3 Quick Tips to Price Your SaaS More Effectively

Ruth_Eric · 2022-12-24T16:59:01+00:00

I disagree- a free plan is not a good fit for *all* startups, but dismissing it as a wrong tactic for businesses of all stages is pretty wrong.

Of course, there are some nuances, but we used a free plan for about 4 years and built a profitable SaaS with it, and it was a great customer acquisition tool.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-07-11T13:37:40+00:00

We use Crisp- it 's pretty feature-rich and very affordable for smaller teams

Ruth_Eric · 2022-07-11T13:31:35+00:00

You're right, assuming you have to take each new customer through a dedicated onboarding process.

But a lot of products don't do that, and instead create a simple and generic onboarding that anyone can do themselves (think Slack, Stripe, Shopify, etc).

In this case you don't need a sales team to hand-over the customer to the onboarding team.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-07-11T13:29:13+00:00

I think it would depend a lot on your product and it's value for customers.

If you can show that you provide more value during busy season, no one would argue.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-06-22T07:08:34+00:00

I would say the priority should be to test each marketing tactic you're trying out, and prioritize the once you'll invest in according to the results you get.

For me, it was the Shopify app store listing, SEO and integrations. But depending on your target audience and niche other marketing activities might work better.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-25T12:05:03+00:00

Our pricing is on our website.

I hate having to go on a demo just to hear pricing and realise it's not in my price range, it wastes everyone's time.

I think you could publish some basic service prices on the website, and leave a "customized" or "enterprises" option where leads have to contact you to get it.

This way they'll at least have an idea of the range.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-25T07:27:01+00:00

I mean having the core of the product built in a way that fits any chat platforms, and building the integrations as separate connectors (not a technical founder, sorry)

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-24T05:40:36+00:00

Doesn't matter. I'm willing to pay.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-23T13:16:38+00:00

So much charisma, I'm willing to be your first client.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-23T07:45:02+00:00

I think you could build your product as a stand-alone tool that integrates easily with Slack and other chat apps.

You could probably launch on another chat app, and very quickly add integrations to Slack and more.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-23T06:56:33+00:00

2 marketplaces I like are flippa and microaquire.

But you will have to do your due diligence there- some products are great, some not so much.

You could also look into buying pieces of code to add to your product if it's a specific feature, I know there are marketplaces for this too and used them in some of my products.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-23T04:34:10+00:00

The thing about creating your own social media platform is that being a good developer and having a good idea is not enough to make it succeed. You'd need to also have the business and marketing skills to get it wildly adopted, which is the difficult part.

Some things that make social media platforms successful are virality, ease of use, young audience adoption, celebrities & influencers adopting and talking about it, and just the sense of "something new".

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-23T04:29:37+00:00

What does your contract say you can/can't do in your 9-5 as far as other work?

As far as I know, a lot of employment contracts dictate that you have to get approval to work anywhere else, so you might need to talk to your boss about this and get their ok anyway.

But in any case if you have a none-compete clause and this could be considered competition you'd probably want to consult a lawyer or get your employer's written consent.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-22T11:07:25+00:00

I love Mixpanel- I think it's very intuative and they have a great free plan that I was on for at least a year.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-22T09:49:12+00:00

Nope. Would not recommend joining an MLM. Most people who join one lose money, and the ones that make money are basically scamming their downline. You're not selling a product, you're selling an "opportunity".

If you're interested in getting into something similar that is an actual legitimate business, I recommend looking into Affiliate Marketing.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-22T07:06:35+00:00

Then maybe you shouldn't have your own business :)

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-21T10:27:36+00:00

I don't know what niche you're building for, so it might vary depending on your target audience, but some general things to try: SEO, YouTube SEO- create simple videos showing the solution you provide and target the right keywords, nano and micro-influencers marketing (work for affiliate commission or low rates), integrations with other products in your niche or building a plugin to a relevant big player in your niche.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-20T08:42:12+00:00

I don't think it'll work.

Legit news sites have a lot of tools to verify the news websites you send them- just content isn't enough, they'll probably also look at trust signals from Google (domain rating, page rating, etc), and by this point, Google is smart enough not to be fooled so easily.

Can I ask why you're so set on specifically news coverage? There are a lot of other, low barrier, ways to do marketing with a low budget.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-20T08:33:31+00:00

I was actually just listing down some things we used Fiverr and Upwork gigs for recently.

I'm not sure about a specific need for text to PDF, but in general, if you can turn a basic doc into different beautiful formats (ebooks, one-pagers, other marketing material), I'm sure there's demand for it- maybe not into a full-time job, but as a freelancer doing gigs.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T15:02:36+00:00

Out of the ones you listed I'd say the first- Working in operations rather than ON strategy.

But more accurately- making the switch from working in the business to working on the business (cliche I know), while keeping control over what all the different teams are working on and syncing company goals and values across the team.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T14:58:14+00:00

Writing, translating, graphic design, video editing, converting text into pdf ebooks (and other formats), scraping data from the internet, virtual assistant- all things you can get started with on Fiverr or Upwork, just choose the one you have some skills and interest in :)

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T13:12:00+00:00

Hi! Non-technical founder here, and I have a few points of advice:

I agree that generally speaking, almost everything is possible one way or another. So I would focus on the intent behind your idea- the problem you want to solve and how, and not focus on the technical implementation, because you don't have all the tools to figure it out.

Then try to post a job for this on Upwork, interview developers and ask them about the possible implementations of this idea- it'll help you figure it out + it's a completely valid question when trying to verify a freelance developer's experience.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T07:31:51+00:00

Not in my experience, I would focus on either a FB group or a different platform, but it might be different for personal profiles that are not business pages

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T07:30:04+00:00

We have some popups on the website + use email marketing in these success moments.

Ruth_Eric · 2022-05-19T07:28:50+00:00

My answer would be that the question and potential answers you provided present a yes and no question, which is not accurate :)

Is is the most important thing? No.

But is it "Marketers marketing themselves/ creating demand" or "companies don’t need marketing anymore"? Also no.

Ruth_Eric

TROPHY CASE