Founders: Are Lifetime Deals worth it?

Joseph Lee
25 replies
I know AppSumo and others take up to 50% and often saddle you with supporting customers for a long time with very low ROI. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts (or better yet, experiences) with LTDs!

Replies

Frank Sondors
No, don't do it
Joseph Lee
@profy17 Got it - really helpful insights. Thanks for sharing your take!
Joseph Lee
@profy17 curious - do you think this is a blanket recommendation? Or for specific SaaS companies? Heard folks have positive experiences when they do a large enough $ (similar to LTV) with a strategy of upselling down the road.
Frank Sondors
@jhylee_95 upselling rarely works based on feedback. lifetime deal crowd is generally against susbcription revenue
Steve de Jong
@supademo_joe Hey, here’s my take on this based on my own experience. I’m a huuuge fan of LTD deals and I've launched my bookmark manager Superdense on Appsumo (and Saas Mantra). #1 Keep the cost per customer as low as possible. If you need to scale up to handle more users, the cost might end up being more than what you make from the LTD deal. #2 Make sure you have awesome help docs and minimal bugs. This way, you won’t be bombarded with support tickets. #3 Offer a really generous deal. That way, you’ll get awesome reviews instead of people griping or asking for higher limits. Of course, this only works if you’ve got #1 covered. #4 Be super available during the first couple of days after the launch and respond to every question quickly. This will give you valuable feedback and help people browsing the LTD deal page. #5 Share your roadmap publicly so people know what’s coming. #6 Don’t forget to ask your customers for reviews! By following these tips, you’ll have a bunch of happy ambassadors, glowing reviews, valuable feedback, and some quick cash flow. Just remember, the LTD platform will take a chunk of your revenue (probably more than 50%), so make sure your earnings outweigh the costs for these early supporters in the long run. PS fun fact: I found this post as I Googled "supademo lifetime deal" 😆
Joseph Lee
@stevedejo Thanks so much for the insights. Good to hear some contrasting opinions as I like to hear both sides of any argument. Superdense looks really awesome. Did you find most LTD customers stopped using after X months? I heard a lot of folks in the space tend to drop off pretty quickly. Superdense looks cool :)
Steve de Jong
@supademo_joe Thanks for the compliments! And I gotta say, I really like how Supademo looks as well! I recently started using a similar tool, but yours blows it out of the water. Let me know if you wanna swap LTD accounts 😉 About the usage from Appsumo customers, it’s been pretty steady since then, no massive drop or anything. So I take that as a compliment. When it comes to the LTDs I purchase, I usually give them 1-2 years to really mature, and overall, I’m pretty happy with the service quality. Of course, there are a few that end up getting discontinued or don’t bother improving the app. But I'd say that’s less than 5-10%. It’s all part of the game, or should I say, part of the risk.
Joseph Lee
@stevedejo I appreciate that! We don’t do LTDs but happy to pass on a indie discount if you end up upgrading from our free plan :)
Hey @thefedoration @gobie_nanthakumar @trungdq88 have some thoughts they can share on this.
Joseph Lee
@thefedoration @gobie_nanthakumar @trungdq88 @maxwellcdavis would love to hear the group's thoughts here!
Fed
@jhylee_95 I had success with a private LTD (not listing it on any marketplaces like AS). Here's my full reflections on my LTD campaign: https://twitter.com/foliofed/sta...
Joseph Lee
@thefedoration awesome, thank you for sharing your insights. Will take a look!
Daniel Zaitzow
Depends on your customer LTV - if you have the data to support that most customers churn after X time and your lifetime deal is getting you 10x on that customer - it might make sense. I also think that its a great way to drum up capital if you're bootstrapped and are hoping to hit scale within a given timeframe.
Joseph Lee
@dzaitzow great feedback. I guess most companies that would consider LTDs are nascent and don't have this handy. But good point nonetheless. Agreed on drumming up capital. I guess you can consider it as "ad spend" budget but instead of paying $, you're paying % of revenue for less risk.
Daniel Zaitzow
@jhylee_95 Totally - could also dilute perceived value of the product if you price the lifetime too low etc. Pros and cons all over the place!
Joseph Lee
@dzaitzow did not think too deeply about perceived value. This is HUGE and often overlooked. Thanks for sharing!
Chris Lindner
I think it depends on the price settings. The lifetime deal may cause low ROI in a long term, but it means also a high ROI and revenue in a short term, as long as the price can 100% cover your cost in this term. I have paid lifetime deals in many apps years ago, and now all of them turn to be subscription bros.
Joseph Lee
@echo_ai very interesting - how did you nudge folks to upgrade? But sunsetting features? Prioritizing upgrades to specific tiers only?
Chris Lindner
@jhylee_95 Better is adding features i think. If you backtrack on promised features, your users might be upset, leaving instead of paying.
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