Curiouser and Curiouser! on making-money http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic making-money Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb So let's not Meetup after all then Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:41:23 +0100 <p>Terry is <a href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/index/2005/04/14#item1661">commenting </a> on the Meetup.Com pricing announcement. Trying to charge people $9 or $19 a month for something which they used to get for free sounds like a dizzingly stupid idea to me. I'm afraid that, as hard as it is to swallow, you don't get credit for the freebie. As soon as money comes into the equation people start asking whether they're getting value for theirs -- <strong>right now</strong>. Taking something which was free and making it quite costly seems almost calculated to build in hostility.</p> <p>It also seems like it is going to cut down on peoples ad hoc group forming. Instead of "shall I setup a MeetUp for this?" it's "do I want the burden of raising $X/mth for this?" Different questions and my intuition is the answer will be a resounding <strong>"No"</strong> to Q2.</p> <p>If it had been me and I was looking to begin to make this revenue generating I would perhaps try and charge based upon the number of people attending each MeetUp, maybe $0.50 each with a quarterly settle-up. This would let the organizer get hold of the money first and only based upon actual attendance. Maybe even give organizers who get the regular good numbers a kick back or offer to do extra promo or something. Sure some people would game the system but that's human beings for you. You just have to roll with it and be smarter than the average bear.</p> <p>Still, we'll see. If they do make decent money with this maybe it's good news for all web service operators everywhere.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002497.html So let's not Meetup after all then (Part II) Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:05:40 +0100 <p>Over at <a href="http://houseofwarwick.com/2005/04/15.html#a1417">Steve's place</a> someone called Jeff has left a <a href="http://radiocomments2.userland.com/comments?u=111853&p=1417&link=http%3A%2F%2Fhouseofwarwick.com%2F2005%2F04%2F15.html%23a1417#a74497">comment</a> regarding <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/04/15.html#a1769">my post</a> about the Meetup.com charging issue:<blockquote>I saw this too... Yep, it's stupid. BUT... if they have 5000 groups and 1/10 pony up they'll be ahead. I have found that the local small town meetups are useless, & meetup was just trying to promote their own stuff. Not good.</blockquote></p> <p>As Jeff says maybe Meetup will make money this way. I'm sure they'll make <em>some</em> and, as I say, if they can make a fist of this then they offer hope to all who are looking to charge for a service on the web. I've no problem with that.</p> <p>However there are ways and ways. From my vantage point of all knowing wisdom (i.e. talking out of my hat) it seems like driving away a large chunk of your marketable user base in one fell swoop is not a good way to start.</p> <p>I think it is interesting to consider whether people who leave now would come back for an offer which they would have taken up if they were new to meetup.com, i.e. has meetup.com potentially soured their market for new products and services?</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002502.html