Launched a custom-built pricing model

This week marks an important milestone for Keep Track of My Games: it has a subscription payment model!

Here's the thing: I decided not to use fixed pricing tiers.

Customer-Set Prices

Instead, KTOMG uses a usage-based payment system that suggests a price for members to pay each month. Members can then choose whatever price they want relative to that "fair use" price threshold. For my MVP, anything above $1 is considered patronage.

This is based on an idea I came across a couple years ago, called FairPay.

There's much to say about this but I will go into it in more detail later in separate posts.

How it works

My site is geared towards casual and hardcore gamers so a lot of my terminology is inpired by gaming jargon.

Here's how my MVP works today:

Powerups

Premium features are called "Powerups." Right now I have two: Steam and GOG importing.

I made a video of how they work when people first encounter them on the app.

7-day Unlimited Trial

After activating their first Powerup, members get 7 days to try all Powerups without any restrictions. I call this the "Welcome Period."

Checkpoints

After their Welcome Period ends, they get sent a survey; this is what I call a "Membership Checkpoint."

Checkpoints are the core of this membership model and they have several aspects to them.

No Code

The Checkpoints themselves are built using Typeform with the Stripe integration question for now so I can quickly iterate on ideas to see what works/doesn't work.

There are limitations with this but I won't get into detail here. It's "good enough" for an MVP.

Value + Usage-based Price

In the Checkpoint, they are presented with a "Fair Use Price." This is a price I calculate based on their Powerup usage.

Many of my users come from using their own spreadsheets or custom solutions. For Steam/GOG, the price calculation is driven by the time KTOMG saved them auto-importing game data compared to manually tracking the data in a spreadsheet. This is the proposed value metric I track for those Powerups. Each Powerup can determine its own pricing factors.

Pay-what-you-want

After they review their price, they can choose to become a patron by paying $1+, they can enter the amount.

The payment is handled by Stripe.

Built-in feedback

After they enter their payment details, I ask 3 other questions about their experience using the app:

1. Rate their satisfaction 1-5. Collect feedback if the rating <= 4.
2. Asks whether they've recommended the app (if so, why)
3. Asks whether they've told someone not to use the app (if so, why)

The last screen has an open textbox for general feedback.

Follow-up Actions

After they submit their checkpoint, the payment is collected (if set) and several things happen including access tier changes, notifications, and reporting. I have a dedicated email inbox where I can directly reply to feedback coming from Typeform.

I built a quick reporting dashboard that breaks down some key metrics (still working on it) so I can monitor how things are going.

Wait... what? Why? How? Huh?!

I realize there's a lot to unpack here and there was a ton that led up to this but I'll save it for future posts. I just wanted to keep a milestone logged since I think it'll be important to look back on!

March 3 will mark the first day any Welcome Period checkpoints get sent from day one activations so I do weekly updates starting from March 10.