Follow Kahn's marketing model.

andybot · 16 Nov 2011, 15:31

That's a good idea - having some sort of tiered approach with support for those who subscribe($) while still keeping the bulk of free users.
I like.

brodie · 6 Dec 2011, 14:11

Interesting idea Mike. Is there a thread on this yet? If not it'd be interesting to see people comments.

My initial reaction is to oppose such an idea. I spend less of my time here these days learning things and more browsing through novice or intermediate questions that I feel I'm in a unique position to help out with. On occasion I'll still run into an question worth posting about or find a cool plugin to try, but that's less frequent than it once was. Separating us pro users off from the novice community could hurt the community as a whole.

On the other hand if I were in a primarily pro user community I wonder if I'd be better able to sift through irrelevant content and find more helpful information more efficiently and regularly.

I wonder, have you guys looked at any models of other forums who have gone through such a transition?

-Brodie

andybot · 6 Dec 2011, 14:16

Actually, I wonder if the subscription would be worth more to the novices who are working their way up (and need extra support) than the pros who already know what they're doing. Just a thought...

brodie · 6 Dec 2011, 14:41

@andybot said:

Actually, I wonder if the subscription would be worth more to the novices who are working their way up (and need extra support) than the pros who already know what they're doing. Just a thought...

Probably true, but I wouldn't expect many of those newer folks using SU free to subscribe to a pay forum for support. But again, I'm talking from ignorance. I've never seen this sort of process play out in real life. Just speculating.

-Brodie

bmike · 6 Dec 2011, 15:04

@unknownuser said:

Sell sketchup pro for beer money.

Compared to most CAD packages, Pro is already selling for beer money.
And Free is Free. Nothing in Free that is likely holding someone back who is just learning to work with the program.

$3-5k for an AutoDesk seat. More if you need to outfit multiples. Or a network license.
Add on some 3rd party stuff for production work (in my case, one client throws probably $10-15k / year at CAD for just the designing bits (the CNC end is a whole 'nother thing). And they choked on buying a $99 PDF exporter for SketchUp, until I demonstrated how easy it would be to use and send off to their clients (pros and non tech customers).

I jumped at the Pro version a few years ago, mainly to use LayOut. Its not perfect, but its getting better.
And I needed import / export of DWG to share with architects and engineers.

brodie · 6 Dec 2011, 15:23

Quite true. As bmike and a couple others have said, SU is essentially using this model already. It's a bit like if someone would have told Kahn he should sell his product for $2 instead of $50 when others were selling for $750.

-Brodie