

Tell HN: Our Project, 365.io, is now $5 instead of $11 - jmonegro

A week ago blehn and I launched 365.io, a website that allows you to undertake a Project 365 in a focused, organized, and elegant way.<p>Quite a few users signed up, but one piece of feedback we kept getting regardless was that people were hesitant to sign up because of the price, $11 yearly.<p>As a marketing move and experiment, we decided to lower the price to $5 (which is just slightly below cost per user) for the next few days, and increase the price by $1 for a week after January 1st.<p>Our reasoning is that feedback has been fantastic, but the app is not spreading well enough because of the price, so we're looking at this like a marketing move instead of a price cut. Our goal is to gather as many users as possible during this time of the year (whether we make a profit on them or not) so the app can spread more easily organically after this period is over.<p>Let us know what you think of our move!
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revorad
I'm not sure this is a good pricing move. Most people who don't mind paying
for this probably don't mind paying $11 vs $5. Those who say they have a
problem paying $11 probably want it for free. They will say it's just a photo
app, there are a billion others out there. Why use yours?

If you are just trying to have a massive user base, make it free. Or do
something whacko like make the price really high. The middle road will
probably lead to nowhere.

I'd say raise the price to $365, donate half the proceeds to something like
<http://www.charitywater.org> and sell, sell, sell.

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blehn
Those are good points.

I don't think the goal is to have a massive user base or make a lot of money
right away. It's more about signing up enough users so that the app can start
marketing itself (by word of mouth). We were doing ok at $11, but we think
there's a psychological difference between $11 and $5, with $5 being within
the "sure, why not" territory.

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revorad
If you want to spread by word-of-mouth, you do need to give your users
something worth telling about to their friends. Any constraint is ok. Look at
Instagram (filters) or Path (limited number of friends).

From my perspective, you are a DailyBooth which costs money.

Why not tap into all the photo apps already out there? Hook into their APIs
and automatically generate albums for people. This is a great time to sell "My
life in 2010" albums.

Once you get people to pay you money for something, you can ask them again and
they will gladly pay for other stuff too.

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jasonz
What if you let users sign up and use the site for 1 month free? They would be
more invested in the site after a month and be more likely to part with some
money. I would guess that you would make more money with one month free + 5
dollars for the rest of the year vs 5 dollars up front.

I really like the dropbox model of subscriptions. I would never had paid money
when I signed up for dropbox, but now I'm right at my free limit. They have me
in a win/win for them - I either pay to increase my storage or refer friends.
For 365.io I think users would really get the concept after they see their
"free" 30 pictures.

Great job on the design.

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blehn
Thanks! Yeah a trial period definitely makes sense.

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jmonegro
As an added note, we refunded the difference to all existing users.

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revorad
<http://365.io/>

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davej
Looks very nice. Do the 365 days start from when you sign up and pay or is it
from Jan 1st 2011?

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blehn
You can start your 365 any time after you sign up. But, once you start, you
can't stop!

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smoody
i would probably suggest $4.99 vs. $5.00 -- there's a reason people do the
silly 99 cent thing, or so i've read.

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lachyg
I would suggest making it $1 a month, and billing monthly.

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veeti
How about supporting Project 52 too?

