@nzimas: 100 transaction credits would cost based on the proposed pricing - 10 euros (0.10 euros per transaction)

As mentioned this transaction credit scheme will not be counting during the RC phase and also during this phase the 180 euro proposed price will be dropped to 100 euros.

So, a more optimistic view could be: during the RC phase one could pay 100 euros and get unlimited transactions.

@all: please take into consideration that this system will be used as an e-commerce tool and it should be factored into your overall business case.

And as mentioned in the newsletter these are proposed prices.

Also, please take into account that the transaction credit is a fixed price regardless of the actual payment amount that changes hands during the transaction. This means that a transaction would generate (after the RC phase) a 0.10 Euro fee towards the CBPay team even if the transaction involved a 10 euro payment or a 1000 euro payment.

Also, we are considering to offer bundle purchasing of transaction credits in order to bring the cost down even further (e.g., the 0.10 euro cost could be lowered to 0.05 with bulk purchasing).

I honestly appreciate all feedback, but please do not look at this as a nice to have thing - you should look at it as a business tool and factor it into your business plan. It is meant to generate income for your business case.

Post edited by: nant, at: 2009/01/01 17:04

nzimas wrote:

nant wrote:

@all: please take into consideration that this system will be used as an e-commerce tool and it should be factored into your overall business case.
(...)
I honestly appreciate all feedback, but please do not look at this as a nice to have thing - you should look at it as a business tool and factor it into your business plan. It is meant to generate income for your business case.

Post edited by: nant, at: 2009/01/01 17:04

I have a few doubts.

How do you define transaction? Is it a full registration process or just any action involving cash transfer through CBPay?
If so, i find the 0,10 cents commission extremely pricey.
Most commercial sites are set up on the prospect of a revenue pitch that either takes too long to reach or does not happen at all.
We have built several community driven portals, out of which a few seem to be very well thought in terms of business model. None, however, has ever manage to become profitable.
In the age of Facebook and countless other SN sites offering neat services for free, creating "yet another" SN is by no means a sure money maker. This is true even for the most niche-oriented engines.

As i see it, the model you propose might come across as too risky for investors / entrepreneurs. Plus, there's this eerie sensation of paying a sort of tax to the CB team per transaction.
From all the "serious" and active SN's we currently manage (3, i think), only one has the *potential* to generate some revenue hopefully before 2038

There's also a technical variable to be taken into account. Besides seamless / hackless integration with CB /Joomla, what is in CBPay that one cannot find in a well implemented combination of CB+AEC+JUGA+PROMA?

Post edited by: nzimas, at: 2009/01/01 19:30

Comparative advertisement is not allowed in Switzerland, so we are not going to try to compare, which would be unfair anyway. Once you get your hands-on experience with CBPay you will see that the solutions are really not comparable.

Your point is perfectly right, most sites don't have instant commercial success: CB team recognizes fully that getting an Internet business running is not an easy task and takes time. It's exactly for that reason that we have invented the "no need to pay all upfront, pay as you go" package that is being discussed here.

I therefore don't understand your point that 0.10 per transaction is to high when you are considering the case where you don't have lots of business, as it exactly allows to lower your upfront investment.

In fact, in operations, the cost of paid subs will be less than many other individual factors, while it's the one which allows to collect automatically the revenues, including while you sleep or are vacationing !

So if investing 100 or 180 EUR is to much compared to the additional revenues that all the built-in workflows and features will bring to your site (even compared to other solutions available), then it's most probably not a problem of the pricing of the plugin, but a problem in the business model or in the added value offered by the site, or in the amount invested in the rest of your site.

The idea is not to rip off anybody, but to the contrary to offer to everyone the best pricing corresponding to his situation, so I am very saddened by this discussion.

May I suggest that we postpone this until it's released and more information is available before commenting on the value and pricing ?

Back to finishing debugging last 2 bugs so we can release RC soon