On Thu, 23 Feb 1995 12:41:50 -0600 David Chapin <[log in to unmask]> said: >That's a very pessimistic attitude. I view it as a positive, >image-building period. Now you sound like a salesman :-) >Eric, you are discussing something totally different here. No, I was discussing exactly the same thing: human nature. If there were a dozen providers offering free trial periods of SIX MONTHS, noone would actually be paying for the service. People would just hop around from trial to trial. Why pay when you can get it for free? :-) >True. But by offering a trial period for use of your mailing list >services you are doing two things: 1) building customer loyalty to your >product; and 2) deferring a payment, which at the beginning the >discussion group is generally unable to pay anyway. You're mixing two issues here. There are people who have a list and need a new home, and then people who are wondering whether to start a list. They have very different profiles. People who have a list and suddenly find themselves looking for a new home don't need an incentive to try LISTSERV. They already know exactly what it can and cannot do. Their only problem is to get organized to collect funding. They may need a break, a deferred payment plan. They don't need a trial, because they know exactly how useful the list is and what LISTSERV can do for them. People who're wondering whether to start a new list do indeed wonder what's the difference between LISTSERV and Eudora. But they're not unable to pay. If they call a commercial provider they know there's going to be something to pay and they'll have thought about this in advance. They may not have much money and in particular they may not have a commitment for more than say 3 months. But they'll know what they're getting into, otherwise they wouldn't be calling a commercial provider. The fees for a personal list are on the same order as the cost of an Internet account so it's not something that ordinary people can't pay for a couple months. As far as I see it, this is a non-issue for new lists. People may need a short trial run in order to see what this mailing list business is really about, because they've just read about it in a magazine and don't really understand it. But it doesn't take 6 months to figure out what a mailing list is. As a matter of corporate policy, our sales folks generally give trials to customers who genuinely need them, so I don't see any problem here. If people aren't sure what they're getting into, we'll help them. The people who have lost their list now are naturally looking for a free solution. There's nothing wrong with that. Ordinarily, it works out just fine, too. Just now it doesn't work too well, because there are over a hundred lists that are all in need of a new home at the exact same time. System administrators usually have some freedom in deciding what lists to host, but it's not like they can add a dozen each and every month, it's more like 1-2 per month. So, it's going to take a while for the lists to find a new home. Naturally it would be very convenient to get a free ride for six months to have time to find a more permanent and free home. But I don't see what the service provider has to gain in this bargain. People will want a free home not just because of the money but because of the hassle of having to organize the collection of some $40/month from say 200 list members. I'd look for a free home if I were in this position, too. I'd pay in the interim, but I'd want to get rid of this hassle as soon as possible. It's already enough work to process the delivery errors. Whether I as a shareholder of L-Soft like it or not, this is the situation. For the kind of list we've been talking about (hobbies, pets, etc), where each subscriber would pay a few cents a month, the hard reality is that you pay for the privilege of having to do some tax collection work on top of your current list owner duties. It's enough money that you don't want to pay everything from your pocket, and yet it's small enough that we're talking about collecting a few dollars a year from each subscriber, presumably banknotes in the mail, and then what do you do for international subscribers? This is no fun at all and I don't expect anyone to put up with that kind of arrangement in the long run. I just don't see any kind of future profit coming down this line. It doesn't matter that you get better service if you have to spend hours and hours collecting pennies from hundreds of people. The kind of setup that does work is when you have a local club of say XYZ race dog owners. The club can probably pay $10/month and find another 3 clubs to pay the rest. One club pays the provider and the others exchange checks once a year, and it's no hassle at all. Another option is to find a sponsor. We're talking about sums on the order of $500/year, maybe a brand of dog food would be willing to pay that in exchange for being able to put an ad in the welcome message. This would only work for the larger lists, though; the first question they'll ask is how many people read the list :-) In such cases there is an initial setup effort in organizing everything, but very little work to actually collect the money. This is where I see possible long term profits. >And, I can assure you, it is a pain in the %$# to leave. Obviously, the >group will have no intention of using the free trial and then moving on >-- this is very hard to implement unless it is a tiny list in the first >place Quite to the contrary, it is extremely easy. It can be done in 10 minutes and the old address can even be made to work. Unless of course you have hundreds of documents you need to migrate together with the list. In the worst case it will take an hour. L-Soft charges $10 for a transfer from an existing LISTSERV list, and that's mostly for the time it takes to talk to the customer and get the files we need. If it really took several hours of work we'd charge a lot more than $10. >Think of this issue the same way that the cellular phone companies do by >giving away free cell-phones for a service connection contract. In the >end they make up the cost of the phones in service charges over time and >the customer ends up feeling the service is indispensable and is >reluctant to give up the convenience, thus providing profit for the >company. This makes sense for a cellular phone company whose business is to collect small amounts of money from millions of people. These organizations have a structure that makes it easy and profitable to talk lots of people into using a cellular phone regularly. L-Soft has a radically different structure. We're the company that sell routers and radio equipment with which you can build a cellular phone network. If you sent us 100,000 people who wanted a cellular phone on a silver plate, we wouldn't know what to do with them. We'd have to start a new company with a radically different structure just to be able to process their orders. Both are perfectly valid business opportunities, but they require a very different kind of structure. With the EASE service we're not looking into running 100,000 personal lists over the next couple years. This is mostly a service for businesses who want to use the Internet for announcements, technical support, newsletters, etc. Personal lists are welcome of course, but this isn't the business plan, and it can't become the business plan without a major restructuration, because we're just not organized as a service provider for the masses. Eric