

Ask HN: Do you "Pricing" for your startup? - rokhayakebe

Does your startup ask for money? If not, why have you decided to give away your work for free, while it is clear that most startups that do so end up quitting.
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patio11
Most startups end up quitting, period, regardless of whether they charge money
or not.

That said, you'll find no argument from me that startups should sell money.
Ignore the "you're giving your work away for free" angle -- the world at large
and your customers in particular don't give mouse droppings about _you_ , they
care about _themselves_ and _their_ life and how your product improves those
lives.

Charging money helps your product improve their life. It communicates value --
it automatically sets your product above 99% of the Internet because 99% of
the Internet is free and everyone has learned by experience that most things
that are free are free because they provide less than one penny of value.

Charging money gives people the confidence that your website is on the level.
You have a clear rationale for providing the service and for being around next
week. It is amazing any commerce on the Internet happens at all with the
pervasive lack of trust people have for new websites. Asking for money
(combined with many other things you'll be doing while asking for money) helps
to build trust, by giving people a familiar, comfortable role to slide into in
their emerging business relationship with you. They figure "Hey, if I pay them
money, then I'll be the customer, and customers typically get what they want."

Charging money tells people that if something breaks (and something _always_
breaks) that you'll be around to fix it.

Charging money says this product will merit future investment. Charging money
says this product _has_ a future.

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noodle
i have a project that is free and a project that is freemium.

freemium project is freemium because it is more time and labor intensive, as
well as resource-intensive. if i didn't charge, i would be in debt.

the free one is free because it is simple, easy, many times less resource
intensive, and i can devote as little time as i want to it while it still
generates me some revenue.

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dmillar
We based our pricing on a hybrid of cost vs competitors. We want to be an
affordable solution, and we know approximately what our competitors unit price
is.

Since we are monthly subscription based we figured out a good price point that
would make us profitable, yet undercut our competition by a wide margin.

