

Ask HN: How to manage costs for Twilio apps? - theli0nheart

So, I'm running into a dilemma. I just wrote a Twilio App that I think is kinda cool.<p>The problem is that Twilio can be expensive, and I can't immediately think of any plug-and-play advertising solutions for use with audio / phone applications (such as Adsense for the web). I really want to show my friends this thing, but I'm afraid the costs will spiral out of control.<p>What are your suggestions on how to make money to offset the costs for web applications that are built on services such as Twilio?
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patio11
Charge people money!

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theli0nheart
So is there no such thing as a freemium model for a Twilio-like web
application?

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patio11
I don't see why you can't do freemium for applications which have non-zero
per-user costs. You just have to either a) be careful with it or b) have a lot
of other people's money to burn through prior to discovering your COCA and
LTV.

I spend rather substantially more than my rent on AdWords, to acquire users
who don't _have_ to pay me money. This is less risky than it sounds because I
have a pretty good idea that a portion of them will indeed pay and that I'll
come out profitable.

There's also cash flow to consider. AdWords has post-pay, which is quite
convenient for cash flow. Twilio, by my understanding, has you pay in advance.
That is a bit less convenient. Basically, if you click on an ad today I owe
Google money as of sometime in early March and then money actually leaves my
physical possession to pay off my credit card sometime in early April, but I
get physical possession of your money on Friday. This is pretty powerful -- it
means, if Google were to offer me infinite advertising inventory, I could blow
up my expenditures very quickly without needing any capital to do it.

Prepaying is not nearly so fun, although since you're prepaying with a credit
card you still get at least a few weeks to get the customer's money prior to
effecting actual transfer of the money to pay for the services they used.

