Flickr, one of my favorite photo sites, just launched some new statistics features for their professional members. When I followed the link that I read, it offered me the chance to upgrade my personal account to a pro account with the #1 benefit being "Be enthralled by graphs and charts!" You can read all the stated benefits of upgrading at this link.
This makes me consider two things:
1. Sometimes you don't have to offer people much to get them to part with their money. Sometimes the value-add that is required, isn't much in the scheme of things. You don't have to offer the world, just enough to provide value to the customer.
2. People will pay for their own information. Whether it be Flickr stats or American Express' specialized statements that allow you to categorize expenses for reporting purposes, sometimes it is the data around the main service that provides the differentiation. This is one of the popular features of Xobni's service (see your most frequent email communicators in an easy pop-up) or iTunes (what are your favorite/most frequently played songs).
So, what information do you gather that you could sell, package, or otherwise entice your clients with? Would your corporate clients be interested to know how often their employees called for technical support? Would your customers be interested to know what their buying preference say about them? Could you post some statistics and get positive press mentions (like Google and Yahoo! do when they issue press releases about what the most popular search topics are in any given year)? I suspect that your data would be more useful and insightful than the fact that lots of people searched for news on Britney Spears this past year!
This makes me consider two things:
1. Sometimes you don't have to offer people much to get them to part with their money. Sometimes the value-add that is required, isn't much in the scheme of things. You don't have to offer the world, just enough to provide value to the customer.
2. People will pay for their own information. Whether it be Flickr stats or American Express' specialized statements that allow you to categorize expenses for reporting purposes, sometimes it is the data around the main service that provides the differentiation. This is one of the popular features of Xobni's service (see your most frequent email communicators in an easy pop-up) or iTunes (what are your favorite/most frequently played songs).
So, what information do you gather that you could sell, package, or otherwise entice your clients with? Would your corporate clients be interested to know how often their employees called for technical support? Would your customers be interested to know what their buying preference say about them? Could you post some statistics and get positive press mentions (like Google and Yahoo! do when they issue press releases about what the most popular search topics are in any given year)? I suspect that your data would be more useful and insightful than the fact that lots of people searched for news on Britney Spears this past year!
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