dw_news | Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

Two things for you today!

Thing the first:

We have not been able to finish and fully test the new site functionality that enables people to purchase accounts without a PayPal account. Instead of finishing it up an hour before the first sale is scheduled and crossing our fingers that it works, we've decided to push the sale off another week.

The new time of the Seed Account re-sale is Thursday, May 14th, 9PM EDT and again at Friday, May 15th, 9AM EDT. In total 200 accounts will be available.

Thing the second:

People with free accounts have probably noticed that a few days ago we took away the Advanced Customization area of the site. (The pages that let you make a custom style.) We had never intended for it to be available unless you paid, and having it on was an oversight on our part. After we turned it off, we got to hear a lot of really good comments from people and we reevaluated the original decision.

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wasn't sure where to post or email this, so I'm trying here in hopes that it'll get to the people it needs to get to.

The current set up for paid accounts makes sense to me. That is, you pay less the longer you commit to using Dreamwidth as a journal service. Currently, if you pay month to month and you keep your journal for a year, you'll pay $36 over that year, but if you commit to longer and longer increments, your payment price goes down - $30 over a year if you pay every 2 months, $26 over a year if you pay every 6 months, and $25 for a year if you pay it all at once.

Your payment schedule for after the first 6 months, though, is, to use an outdated term, a bit wack. You've still got the month-to-month payment at $3/month, which totals out to $36 if you continue paying every month for a year - but if someone decides to commit to a year of using your service up front, they will pay $35. This does not provide any incentive for your userbase to commit to your service for long periods of time.

To be successful, you're going to need people committing to using your service and the best way to do that is to keep a payment structure where commitment evens out to a cost-incentive over time. In your change of account structure, you won't be competitive with LJ at all - as their service will still cost $25/year when that year is paid up front and will otherwise cost $30/year if a user chooses to pay in smaller increments. I think you need to stay with the current pay structure to both provide an incentive for people who choose to commit to using your service for a year at a time and also to be competitive with LJ.

I think that most people who buy $3 of paid time are the ones doing it to bypass the invite system, and that these users either will not continue to buy paid accounts, or will decide they like the site enough to pay for their accounts over longer periods of time.

Dreamwidth should be able to tell how much of a concern this is by monitoring paid account sales - if lots of people have bought a month of paid time to get onto the site and then continue buying month-by-month, then they probably do have reason to be concerned.

(Hit post too soon, oops.)

But if most people buying 1-month paid accounts either let them lapse or choose 2+ month increments when they renew, then I would suggest DW keep the $3 level. I'm not sure how much higher they could take the price and still have people willing to pay it just to avoid having to solicit an invite code.

Edited 2009-05-10 14:42 (UTC)

My argument isn't so much with the price of the month-to-month, but rather with the increasing price of longer amounts of paid time - $35 is quite steep and doesn't give anyone any incentive to pay in advance for a year when they could just pay month-to-month or every other month or every 6 months and still pay about the same amount - and people who pay month-to-month, every other month, or every 6 months may not continue to use the service after a couple of months. When you have people committing to a year at a time, you have, usually, a guaranteed userbase who will get you through the tough times and still be there a year later when all the wrinkles have been smoothed - and by that time, you have userbase loyalty and they will keep paying.

Just my experience...

Hm. That is a good point. Three initial thoughts on why it might not apply as much to Dreamwidth as to another site...

1. Dreamwidth's paid features work better over time - looking at the features in FAQ 4, things like mass-editing entry security might be worth a one-time payment, but most of the paid features are things that users will grow accustomed to and be willing to keep paying for.
2. Many of Dreamwidth's users are not just paying for a service. They are paying for the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting a site they have an emotional attachment to.
3. What seems more likely to keep users on the site is a connection to community (as opposed to, "well, I paid for it so I'm gonna use it").

But even taking all of that into consideration, you still have a point. Unfortunately, I don't know how much the prices could be modified to take your point into account.

Here's the email message where

denise really got into the reasoning behind the price levels.

So they're not going to just not increase the price. They need that much money to operate the site after full launch, and they've put a lot of effort into being confident in their numbers.

I'm also not sure they ever intended to offer discounts for buying longer chunks of time. DW seems to have arrived at its regular prices first (the ones without much variation in per-month price), and then come up with the discounted open beta prices. I seem to remember talk of not wanting to penalize users who couldn't afford a year at a time, but I can't find those messages and could be imagining it.

Whether or not they should offer discounts for longer chunks of time is something to talk about. But I doubt they would implement it by simply knocking down the price of a year, and I don't think they want to increase the prices for shorter units, whether as a standalone measure or to offset loss of revenue from discounting longer spans (especially not after publicly stating the prices in the FAQ, and especially because the $3 level seems to be very important in helping to get people onto the site).

Presumably the site owners have numbers to look at now that they are taking in revenue, and that will inform any changes they might make to price structuring.

Disclaimer: not actually a Dreamwidth spokesperson - just an overinvested user who lurks the official-but-open spaces. :)

My reasoning for bringing this up is that this was how LJ originally garnered a loyal paying userbase before they got evil & kept much of that same paying userbase even after becoming evil. :)

I also post this knowing that I just joined as a beta user, but it was the first wackness that stood out to me in meandering through the pages.

Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

Paid account structure in 6 months

Re: Paid account structure in 6 months

Re: Paid account structure in 6 months

Re: Paid account structure in 6 months

Re: Paid account structure in 6 months