, so people can't abuse it?

~~~
liyanchang
We enforce both the filetype and size limits on the server side.

We have some hostname verification and we also also adding in secret keys to
sign requests so we can be even more sure.

We also have some checks that look for abnormal upload patterns that have
found a couple oddities and will get better with time.

~~~
tlrobinson
But where can I specify filetype and size limits in my control panel? There's
nothing stopping abusers from changing those parameters on the client.

~~~
liyanchang
That's a good idea. We had been working under the assumption that you would
want to change limits often, but I can see how a per-apikey cap would prevent
gross abuse.

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adambard
It was good to see numbers (relative ones anyhow) for your switch from
contact-for-quote to standard pricing. Do you have any early insight into your
changes in revenue/signups from this new switch?

~~~
ananddass
Given that we just switched from contact-for-quote to a new version of
standard pricing (we had a old version which was confusing!)we don't have the
numbers yet from the switch. Will post the results once we have them.

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neovive
Pricing is tough! On one of my websites, still running after 10 years, I still
modify prices quite frequently based on market conditions. Their is quite a
bit of "art" in pricing.

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jdangu
Your Free plan says: "5,000 files/month $0.005 per file over"

Looks more like $25 then, what's the catch? :)

~~~
karamazov
I think that means half a cent per file _after_ the first 5,000, which are
free.

