Started as freemium product … reached 10,000+ users.. When is the best time to add a premium service?

You need to monetize now if your market is 70-99 percent bigger than what it currently is. You don’t have anything until you’ve made money. Most likely, 9k users will fall off once you begin charging, but 1k paying always beats free.

I truly don’t understand why $4 a year is so scary for you to charge. If your product is worth more, charge more. If it’s worth less, enjoy running a charity.

My startup is based on a freemium app. In less than one year, we have 100.000+ users. Premium users pay more than $100 per year. Very few people pay, but it is growing. Mostly because we make some repeat business and convince more and more people to pay. But new users coming is a nearly flat curve.

My numbers are way above yours, and we can just pay tiny salaries to founders. No more, no less. You may think I’m a happy startup CEO ? Not that much. We all work harder than hard every day to earn just enough to survive. And we are not sure to grow enough to live well. Our finance is perfectly safe: at ultra low wages, this is a perfectly viable zombie startup which can kill us during years. So we must grow our figures ASAP.

Your figures are so low you can’t go anywhere. You must have short term plans to earn at least $10K each month. Below this bar, you don’t have a real business. Only a costly hobby. It’s OK at the beginning, because it’s a startup, but you must have revenue ASAP. Otherwise it will be a costly hobby.

When asking for payment ? As soon as possible. I sold subscriptions until day one, and I had my first paying customers on day one. It was just a few bucks, but everybody knows it is not free. You don’t imagine how difficult it is to convince people to pay for something they had for free until then.

Make a true reality check. And think about your business model. You don’t need a business plan, but you must have a decent business model.

Last but not least: forget the “donate” button. Been there, done that… I worked quite hard during years with friends on a very serious free software. It was a success. One day we put a donate button. We received quite nothing. Not enough to go together to a restaurant… When people see a donate button, they think “Good idea, I will think about it”. And they never donate, because they feel free to use it for free. After all, you made it free, so you agree not to be paid. Don’t make that mistake.

Good luck and kind wishes !

Have you asked your existing customers whether they’d be interested in a paid version of the product? And what makes the paid version better?

Freemium in practice tends to be making the free product crappier and crappier over time – just enough that people don’t quit using it – but at least theoretically this doesn’t have to be the case.