The Best Pricing Model for non-FEM Structural Software - KootWare 5

[KootK]

The Mission

While I'm still above grade, I intend to create a suite of pay for play, online structural engineering tools (KootWare). And I feel that a big part of making this questionable venture a success -- or at least improving the odds of a contained failure -- will be arriving at a good pricing model. Frankly, this is something that I feel that other developers have done poorly, to their detriment. As such, I'd like to solicit feedback from the hive with respect to the pricing models that I'll propose below and any possibilities for improvement.

The Basics of What You Need to Know About the Offering

1) 100% online offering. No option for a local, perpetual license version.

2) The goal here is not to get rich. The goal is to extract enough income from this that I can justify pouring a lot of effort into a project that I expect to enjoy a great deal.

3) Spit balling, if I could create enough value that I could convince 1000 SE's to part with $5/month, that would be enough. Or any other combination of numbers that gets to the same place. How many software using structural engineers do we think exist in North America anyhow? Sixteen? Eighty thousand? I really don't know.

4) Think something along the lines of TEDDS, ENERCALC, or Jabacus on steroids. I do have ideas for, in my opinion, greatly improving upon these offerings. I'd like that to be a separate conversation however. For now, make a leap of faith and just assume that it will be awesome.

5) I intend to attach some manner of structural only, online forum to the offering. While it would be a free-form space for conversation, as Eng-Tips is, it's ostensible purpose would be to provide a place for me to provide responsive help to anybody designing stuff utilizing the software. Thus making the whole thing even more fun for me. This would be offered in addition to the usual help guide and verification manuals etc <-- edit added per skeletron's comments.

Some Obvservations that I Have Regarding the Pricing Models of Others

6) For software of this type, I feel that a monthly subscription pricing scheme would not be well received. As a small outfit my self, I loathe taking on any additional "monthlys", no matter how great the ROI seems to be. I'm always afraid that I'll use it twice and forget to cancel. I doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way.

7) I also don't think that a straight "pay per use" model is the way to go either. Design is an iterative process and software licensing needs to reflect that. Sadly, I don't just design a shear wall once. I probably design it half a dozen times before all is said and done. And I can't be losing my shirt on pay per use while going through that process.

8) One has to assume that anything that can be abused, will be abused. This will prevent me from being quite as customer friendly as I would otherwise wish to be. My own IP halo gets a little dirty from time to time so no judgement here.

Pricing Model A

This is my favorite of the two and would appeal to me as a customer. Keep in mind than none of the particular values are set in any way. It's really more about the structure at this point. That said, if anybody has thoughts on what the numbers ought to be, I'd welcome that too. I figure I'll adjust as use data starts to pile up but I'll still have to start somewhere.

1) Create an account at KootWare International and add a credit card, paypal etc.

2) Buy yourself some quantity KootWare credits. $10. $100. Whatever. Little gold doubloons in your digital purse.

3) To access the retaining wall tool for use, you pay $5. After the first run, you have the lesser of 20 additional runs or 60 days to keep using the tool on the original $5. One "run" would represent one execution of a full design with detailed output. <-- added per skeletron's comments.

4) If you want to share your account login and credits with somebody else, that's your prerogative. Share it with your coworker, a school chum in Brisbane, your aunt... retaining walls for everybody on that original $5. But, no matter who's using, it taps out after 20 runs or 60 days.

Pricing Model B

1) Create an account at KootWare International and add a credit card, paypal etc.

2) Buy yourself some quantity KootWare credits. $10. $100. Whatever.

3) You can use any tool your like, for free, but you can't get a detailed printout for your calcs until some money has changed hands. The software would tell you the basics of what passed and what failed and would allow you to save your file to the system for future retrieval. I kind of like this in that it would allow one to essentially do their preliminary design work for free. I could allow folks to printout their inputs in case they were worried about my going bankrupt before they get to IFC.

4) When you've got all your design settled and ready for final calc documentation, it's $5 per print. The trouble with this is, I couldn't let the user see the detailed printout ahead of paying for it. Otherwise, I'll wind up with a bunch of folks just doing screen capture etc.

 

[KootK]

sidenote: if the site starts to get serious traffic, there could be serious money to be made from the advertising alone. might be no need to charge, if you have 20,000 visitors to your site every day

I agree. Truly, the best possible outcome from my perspective would be my customers being able to use my nifty tools for free. Who knows, maybe the "pricing" could just be a nominal fee to not have to deal with any ads. On the other hand, one does always worry about the perception of greed and "cheapness" that sometimes comes with being associated with advertising. A big part of this aspect for me is that I really just have no idea how to get from here to there yet. Working on it.

On a related note, I view advertising as a modern form of "patronage". You know, in the artistic / Medici sense of the word. And in a very tangible way, I will be viewing this as my "art". And this suggest the possibility of some other forms of patronage. Basically other entities supporting my effort in exchange for being associated with the work. Maybe:

1) Pair my offering up with those of a larger software vendor to benefit from mutual traffic generation.

2) Pair my offering up with a supplier of connection hardware etc.

Obviously, this is long shot stuff and I'd need to be sure to exert suitable control over my stuff in arrangement.

HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[MotorCity]

KootK,

Are you really going to call in Kootware? Does have a nice ring to it. I'd be more inclined to pony up for software w/ a catchy name .

Any particular niche of structural calcs?

How do you plan to differentiate your software from every other Joe Engineer that has ever made a structural calculation spreadsheet?

 

[KootK]

I believe this is a fantastic idea and the sort of thing that could really take off.

Thanks so much Eaglee. For obvious reasons, I'm encouraging the tough love answers here. That said, some sincere encouragement feels pretty great too.

have you considered also targeting the european market?

Sure. NZ & AU for sure too. Right now, I'm thinking North America first because:

1) The codes are so similar that it would be a piece of cake to develop tools for both without too much added effort.

2) I have personal knowledge of these market places and feel that I have a good sense for where genuine "needs" may exist.

3) I guy just has to start somewhere, right? More on this below.

I'd move KootWare Europe up the queue in a hurry if I had a Europe partner on board though. I think that once a basic platform is created for tool deployment and eCommerce, it would make nothing but sense to start scaling things up.

your comment on video games is spot on. i believe getting inspiration from business models outside our industry can provide quite an advantage.

Thank you for that. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I really feel that I'm on to something with this as well, which is why I've held on to it so doggedly. Gotta tap into those endorphin rushes. It's hard to walk by some monkeys masturbating furiously at the zoo and not come to the conclusion that yeah, that's how people really work.

In a very real sense, I'll also be applying the quick ROI scheme to myself. Part of the reason that I'm starting with North America only is that, for the thing to "take", I'll need to pretty quickly get from zero to generating enough revenue that I'm not screwing over my family by pursuing this. I can see a very promising future on the horizon but I'll need some quick win in order to bridge the breach. Once the thing gets somewhat stable, then I can start tinkering with new markets, alternate pricing, old codes... etc.

HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[KootK]

Are you really going to call in Kootware? Does have a nice ring to it. I'd be more inclined to pony up for software w/ a catchy name.

Thanks for joining the conversation as I'd hoped that you would. WRT to name, I have no idea at this point in time and am very much willing to consider suggestions. I just went with KootWare because I had nothing else in mind and I though it might make for a light and humorous way to refer to the thing 10,000 times over the course of the thread. I tend to struggle mightily with the naming of things as was the case with naming my fledgling design firm. So much to consider:

1) Being catchy.
2) Being original.
3) Being a little meaningful.
4) Not being pretentious which I'm am inordinately sensitive to.

It's a tough circle to square really.

Any particular niche of structural calcs?

How do you plan to differentiate your software from every other Joe Engineer that has ever made a structural calculation spreadsheet?

I'll tackle these together and can only really speak in general terms at this time. And some things will differentiate me from only some of the competition of course. Not everything will be new to KootWare. And I will be offering a lot of the same, common tools, that others do.

1) I think that the right pricing model(s) is HUGE. Hence this thread. Unfortunately, if I get it right, it will be very easy for competitors to also adopt the innovation.

2) As I mentioned somewhere above, I truly feel that most software doesn't do enough to tailor itself to real production office needs. I want to do things like nomographs instead of one off designs, a footing design tool that does your whole schedule in one go, and things tailored for preliminary design. This is tough to explain but I kind of have a "vision" in my head for how this could be better.

3) 100% online. Fast code updates, easy deployment, usable anywhere, shareable with your friends. It would be hard to convince me that this isn't the eventual future in this space.

4) I very much intend to us this forum, KootWare's forum, and others like it, to inform me about where legitimate needs are. You know the drill. How many goddamn threads on "sistering/reinforcement" do I have to knock out of the park before I just bow to demand and make a tool and design guide for that? And there are a million things like this. How do I know if a base plate is fixed Mr. Koot...

5) Simple, clear, killer output that looks close to what you'd do yourself. I'm going to stay out of 3D rendering space etc.

6) Again, it's hard to explain but I want simple, powerful tools designed to be used flexibly and creatively by smart engineers. I feel that a lot of what's out there tries to do too much without ever doing it well enough. For the love of all that is wholly, someone must make a tool that can do a comprehensive job of wood shear wall and hold-down design for a simple framing line without requiring ten billion inputs and 3D modelling of the whole building. Another example is that I would like users to be able to create and save their own, system wide load case matrix for use in any of the tools. Yeah, I'll supply the ASCE basics but if you, as the guy with the frikin' brain, want to make some load factors negative for some reason that makes sense to only you, so be it. We at KootWare are going to assume that you're the Leonardo Da Vinci of your craft and treat you as such rather than wasting a bunch of time on our own CYA.

7) I want to develop some pre/post-processing tools for the software that you already use (ETABS/RISA/Bently). Another long story but I feel that there are a ton of opportunities to both do more powerful things and things more customized to people's work flow using existing infrastructure in this way. I don't support the final result but somebody out there made an ETABS add-on for shear walls that adjusts wall cracking stiffness based on the amount flexure in the wall. I think that stuff like that is super smart.

8) Kootware loves startups and will always and forever be looking for ways to provide tools and pricing schemes that help the little guys compete fairly. I'm fortunate in that I have a friend who's a higher up at one of the software giants. He's assured me that hardly anybody's targeting the startup market in a meaningful way.





HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[XR250]

I’m a guy who typically won’t update software unless:

1)The laws of physics change
2)The software no longer runs on my OS
3)Something shows up that will increase my productivity

So I have been conditioned by the one-and-done business model. That being said,
I believe Pricing Model “A” would be perfect for my needs.

Looks like you found your outer purpose, Kootk.

 

[KootK]

I believe Pricing Model “A” would be perfect for my needs.

Yessss... potential customer #2. Please recommend KootWare to 998 of your closest friends.

Looks like you found your outer purpose, Kootk.

We shall see. I consider this exercise to be part of the development of a tentative business plan, the results of which will inform future decision making. I've committed to nothing.

HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[TLHS]

6) Again, it's hard to explain but I want simple, powerful tools designed to be used flexibly and creatively by smart engineers. I feel that a lot of what's out there tries to do too much without ever doing it well enough. For the love of all that is wholly, someone must make a tool that can do a comprehensive job of wood shear wall and hold-down design for a simple framing line without requiring ten billion inputs and 3D modelling of the whole building. Another example is that I would like users to be able to create and save their own, system wide load case matrix for use in any of the tools. Yeah, I'll supply the ASCE basics but if you, as the guy with the frikin' brain, want to make some load factors negative for some reason that makes sense to only you, so be it. We at KootWare are going to assume that you're the Leonardo Da Vinci of your craft and treat you as such rather than wasting a bunch of time on our own CYA.

I think everyone here would agree that control is important. However, simplicity in a toolset is good too. So interface becomes a big deal. Setting things up so that they're simple to use and understand while also letting you control details is going to take a lot of front end planning before you even start trying to implement. If you want consistent style and workflow through different modules, you're going to find that early decisions lock you in to future interface and workflows that you may not have considered.

Simple, powerful tools are also interesting though. It's the sort of problem that I have with my own spreadsheets versus ones I want to share with colleagues. My own spreadsheets end up doing exactly what I want in a very straightforward way. I understand the limitations and it's all great. Then I want to share them, and realize there's some edge cases. Then I try to hack those in or put a flag. Then there's some other little thing about the way I design that is built in and I have to write a couple of paragraphs of commentary. Then that kind of just keeps going. It's hard when you have to make something that's usable by any given engineer to keep it as simple as you'd like. I'm sure this can be worked around, but it's the sort of thing that you have to work out early or you're hacking stuff in forever and losing the simple. I think that happens a bunch in engineering software.

It's interesting, because it's really hard to know what the market size for this is, so trying to determine how much work and investment is worthwhile before you start is tricky. I'd be tempted to say that you should start with some straight forward test stuff for free and see how much traffic you get while you're working on the main body. If you can make one useful core module and let that sit out in the world while you're working on things you'd probably learn a lot. Even if it's not the same system you eventually decide to use, just getting an idea of how many visitors you get would be good to know.

 

[KootK]

@TLHS:

1) Thanks for sharing your insights.

2) I agree, there will challenges in finding the right balance of flexibility and simplicity. I welcome it as an industrial engineering challenge.

3) I spent a couple of years as, effectively, a semi-professional database programmer. Juggling mountains of data and complex queries? Piece of cake. Trying to figure out the 7000 different sequences that six seemingly smart people might use to push four buttons and fill out a text box? Seemingly impossible. The GUI is hard, I get that. That said, the perfect cannot be allowed to be the enemy of the good.

4) I don't know the extent that other developers are doing this but I intend to do a lot of focus group testing for each individual tool. I'll do it here if I'm allowed to. If not, I've got a pretty good, and diverse stable of real world folks that I can reach out to. I very much see this is a collaborative process rather than "develop in a vacuum and see hot it goes".

5) I'll absolutely be doing the free tool thing as both a teaser and a way to test the market. Wind, snow, seismic, and non-cont beam design will likely start free and remain that way always. Other things to be considered case by case.

6) Yeah, I notice that nobody's taken the bait with respect to answering the "how many potential customers are there?" question. Probably nobody here knows. Certainly, I do not.



HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[KootK]

There is a ninth thing that will differentiate KootWare from the competition, and some may well disagree with it.

9) I will treat each module as both a tool, and a vehicle for education. Whether we agree with the practice or not, it has become apparent to me that many designers actually learn a lot about design from the software they use. And, while this seems bass-ackwards in some ways, I've done some of this myself. I thought I knew prestressed concrete until I started using concise beam. Trying to sort out why a lot of the graphs looked the way that they did resulted in me really upping my game. Rather than fight this, I'm going to include educational information with the tools that teach designers how to design as well as how to use the tool. As an example, I might have a simple diaphragm design module that takes deck properties as input. At the same time, I'll provide some information about the fundamentals of diaphragm design, how and why common assumptions are made, and
common sources for where the design inputs ought to come from (some would be included by default).

If Eng-Tips has taught me anything, it's that technical mentorship is severely lacking out in the wild. One way or another, I suspect that non-colleague conduits of mentorship are going to have to fill that void. And I'd like to help.

HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[TLHS]

I don't even have a feel for how many real structural design engineers there are out there. Then from that you have to narrow down the subset of people who:

-Care enough to actually try and find good tools
-Want the types of modules you're providing
-Hear about it somehow
-Don't have their own systems in place or other software tools that are 'good enough' such that learning something new makes sense
-Aren't too cheap
-Are able to actually spend money (i.e. I suspect a lot of people at medium or larger sized companies can't)
-Do the type of work where your toolsets are used enough to justify validation or getting comfortable. Using a toolset once isn't a time saver for a lot of people and it isn't a source of income for you with your business model.

I'm not sure what the number is when you filter all that stuff. There's definitely a market, it's just a question of whether you're budgeting for 5, 50, 500, 5000 or 50000 users.

From a business model standpoint, the CivilBay guy's prices are huge... but he must sell some or he wouldn't bother. He's basically the opposite business model from you. Small market, high cost.

http://asp.civilbay.com/01-main/buy.aspx

I suspect his anchor sheets are possibly along the lines of what you're talking about doing, from a presentation standpoint, but on higher level than just detailed capacity checks.

http://asp.civilbay.com/03-index/12-conc-anchor.aspx

 

[bookowski]

My 2 cents:

- Definitely a market for this and a hole in the existing offerings. Obvious example is Profis. I'd guess a large % of the people in this forum use profis in place of their own xls/mathcad, in fact I'd guess just about anyone that is aware it exists uses this in place of their own tool.

- NCCEES lists 800k licenses, but that double counts people with multi state. You could probably do some quick google math and attempt to estimate # of unique se's, % that is solo/small, etc. Seems like since you're not looking to become the next amazon you can pretty quickly be assured that there is some market that satisfies your initial target (i.e. 1k users at $5 or whatever)

- Lots of talk about the applications here as it relates to pricing. I think you can basically divorce the two. Market seems to be there sufficiently for what you want. The pricing model to me seems unrelated to the engineering (assuming the product is decent) and more tied to psychology. Unfortunately it seems like a tough nut to crack, if you figure out the psychology here you can probably get rich on many ventures. Look at the number of news/magazines that once thrived getting people to pay real money for something in their mailbox and are now begging for $0.99/month and getting laughed at. There's some kind of bizarre psychology at play in all this.

- Mental exercise based on above. What if profis started asking for payment? How many people would pay vs try to rehash their old xls sheets? Say Profis wanted $2 per completed design. I'd say its near impossible to say that's not killer value compared to the time it would take you to do similar on your own yet I'm sure there's a portion of people that would not pay the $2. May have to write that portion of the market off.

- Related to the above at some point you'll have to assume you don't get some portion of the market due to their idiosyncrasies with respect to payment/money etc. There will always be people who want to buy their house in cash so they don't owe the man, then others that will mortgage to the hilt to take advantage of low rates. Can't please all the people.

- Against my own statement above about divorcing payment from application: the one thing I'd say for my own monetary nuances is that the legitimacy of the product would affect my reservations on payment. By this I don't mean the technical aspects, I'm taking for a given that this stuff works well. I mean that the site looks good, legit, different tools have the same format, navigating is easy etc. I would want to show up and have 100% of my thoughts be about which tool do I use, ok I pay by clicking here, ok here we go and I'm working away, etc.. As soon as I am thinking 'did some guy in his basement make this' my wallet tightens up, even if it's only $1 (psychology vs logic again here). I am not familiar with the civilbay stuff and it may be killer but first impression by just taking a quick look is that I won't be sending this guy my money. If the products are good and look legit I think you get the ones that like your pricing model + bend those on the fence that would prefer a different pricing model but aren't zealots about it.

 

[Ussuri]

Member Prex has an online calculation website, xcalcs, they offer two payment methods in both credits and monthly/annual subscription.

They have done something similar to what you are proposing already. You asked for European partners too, and I believe Prex is based in Europe.

https://www.xcalcs.com/cgi-bin/tutti/x3calcs.cgi?a=w&d=prices_.htm&l=en

 

[glass99]

My thoughts about software as a business:
- you need to be awesome and powerful in the eyes of your users. It can either be a famous professor who wrote the code or it needs to be something which is just considered this indispensable tool by regular engineers. This is mostly marketing, and it going to be a big deal no matter what. Can you partner with a university?
- As a user, I like the buy it and own it model, with a relatively small maintenance fee.
- Network effects are a big deal, meaning scale matters. If I hire an engineer and they have to get used to my idiosyncratic software, that's expensive.

 

[structSU10]

Mental exercise based on above. What if profis started asking for payment? How many people would pay vs try to rehash their old xls sheets? Say Profis wanted $2 per completed design. I'd say its near impossible to say that's not killer value compared to the time it would take you to do similar on your own yet I'm sure there's a portion of people that would not pay the $2. May have to write that portion of the market off.

funny enough they are going paid with a 'premium' version. It will design the base plate and column weld for any configuration, and handle a couple different anchor embedment's. Its also an all online portal i believe. Its fully paid starting today I believe - you could have tested our the premium version for free previously.

sorry to hi-jack...

 

[KootK]

NCCEES lists 800k licenses

Thanks for tracking that down and for your thoughtful response in general. Assume (I really have no idea):

- 3 licenses per engineer.
- 1/3 of engineers in a role where they design and would use software.
- I need 1000 users min.

That leaves a pool of about 90,000 possible customers. At first blush, that sounds like a lot and is encouraging. On the flip side, though, this means that I need about 1% of that market to meet my minimum targets and 5% to be doing awesome. Perhaps it's naive to think that one should dive into a pool like this without intending to gain 5% market share. I'll confess to still being a bit intimidated by this number though.

Mental exercise based on above. What if profis started asking for payment? How many people would pay vs try to rehash their old xls sheets? Say Profis wanted $2 per completed design. I'd say its near impossible to say that's not killer value compared to the time it would take you to do similar on your own yet I'm sure there's a portion of people that would not pay the $2. May have to write that portion of the market off.

Interesting. Unfortunately, my own gut reaction to this mental exercise was quite negative. That, even though I agree that it's pretty much impossible to argue with the ROI on profis. Perhaps my feelings on this are tainted a bit by my having free access to Profis in the past and now feeling as though something is being taken away from me.

As soon as I am thinking 'did some guy in his basement make this' my wallet tightens up, even if it's only $1 (psychology vs logic again here).

you need to be awesome and powerful in the eyes of your users. It can either be a famous professor who wrote the code or it needs to be something which is just considered this indispensable tool by regular engineers. This is mostly marketing, and it going to be a big deal no matter what. Can you partner with a university?

In this respect, I'm screwed and would have to abandon the segment of the market to whom this is an important trigger. I won't be teaming up with any universities and I absolutely will be a guy in the basement unless the thing scales up seriously. I agree with having a very clean and professional web presence and will do that. At the same time, though, I wouldn't be taking any additional measures to conceal what I really am. On the contrary, I'd probably be celebrating it and hoping that appealed to my target demographic.

In my opinion, this can still be made to work without being a credibility rock star. Consider the Enercalc example: Link. I believe that Enercalc is a pretty small scale thing that's been able to make a go of it. More credibilty is always better but, when I design a stud wall with their software, I'm not checking their references first or anything. And, surely, much of the credibility effect must be proportional to the complexity of the thing being designed. If I'm doing glass beams or precast sandwich panels then, yeah, seeing that a heavyweight is backing the software will mean a fair bit to me.





HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235

 

[bookowski]

The accuracy of this may be questionable but have a go at this website which is purporting to report how many companies use various softwares. The numbers seem too low to me so may be useless (only 970 companies using Risa, 1800 using etabs...?). Even if accurate not sure what it tells you but perhaps combined with other info it's worth > zero.

https://enlyft.com/tech/products/risa-3d

 

[bookowski]

Interesting. Unfortunately, my own gut reaction to this mental exercise was quite negative. That, even though I agree that it's pretty much impossible to argue with the ROI on profis.

There's where the bizarre psychology part comes in that seems near impossible to crack.

Imagine trying to rationally explain this to anyone - yet I think if you took a survey of the profis test a good percentage would bail, or at least attempt to bail, even at a $2 mark.

Wife: "Why are you still working, it's midnight"
KootK: "Making a sheet to do appendix D calcs.... it's a nightmare"
Wife: "I can't believe no one has a software for that"
KootK: "They do - but it's $2!!"
Wife: proceeds to googling divorce lawyers

 

[MotorCity]

One more request for KootWare…..please pull back the curtain and show the user line by line calcs…..no blackbox stuff.

That is, in my opinion, the best part of TEDDS (and to my knowledge, the only software that does this)

 

[GC_Hopi]

What does profis charge? NVM They probably did some kind of market research and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

[KootK]

I would like to propose a third pricing model for consideration. And I'd love to hear any thoughts on it.

Speaking to the all important question of customer psychology, I'm wondering if it might be better to allow users more unpaid access even if the cost of that is allowing some users to not pay at all if they want that badly enough. This, working on the assumption that there may be little Venn diagram intersection between these two groups of people:

Group 1: those for whom clean, legal calculation documentation is not important enough that they would become paying customers. They would be willing to get around the calculation documentation question by either having none or by going to the trouble of screen capturing heavily water marked output and saving that locally.

Group 2: those for whom clean, legal calculation is important enough that they would seriously consider becoming paying customers.

Yes, I would lose some of the Group 1 folks who might have otherwise become paying customers. But, if this makes for a much more appealing use experience for the the Group 2 folks, perhaps that trade off is worthwhile.

Pricing Model C

1) You set up a JOB folder and add design files to that. All design files will be saved to the server.

2) For free, you create design files, run them, and view detailed but watermarked PDF output on screen. Screen capture as you will. Design files get saved to the JOB folder.

3) At any point in time, such as project closeout, you can choose to pay your $5 per design and, in exchange, receive your design file and clean PDF output for each design. If desired, you can use the JOB structure to a) batch print your output and/or b) pay the bill for the entire job, or any part of it, in one go. This might be nice in that you can say to yourself at this point "clean documentation for the six designs used on this $13,000 project is going to cost me $30. Is it worth it?".

4) After any design file is created, you've got six months or whatever until one of these two things happens (after a warning or two maybe):

a) You don't pay for the tool use and lose access to your design file forever. Only way to get it back is to contact the administrator.

b) You pay your $5 for the tool use and:

i) Download your clean data file and output.
ii) Your data file becomes LOCKED such that additional modifications cannot be made.
ii) Your data file is saved to the server indefinitely for future use.
iii) If you need to revisit your design after payment/closeout, you do one of two things:
iii a) pay another $5 to UNLOCK the design.
iii b) use a COPY FILE feature to make a replica of the original file that you can tinker with. You only pay if you want the modified design cleanly documented.

Ways This Could be Abused:

5) Screen capture the watermarked output, file by file, instead of paying for clean output.

6) Run a file, screen capture the input and output, come back and recreate a new file with the same input in the future if you need re-run it.

Ethics aside, a customer would effectively be paying for not having to deal with the hassle of #5 or #6.



HELP! I'd like your help with a thread that I was forced to move to the business issues section where it will surely be seen by next to nobody that matters to me:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456235