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by huhtenberg 2341 days ago
This needs a free trial.

No trial = no interest.

As important, the trial should not require a credit card, because this is just some random site with no established reputation that may or may not employ shady cancellation practices.

3 comments

Running free trials in the past in other projects ( either as an employee or owner ) with no credit card has proven this audience of people hardly upgrades to a paid user. There is a %, but it's so slim and small that it is almost not worth it. There are a lot of reasons why for this that I have surveys and first hand data on. It was just not the right fit in my mind right now.

A lot of these users sign up and stay free forever, or sign up multiple times to bypass the time gate ( free for 7 days ), or sign up and hardly use the product and stay inactive. All bad things for a developer or owner to stack against metrics. When this happens, it's hard to compare the "do we have a bad product, or are the users just freeloaders" questions to improve the product. At least at the very beginning of a launch.

Nothing against these users, but as a MVP type product where I am trying to gauge demand and fit, it just was not in the cards.

People signing up for free is one thing. People pulling out their wallets is another.

I totally get people want to validate before they purchase though, but I need "wallet" data to see if I am going in the right direction for several metrics and thoughts I have in my head atm.

I will keep this in mind once I am able to see demand and fit better as it is a valid concern you bring up.

We publish several installable products. I've been looking for a way to track all mentions for all product names. It's not critical, but it is definitely something that we can use.

But I am not sure if we are going to get something relevant or just some random flotsam from SEO spamfarms and such. That is, you made something that may potentially have a value for us IF we can gauge the quality of the results for our products. No way in hell I'm going to pull out a wallet and subscribe just to valid if your service is any good.

Basically, you have no reputation and you expect us to pay you to check if you are any good. That's a firm No. In fact, it's not a matter of money, it's a matter of your general attitude towards establishing a working relationship being wrong. You are throwing the baby with the bathwater.

Results will come down to the term you pick and the negatives you bundle with that term. We also offer a filtering option so that if you do still get a bunch of data you do not want to see, you can filter in live time for results you do want like "only containing terms of X" or "only domains of X", etc.

One difference in my data and other similar services is that I do not limit the amount of results I collect. Higher priced competitors limit you to XXX results a day, or XXXX a month. So you automatically miss out if there is more data than your limit. Since I don't limit the results we collect, you can see more of your keyword universe. You just need to filter and add negatives ( if you wish ) to get the true results you want if you are getting some that match your keyword, but don't match your intent.

Some people will want to see all the data, some will only want specific quality. We leave that option to the user. Thus we allow you to use negatives and filtering.

The only problem I have with your other statements is:

1. You assume because I have no reputation on this site, that something must be off for you to pull out your wallet. What about my reputation elsewhere? With this being a new launch, you can not just gauge by my brand name alone or my handle here alone. You know nothing of my background either.

2. You feel my attitude towards establishing a working relationship is wrong. What if your thinking about it is wrong? You do not know my past history with SaaS, business, or networking in general. I have a lot of data as both an employee and business owner that proves free trials ( without credit card ) hardly moves the needle in converting free users to paid. Just because you feel relationships should work one way, does not mean my process is now invalid and wrong.

3. When was the last time you pulled out $7, got frauded and could not get the money back from the product owner/service, Paypal, or your credit card/bank? I am going to assume just about never unless you actively decided not to pursue and just let it be. In today's time you as the consumer will just about always get your money back from Paypal or your credit card/bank if you ask. In the 20+ years I have been online I have never had a merchant keep my money unless I was out of bounds on their terms/policies. If you are paying with a credit card ( which my service only takes ), you have protection in place pretty much.

I will add this to your credit. I totally understand the mentally behind this. I just do not agree with it is all.

Also, I had the wrong idea for what SHOWHN was. That is totally on me. I misunderstand what SHOWHN was used for and it's backstory. I had to talk to one of the moderators to understand a bit more and properly use the system.

I came into this thinking I would show what I built. It was a mod here that discussed with me that a lot of SHOWHN is about sharing free/beta products and getting feedback and product users that can improve the product.

In that sense, I was using SHOWHN wrong. Which is entirely on me. I just wanted to show my product, not really drive free user into it that would help with feedback.

So most of this miscommunication lies on me and the wrong expectation.

Less than 7$ monthly is cheap enough to qualify as almost free trial. At least it was for me.
Thank you. This was my thoughts and direction for this project as well. To see how it goes.
1. It is just $7

2. You could use https://privacy.com/ if cancellation policy is a concern

this service is available only for US residents
Ah sorry, I didn't think about that.