In order to not only maintain but to scale Zest, we need to hit the $20K MRR mark in three months from now. No biggie.. right?
**So, it’s just about time to take our pricing model public**
Up until now, potential advertisers have reached out to us and we’ve been lucky enough to be in a position where we can hand pick them. While this intimate process will continue to exist, we want to broaden our funnel.
For some reason we are terrified of the idea that everyone will be able to see how we charge users. We don’t know why, but it is probably part of this whole startup maturity process.
It could also be because all of our growth and Tribe demographic data will be on the pricing page. Yep, that’s definitely it…
To reduce anxiety and take a little pressure off of the big unveil, we thought that we’d tackle this new hurdle just like everything else we’ve done up until now — by taking it to our users. They’ve been instrumental in every other big move we’ve made, so they were a natural outlet to turn to regarding this core milestone.
I’ll expand: before launching a product, you onboard Alpha users, then Beta users followed by a soft launch. After that, you typically start the whole marketing shebang.
We are going to do the same.
In two weeks, we will launch an early invite pricing page.
“Say what!!?!!”
Yes people, an early invite pricing page. A waiting list kinda thing if you will.
Why? We want to create a pipeline of potential advertisers and to get back to them once we launch the pricing model. Not to mention that this will enable a more gradual launch that’s as smooth as possible where we can manage both our brand and user experience.
In the meantime, our “Alpha” & “Beta” users (our unofficial User Advisory Board composed of influencers and marketing execs from top brands) will review the suggested model and give us feedback… and keep on giving us feedback until we nail the damn thing; layout, graphics, micro-copy, messaging, tone of voice — the whole kit and kaboodle..
Two important notes: 1) we are going to keep the number of advertisers limited to 5 a week as we want to keep the feed as “clean” as possible and 2) prices will most likely be relatively high as our users are quality individuals in senior marketing positions which means that we aren’t just going to throw any old brand or article their way. Exclusive stuff indeed.
If any of you are interested in helping with this feedback process — ping us.
If any of you are interested in hearing more about the pricing model itself or to feature your (manually-approved) content on Zest — ping us.
If any of you are interested in anything other than that, we’re here (you get it) — ping us.
yam@zest.is
Alright, good people of Medium, time to cross fingers for us.
Yam & Idan
