Hmm, I’ll have to think about that
After my Geekfest presentation this week, I had a quick conversation with Jim Breen about why I decided to create an invoicing app.
The answer goes a little something like this:
When dealing with my own clients, I found myself always on the cusp of a ‘free’ plan while using other invoicing services. I wasn’t quite ready to make the move to paid offerings because for the most part I could still manipulate the situation usually by waiting to invoice until the month changed.
Then I got to thinking… why on earth wouldn’t I just create an invoicing app. You know, something I can use internally. So after my time at Obtiva’s TDD bootcamp, I ran home and pretty much threw out what I had and started from scratch. For the most part the project came together within a week or so. Now normally I have do all of my own design/stylesheet work but I was fortunate enough to have a friend help out with that this time along. This really really freed me up to work on the actual system. Once we had most of the functionality that I wanted to have, my friend said that I should offer it up for sale as a service.
Luckily Jim only had to listen to my short story but I will finish here for you all of you in case anyone is interested. We’ll get back to the story at hand in a moment!
That got me thinking… maybe it could provide a little extra income if only even a few people subscribed. So I figured what the hell and started work on that. The idea was simple but it does add a bit more to the app as now I have to account for different users, domains, subscriptions, etc. Not horrible but, you know, extra work. This is also where I started feeling like an ass… internally of course.
Why am I trying to sell this software as a service when it was created solely to avoid paying for a service? Quite the conundrum I would say! That’s when I decided the project, or at least the majority of it, would be open sourced. I’m still playing with the details on how to protect myself as a business and still allow the community to have the project. You can even find the project in an early state on Github.
I was also very particular about the pricing model. With a dislike for limited features and tiered pricing, I decided Breadbox would have very little of that. There will be a free plan with a limited set of features but what I feel is a great offering. Then there will be a paid plan at an extremely competitive price point. The key here is that the paid plan will make everything the service has to offer available. Anytime new features are added to Breadbox… paid users will just get them.
To me this was a different way of thinking about the pricing structure that we seem to be accustomed to nowadays with most web services. Or… there’s a reason for tiered pricing. And now back to our story.
When I was finished with my pitch, Jim kinda smirked and asked: “What happens if a user starts sending out 1000 invoices a month?” That’s when it instantly occurred to me where tiered pricing is key! At that point I knew the cost of dealing with a customer who uses the service like that would outweigh the price they were paying. The only way I see to combat that would be to have many other paying customers that don’t use the service as much. So thanks to you, Jim. This provided me with a train ride home of thinking.
During this whole journey I knew that I wanted to cater this service to really small businesses and freelancers because that’s what I am an in effect what it was designed for. So I think the service is going to get a little opinionated ( well more than it already was ). In case you’re still here with me… this is what I came up with.
Breadbox paid plans will have a max sent invoices cap. I feel the cap amount would be around 50-75/mo. The conclusion came to be when I thought, who am I catering this service to? If small businesses or freelancers are sending more invoices than that a month… they are probably in need of a more robust system anyway and I would be more than happy to recommend one to fit their needs. Fortunately in this world I don’t have to be everything to everyone. Will this decision or way of thinking hurt business… maybe. Do I care? Not really, as I put thought into this and feel it’s a good decision for the service. People will find the service has value and continue to pay. Some will not and move on. I’m OK with that.
Thanks to Jim for making me think about something that would have not crossed my mind until it happened. Anyway else that has input, feels the cap should be a different amount or some other question… please share.
