Hey Mike
Thought of sending you a private message but I think it's better if I post this here. You may not remember me, but we once talked on skype once when we were trying to hire you for building a style for stronglifts.
Anyways, first off many congratulations at building your business thus far. Your styles and work are awesome. I think almost all custom projects I work on have bought your styles, and I recommend them to all my clients. Your solution on converting some to premium and some to open source from the addons you acquired is an excellent move in my opinion. Allows you to focus on those which are most popular.
If you would allow me, I would like to provide a few suggestions. I won't bother into going into my background, but I have several years of business experience with many companies and I just want to share something I feel may help you.
First off, I think you are trying to do too many things at the same time. Building your new website, bug tracker, idea tool etc etc... my head is already spinning. Irrespective of your team size, you would be well served if you focus on one thing at a time. We are all cognitive misers and the more things we have to handle our focus slips.
And even if you are working on several things, it is best to not let people know everything you are doing unless the work is well formed. Jira is an awesome bug tracker tool, but couldn't you just do with forum threads at the moment? It could have waited a couple of months until you sorted the other things out. I feel your team is a huge asset for the xenforo ecosystem and it would be heart breaking if you were to burn out and leave.
Secondly, you are in the low pricepoint business. Most people in this market here and / or everywhere are whiners. Some people may feel offended by it, but that doesn't change what it is. You roll out a product for $10 and people expect you to deliver the moon. Ironically the higher you charge the better though fewer customers you will have. So do not be disheartened by the negative comments here...
This is the reason the only addon I sell is priced at $99. I want to only work with people who appreciate the value of time.
And finally here's a suggestion for the idea Funding tool. I think it's an awesome name.
With paypal you can set up a recurring subscription which ends after one charge. You can also specify a different first charge amount and you can also specify a fixed date on which the next charge is to happen.
What you can do is let people vote on an idea with $1 as the first charge which would also setup a next payment of say $30 at a fixed start date. Each idea has until the start date during which it can meet the minimum number of votes. If by the start date the idea does not meet the required number of votes, you can refund all of the $1 votes.
If you do this the following happens:
- People know the number of votes required to start development.
- People only pay $1 to vote.
- There is a fixed start date.
- You get the balance money on the start date.
- If required votes / budget is not reached, people can get their $1 back.
This can be done by using paypal's express checkout api with the createrecurringpaymentprofile api method.
Of course the above is only what I hope is some constructive suggestion. You are the best judge of your business decisions...
All the best,
- Sadik
. Either way, we'd have the same issue if we let people register before posting the issues
