Pondering, pondering.

[conuly]

A long time back, I asked why you couldn't buy seperate (separate? I hate that word) features without buying a full paid account, and got a nice, understandable answer about profit (basically, those features aren't worth enough for LJ to break even selling them alone).

Except now I'm thinking, what if they could be sold individually, but you had to buy a certain amount up front - maybe $5 or $10 dollars worth, however much that would be. Would this be possible and still profitable?

Hm. I might've asked that back then. If so, I completely forgot whatever I was told. Sorry.

Comments

[rho]

I suspect that there may be an issue of the dev-hours required to set it all up versus the small number of people who would actually use the feature.

[conuly]

You think it would be small? Everyone and their dog seems desperate to buy user pictures without getting a full paid account (god knows why, it's not like paid accounts are terribly expensive, but.)

[rho]

I suspect that the number who would be willing to take it up at the cost/quantity that would be financially viable for LJ would be fairly small.

[conuly]

*ponders*

Ah, you might be right. Or not, but I don't care that much.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

$25 isn't much if your bills/needs are covered every month without massive strain...but it seems like a gold-mine if you're in a financial position where you have to scrape together spare change at the end of the month to avoid starvation, or if you're trying to support somebody in that situation.

[conuly]

In that case, I doubt you're spending money on LiveJournal anyway, and if you're going to whine about the cost of user icons, fie, fie on thee!

*hugs* I know what you mean, though, and I'm sorry.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I think it'd be small compared to the loss of people who buy the full package because they want some of it. It's an incredibly rare paid user who uses all of the benefits.

And I think it'd be messy to keep track of. And then what about when the person repays but gets a different mix of features... And I'd expect an increase in: what happens when FOO expires... and I want to renew but I want to swap X feature for Y...

There is a basic annoyance factor to having a more complicated system.

[conuly]

All right, all right! *grins* See, this is why I post here first. I know youse guys are smart enough to keep me from making myself look silly.