[vaksel]

If quality was your only concern, you'd just charge a one time $5 fee. So I'd say greed is at least somewhat involved.

And yes giving away coupon codes is good and well...but then you run into the quality problem that you use as an excuse to charge from the start.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with greed...provided it doesn't cause you to kill your business before it gets the chance to get off the ground.

[SoftwareMaven]

Business exist to earn money and the best way to convince others of the value of your service is to charge for it. You can argue that it isn't good business sense, but calling it greed is a judgmental call that you have no evidence of.

[robeastham]

I think a good strategy is to get your minimum viable product out as soon as possible and call it a beta. Don't charge for the beta and provide plenty of warning to existing clients by signalling early on your intention to charge for some/all features when you are out of beta. After a private beta period, this is how I'm planning to handle Mighty CV, a resumé building app with hacker leanings that I've been working on. I'm looking for private beta users to kick the tyres a bit, so if you feel inclined then you can sign up for the private beta at http://www.mightycv.com.

I always remember being impressed with the way Heroku did things in the early days. After beta feedback it must have become clear to them that it made sense for them to rewrite from the ground up. This left them with a beta platform which they gracefully continued to support, renamed herokugarden, whilst also rolling out the paid for service. They then provided plenty of info on how herokugarden users could migrate to the new Heroku platform for free too. I'm sure they learnt a lot early on about what direction they needed to take the Heroku platform. Anyone remember the web based code editor? Without the early feedback from beta users perhaps they would have pushed more in that direction instead of changing course towards the Heroku we all know and love today.

[chirayu]

I think the $75 per mo is actually a smart idea. It gives the founders lot more leeway in finding and sustaining quality traffic for the postings.