Similarly, you can price it for free or you can price it for dear, but never price it for cheap.
— Patrick McKenzie
- Taco Tuesday: why don’t we charge money?
- (aka: when to be generous)
- Network effects: Taco Tuesday gets better with more people, and new people; we want to lower the friction
- (though: space in the house is limited; diminishing returns)
- Charging leads to incentives for growth, or focus on size (?), or reduction of costs
- Charging adds an obligation for support?
- Culture / “weirdness points” — charging and negotiating pricing for things that are uncommon, is hard
- You can make trades between immediate monetization and longterm growth. When you give a thing away for free (or otherwise underprice it), people have a better experience, are more willing to promote it word-of-mouth
- Which things are free, which things to charge for?
- For patio11: internet blog posts are free (though with an optional donation subscription); consulting
hoursweeks are billed - Information: marginal cost of production is 0, so much more easy to give out
- Advice, short engagements tend to be free
- On the flip side: very few people get used to pricing things and selling things
- So charging for things might be a good muscle to develop
- The thing that most people sell: their own time. Cf salary negotiations
- Sometimes for money, sometimes for equity
- Personal journey of income over time
- Personal journey of sales over time: $500/mo on One Word, to Manifold, to Manifest, to Manifund
- Things to try and assess value of:
- Information (websites, books)
- Relationships: love, sex, friendships
- Freedom (cf nonmonetary payoffs to starting a company)
- Commute
- Game idea: pilot a character through various “trades”, based on their value in life