This is actually the ONLY reason why I said you should rebuild the service. It would seem you built it all wrong. You know why? because it shouldn’t bother you if you have 500,000 dormant sites on your service. Take WIX for example, they have over 70,000,000 free sites. I’m sure it doesn’t even bite them that much.
Change the overall architecture of the platform to accommodate free sites without you doing anything. Your target should be 50MB for 5000 dormant or free websites on the server. if you can achieve this you would have built something worth even investing in. Every investor would really love to hear this.
You are a great developer, efficiency will enable you have a better price point & put you in front of everyone.
Cheers.
2 Likes
@Ralph was right about the similar solutions he recommended (as well as WIX.com which was recommended by @somtoifezue), you should review their approaches. The common theme is that if new users of your product can develop their own websites themselves using templates without requiring support and you have infrastructure to contain FREE users, then you can innovate around your monetization strategy.
My recommendations:
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Have a freemium approach and make the cost of entry negligible; To do this you have to scrap your signup fee. This could be a tough decision, but it has a potential upside. You can learn from what LeadPages is doing with Drip that they recently acquired.
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Consider tiered-pricing approach. Your users don’t have to pay the same rate. Instead bill them based on their usage or the features available to them. You can also focus on making add-ons available that they can pay for (like Do-It-For-Me, logo design etc). Pricing is a key part of your market entry strategy. (HINT: One of the reasons you are probably using VoguePay.com is zero pricing 
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Keep using VoguePay for payment processing. For obvious reasons, it solves your current market challenge out-of-the-box.
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Promote your paid users: Part of the incentives for premium users could be newsletter promotions (are your familiar with Envato’s newsletters or any other sort of promotions 
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The Nigeria effect. It is difficult getting people pay for a service when they are not making sales; it leads to churn. PLUS this is Nigeria where we seldom want to pay…that is why none of SME-friendly online payment gateways is charging for account maintenance fee - something that PayPal charges on its Merchant/Business account. keep that Nigeria factor in mind and make sure that your platform drives enough value to your users to make them keep using it instead of building theirs. Shopify rocks at this and will be a great template to copy. Same with BigCommerce which I happened to use when they were still called Interspire Shopping cart.
I really want you to read why Collins is ready to lose $1Million on Drip
Good luck @StephenAfamO
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Thank you both @somtoifezue and @spokentwice
I can see sense in scrapping the signup fee. It seems to be the highest entry barrier so far.
Restricting features to “premium members” feels like I’ll be shooting my self in the foot for the following reasons.
- All features are added to boost sales
- I will be basically make revenue if and only if sales are made.
- Restricting features that could help sales is restricting my profit.
Instead, I think it will be better to either limit the amount of allowed products, or limit the upload space. I will consider which approach will be better.
As for leaving redundant sites like @somtoifezue mentioned, it really only impacts my storage space. So I guess the architecture is Ok.
I’ll just budget a certain amount of space for dormant sites and go ahead and open it up.
A newsletter should make a lot of sense. I guess I should start one driven at promoting Nigerian Brands with a space to feature certain brands.
I must say that I am overwhelmed with the amount of constructive criticism and helpful suggestions you have all given me.
It is obvious that you’re all trying to help me succeed. That’s touching when you realise that I’ve never even spoken to any of you before.
Thank you sooo sooooo much.
Keep the suggestions coming. I will try my best to use them.
1 Like
I believe your model lies between these 2 ideas
For the newsletter idea, you can consider what BellAfricana is doing with their newsletter.
http://i0c8q2y9a1.mailerlite.com/e2u4v4/381773525993655117/q8i6/
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Impressive! The veterans have really dished out top reviews.
As regards the logo identity, the icon is on point. I simply recommend you modify the ‘Magneto’ font.
Go simple! - ‘Segoe UI’ wont be a bad idea.
Think of a way to implement a built-in audience and communication tools. Cut out all the noise and focus on what’s important. It’ll be cool to have features that’ll help business owners expand their contact network. Users should be able to compliment a business.
So far! You’re doing a great job @StephenAfamO
Expecting to see a modified landing page and more functional contents which will win the hearts of business owners.
For the Free Tier, you can assign a storage of 100MB, leave the Proudly Signature in footer of free websites, allow only one custom email address and user support via emails only. That should do the trick.
2 Likes
Thanks. Great idea about building networks.
Already working on the redesign
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