

How To Transition From A Free To A Paid Service - webtickle
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/13/free-to-paid-tips/

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daryn
I work at TeachStreet, and this has been a really dramatic change for us. By
thinking through the transition and being as transparent as possible with our
users throughout the process, it has worked out as least as well as any of us
could have hoped.

Go checkout the article!

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rishi
Awesome article. We will be killing off our free plan soon. This helped a lot.

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daveschappell
Thanks, Rishi -- and, I just checked out FlyingCart.com (saw you mention it in
your HN About Me section). Looks great. Do you white label that for other
sites, too?

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rishi
Thanks. Yes you can white label the store easily. Just use a custom domain.

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randfish
Really like seeing stories like this shared in such a transparent fashion. I
wish there were more case studies from inside.

I will say that when we transitioned from free to paid, there was a little bit
of negative feedback, but I agree with the article that the overwhelming
majority of feedback was positive and supportive. It also enabled us to do
much more remarkable things than what we did previously :-)

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blantonl
An outstanding article. However, I'd love to understand further the business
dynamics of handling a price increase for a service.

Five years ago I somewhat went through the same scenario..except we went from
a _donation_ model to a subscription model.

Now it is time to evaluate a price increase and up against a five year
established price I'm curious as to how it has been handled in the past.

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daveschappell
I think the most of the tips apply to price increases as well. Most of your
loyal customers will understand that prices go up over time, but if you
communicate with them and explain the changes, offer some grandfather'd
benefits, etc. etc you'll find that many will make the transition with you,
especially if it's gradual.

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Groxx
_4) Provide Grandfather’d Pricing for long-time customers, or give them
exclusive benefits_

Something which seems to be missed by nearly every cell, internet, electronic,
etc. company in existence. You'd think you'd want to _keep_ customers, not
just incentivize new ones.

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derefr
It's a problem with the division of strategy throughout a company. The job of
sales is to turn people who don't pay into people who do. They have no
incentive to keep current customers; in fact, it's sort of the opposite—every
customer that quits, and then comes back later, counts as a new sale.

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gbolan
Great idea to find other "currencies" from your clients/suppliers. What about
the idea of having teachers provide you with free classes as their way of
paying? You could then turn those freebies into promos/giveaways, etc..

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daveschappell
The problem with teacher paying with free classes is that many of the free
classes are just ways to get a first meeting with a customer. And then future
transactions between the student and the teacher happen without TeachStreet
being part of them. But, we're experimenting with some ideas in this space
(helping teachers to offer promotional pricing, with additional featuring on
TeachStreet.com itself).

