The first time I charged for a web service the hard part was getting over the guilty feeling that I was charging for something that cost me almost nothing. That's definitely not the case of course. I had to develop it, support it, pay for hosting, etc. Still, it takes a bit of strength initially to begin charging money for little more than adding a few rows to your database.
From the inside it's really easy to undervalue what you're doing. It's a big mistake too, because if you're solving a hard problem for someone they really don't mind trading money for it.
I think 37 signals emphasis on creating products you can charge for is their very best advice. Paul Graham didn't go for eyeballs with Viaweb -- he charged something like $300/mo for an online store application.
Working on a product that makes money is entirely different from working on a free one. In a thousand little ways. As a business I definitely prefer charging users directly and probably won't ever try to create another free (to users) business again.
> the hard part was getting over the guilty feeling that I was charging for something that cost me almost nothing.
Yes! Coming from the world of open source software... that's something that doesn't fit into my mentality. Other people in this thread are talking about how the 37s people were probably able to envision paying X $ for something themselves. I would have trouble with that - there are few things I pay for online besides domain names and hosting.
Comments
The first time I charged for a web service the hard part was getting over the guilty feeling that I was charging for something that cost me almost nothing. That's definitely not the case of course. I had to develop it, support it, pay for hosting, etc. Still, it takes a bit of strength initially to begin charging money for little more than adding a few rows to your database.
From the inside it's really easy to undervalue what you're doing. It's a big mistake too, because if you're solving a hard problem for someone they really don't mind trading money for it.
I think 37 signals emphasis on creating products you can charge for is their very best advice. Paul Graham didn't go for eyeballs with Viaweb -- he charged something like $300/mo for an online store application.
Working on a product that makes money is entirely different from working on a free one. In a thousand little ways. As a business I definitely prefer charging users directly and probably won't ever try to create another free (to users) business again.
> the hard part was getting over the guilty feeling that I was charging for something that cost me almost nothing.
Yes! Coming from the world of open source software... that's something that doesn't fit into my mentality. Other people in this thread are talking about how the 37s people were probably able to envision paying X $ for something themselves. I would have trouble with that - there are few things I pay for online besides domain names and hosting.
So how did it work out for you?
> "I was charging for something that cost me almost nothing"
Don't charge based on your (marginal) cost; charge based on the value you are delivering to your customer.
...which is another way of saying "Charge based on what customer is willing to pay". (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)