Ben Cochran - Blog

nickd: Charge money for your work. Don't be a jerk to people. Repeat. →

Go read that then come back. It’s short, just do it.

The topic of charging money to users who love your products has been on my mind a lot lately. By putting your product cart before your business plan horse, you’re basically leaving yourself two options: force ads on your users/sell user data to advertisers or force previously non-paying customers to pay.

I’m not saying that venture capital is in itself bad. Some products and ideas need startup capital to get off the ground. But going full force towards a product without any plan for making money is setting yourself up for compromises I’m not willing to make.

Make great things and let people pay you for them. Either you’ll end up with customers who actually value what you’ve created or you won’t. If not you’ll have plenty of time to give it another go and reinvent the whole thing. You can’t do that when you have hundreds of thousands of users and investors knocking at your door for their payout.

Notes:

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    Oh man, there’s so many...links today (my [Read...most...
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  8. bencochran reblogged this from taphead and added:
    then come back. It’s short, just do it....to users who love your products has been on my...
  9. chartier reblogged this from taphead and added:
    My friend Nick Disabato lays out
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