Monetization Plan for W3Counter

Continuing my trend of not taking any of the advice given, coming up with a new option instead, I don’t plan to pick any of the choices I laid out for monetizing W3Counter. Missing from that list is what I am going to do instead — add more value to the paid accounts so that more users have a reason to pay. Simple solution, isn’t it.

W3Counter should be a model product for Awio going forward. It’s everything I want to be selling:

• Created in-house, so I can be confident in both selling and supporting it effectively. I have full transparency into how it works, so there’s no problem I can’t investigate and solve for a user.
• Costs, in terms of money and time, do not increase significantly with each new user.
• Operation is nearly 100% automated, and since it “just works”, support mails come maybe once or twice a month.
• Providing real value to every user. Unlike the advertising services, it’s free to try, and everyone gets something out of it no matter their experience level.
• Users love it. I’ve had a survey up after log in for over a month now, have received over 100 lengthy replies, and everyone is genuinely happy with it.
• All of these combined lead to a product that can be spread by word-of-mouth rather than paid advertising. I’ve never had to advertise the site, and new users sign up every day.

Adding ads, throwing in tons of teasers, reducing limits… these all detract from what I want W3Counter to be. I don’t think compromising on quality will convince users to upgrade. The real reason few people upgrade is because they don’t see any compelling benefit of doing so. Those that have upgraded did it because they have more than one website — tracking more than one site from an account is a good benefit, but most users only have a single site, and most sites fall within the usage limits of the free plan. The stats-by-RSS benefit isn’t something most people understand, let alone want to pay for. Only a few hardcore developers make use of the API. There’s little left being offered for that $5 to $15 per month.

So what can I give?

It won’t be more reports – I don’t want the free users to feel cheated by not having access to vital information. I want to treat them so well they fall in love with W3Counter and want to upgrade just out of thanks – if only they didn’t have to pull out their wallets. They should be on the brink of doing it at all times, such that when they check out the list of reasons to upgrade, when they see these new reasons, they’ll follow through.

It won’t be date range selectors, or bigger log sizes, or even bigger limits. The business model won’t support free users if the few paid users use drastically more resources. $5 a month doesn’t buy new hardware for that user. The benefits shouldn’t require lots of resources for me to provide, but they must provide value to the users nonetheless.

For starters, I think these two features would add a lot of value to the type of user willing to pay for a low-cost web analytics solution:

1. Export any report to CSV or Excel format. Suddenly the reports have more business value at little cost to me. They currently don’t print well due to the Flash graphs and paging, and can’t be easily analyzed outside the website. They can’t be taken offline or easily sent off to a manager for a status update. Exporting all the data for a report at once in a print-friendly, import-friendly format can provide all this.
2. E-mail any report, and schedule e-mails of any report, to any number of e-mail addresses. This could be easy as a scheduler to run the export, attaching an Excel spreadsheet to the mail. More premium users than not use the daily, weekly and monthly summary e-mails. Now they can do the same with the reports they are interested in. They can get these reports without checking the site, and other relevant parties can get reports without having access to the account or learning to use the site.

I have some other ideas along these lines, but I don’t want to talk about them just yet. Combined with higher usage limits, SSL tracking code, and e-mail summaries, I think this could make a decent feature set to target small business. The type of business without a full IT staff, without a budget for enterprise-grade analytics, and for individuals that treat their sites as more than hobbies.

Aside from improving the features and plans pages of the site to better sell the benefits, I’m thinking of doing some direct mail selling as well. I think if done right, it can come across as something unexpectedly delightful instead of a put-off. I would need to start collecting addresses from free users on signup. I’d send a letter (heavy paper, professionally designed, screenshots and all, like a printed webpage) welcoming the user and highlighting some features, including the premium ones.

I’d also throw in a couple W3Counter stickers. People love free stuff — the inclusion of the stickers can change the perception of the letter into a positive instead of a possible negative. Stickers don’t appeal to everyone, but I think that W3Counter has a certain feel to it that wouldn’t fit the type of person to be turned off by stickers in the first place. It’s bright and shiny. The stickers are perfect for sticking to a laptop lid or computer.

They serve two more purposes – continually reminding the user about W3Counter, and as a trigger for word-of-mouth advertising.

1. They’re shareable. With a handful of stickers, the recipient will be likely try to think of someone to give some to before throwing them away. New people get exposed to the service.
2. They’re a conversation starter. I don’t expect people to get super excited over stickers, but if even a single blogger were to write about it, that’s a new link and new vector for continuing the word-of-mouth advertising.

I haven’t thought this all through yet, but I think I’m on the right track with the plans. I won’t be implementing any of this until after I’m back in Philadelphia in late September. That gives me time to think of more premium features worth paying for, ways to get users to think about them, and continue building on the idea of adding direct mail to the strategy.