In my opinion every SaaS company focuses on marketing, innovation, and public relations, but pricing strategy, which is a key part of making money, is often overlooked.
Time 25:00 thereabouts, it's pretty wild to see the much lower churn for the customer paying so much more. I wonder if it's because the higher paying customer was initially willing to pay more, because they extract much more value than the low-pay customers. And because they get more, because they perceive much higher utility/value, like most things in life, "we don't enjoy giving up the things we treasure" - they do not leave readily. In our rental property portfolio, we never compete on price; we set rents well above the median and raise them regularly. Tenants stay and stay. So the higher price filters out the lower-intent customer, apparently. In the early days, when we were afraid about making our mortgage payments, we always competed on price. Wow, the turnover. Price is a signal.
I was once part of a sales force that had do execute a switch from a perpetual (one-time payment) license to SaaS with an annual payment plan. What a monumental pain it was. And we probably lost 1/3 of paying customers and it was at least a quarter of not closing new customers. But it improved revenue a lot.
Hey Rob. What do you think about raising prices despite not having any paying customers yet? I'm in-between either raising prices, killing the free tier or limiting the free tier and raise the prices... I currently have about 70 people on my free tier and I'm pretty limited in terms of software as to how to monetize my platform... So I thought combining marketing with a pricing raise would be the best (and cheapest) approach given the limitations. I kinda want to pull the trigger on this cause I feel customers are too complacent with free tiers while you on the other side are burning through cash and sleep to keep things afloat.
Hey Rob, amazing content as usual. I'm about to launch a SAAS but i'm not sure how i should price it. To keep it short, my SAAS's value comes from the people within the network of the platform itself. How do I charge people, given that there needs to be active network effects before people see the value? What approach would you take in the beginning? Thank you
I wouldn’t bootstrap a company that needs network effects to work, unless I already had an audience in that space. It’s stacking the chips against you from the start. If I decided to do this, I would give early users free or very cheap access to encourage them to use the product when there is less value. Then, as more people join and value increases, the price should go up. You could be public about this to encourage folks to sign up early, a gamification of sorts.
I can’t believe this content is free.
In my opinion every SaaS company focuses on marketing, innovation, and public relations, but pricing strategy, which is a key part of making money, is often overlooked.
Amazing talk. Thank you for sharing this, Rob.
Thanks for watching!
Time 25:00 thereabouts, it's pretty wild to see the much lower churn for the customer paying so much more.
I wonder if it's because the higher paying customer was initially willing to pay more, because they extract much more value than the low-pay customers. And because they get more, because they perceive much higher utility/value, like most things in life, "we don't enjoy giving up the things we treasure" - they do not leave readily.
In our rental property portfolio, we never compete on price; we set rents well above the median and raise them regularly. Tenants stay and stay. So the higher price filters out the lower-intent customer, apparently.
In the early days, when we were afraid about making our mortgage payments, we always competed on price. Wow, the turnover. Price is a signal.
I was once part of a sales force that had do execute a switch from a perpetual (one-time payment) license to SaaS with an annual payment plan. What a monumental pain it was. And we probably lost 1/3 of paying customers and it was at least a quarter of not closing new customers. But it improved revenue a lot.
Good stuff Rob. Also, I peeped the VladTV strategy too.
Are you available for consulting for a 10 year old SaaS niche for subscription pricing? We haven’t changed it since the start.
This is gold
Amazing content, thank you so much !
Glad you liked it!
Hey Rob. What do you think about raising prices despite not having any paying customers yet?
I'm in-between either raising prices, killing the free tier or limiting the free tier and raise the prices... I currently have about 70 people on my free tier and I'm pretty limited in terms of software as to how to monetize my platform... So I thought combining marketing with a pricing raise would be the best (and cheapest) approach given the limitations. I kinda want to pull the trigger on this cause I feel customers are too complacent with free tiers while you on the other side are burning through cash and sleep to keep things afloat.
6:48 growing your customers and get net negative churn, you’re going crazy
8:30 problem with one price. Some people won’t balk at $50-100 per month
It's impossible to find the true price for Sass in non-convertible currency-high inflation economies.
Thank you for creating the video - likes Unequivocally !!!!
Thank you 🙂
Amazing Thanks!
Glad you like it!
Hey Rob, amazing content as usual. I'm about to launch a SAAS but i'm not sure how i should price it. To keep it short, my SAAS's value comes from the people within the network of the platform itself. How do I charge people, given that there needs to be active network effects before people see the value? What approach would you take in the beginning? Thank you
I wouldn’t bootstrap a company that needs network effects to work, unless I already had an audience in that space. It’s stacking the chips against you from the start.
If I decided to do this, I would give early users free or very cheap access to encourage them to use the product when there is less value. Then, as more people join and value increases, the price should go up. You could be public about this to encourage folks to sign up early, a gamification of sorts.
Hi Rob, do you do mentorship on platforms like GrowthMentor or its equivalent?
nice hack i appreciate it
Thanks for watching, Eric!
Cmon microconf/rob release all the video of conf.
Check the playlists! We've got tons of them listed there! You also see more at microconf.com/videos