[Vindexus]

Not really. If the terms were actually "Gives us $99 dollars and we'll consider you" then you would be correct. However the terms are "Use our $99 service and we'll consider you." It's not the price to be considered, it's the price of a Pro Sortfolio listing AND consideration for this project.

The "advertise our product" part is true, but I think that's just a good idea.

[icey]

I just dislike marketing disguised as magnanimity.

I don't really see much difference between "give us $99" and "we will only consider people who pay us $99 a month".

Edit: Here's what Jason has to say about it in the comments:

It’s no different than entering a design in a design annual or contest. You pay to be included, they publish a book, you get exposure. Thousands and thousands of design firms do this every year. They pay to be included in a promotional piece in the hopes that someone will see their work and consider them for a project.

I also liked the person that pointed out that only 86 people have to sign up or upgrade for 37signals to get their redesign for free.

[jasonfried]

Seeing that we have about 170 paying Sortfolio customers, we find it highly unlikely that 86 would sign up because of one promotion.

This Pro-only rule was mostly done as a value-add for our existing Pro customers. If new customers sign up that would be great, but even if no one did that would be completely fine with us. We don't need to fund this redesign with Sortfolio money.

[icey]

I loved "Getting Real" and I pre-ordered "Rework" as soon as I could. I like making money too, so I see where you're coming from.

That being said, this feels misguided to me. I think you could have avoided all of the hubbub by just asking for a Sortfolio link and a tweet. I'm sure the product is good enough that you'd end up with some number of upgrades anyways.

If you really wanted a "value-add" for your existing Pro customers, you would have opened this up to them separately, especially since the big selling points of pro subscriptions revolve around being able to separate yourself out from the crowd with premium real-estate on the page and larger ads. If I were a pro member, I would think this actually devalues my membership as it encourages more people to compete with the premium page locations.

Nobody is insinuating you guys need any kind of financial help; if they thought that was the case I don't think people would have said a peep about it.

At the end of the day, you're still the guy that a lot of people get their business ideas from; I'm sure you know what you're doing. At least it will be easy for the rest of us to quantify the results with a simple Twitter search: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23sortfoliosvn