Is this subscription model viable? How to make it work before users?
Hey all. I've had an idea floating in my head since we started looking for daycares for my child. My local area doesn't have a good central daycare website for the entire city, despite there being literally hundreds. There is one already made, but the website is very bare bones, and even as a newer dev I know I could do better. Here's my thought for subscription model:
- Childcare centers/in home daycares/etc. would pay $10 to have their listing on the website. They'd have the ability to have things on their like address/phone/desc, as well as more advanced features such as pricing, open spots, video walkthroughs, etc. They'd potentially have the option to pay more for advertised spots on the website.
So that's the subscription model, but here's the biggest problem with it. The entire concept works on the idea that parents want to see a comprehensive list of the daycares around town. I'd probably need 20-50 to be on the website before it'd start seeing good use. So the question is, how do I get that subscription model when my anticipation is that nobody would subscribe if they were one of the first few daycares? I've thought about making it free then switching to paid, but that seems a little scummy and like many would pull out.
All help appreciated.
Offer everyone the first 3-6 months free for their listing. Use that time to sign up everyone possible. Nobody will care. They get free advertising either way.
Sharing some thoughts & ideas below, after having run my own marketplace business before.
Picking one side to start with:
To validate marketplace ideas, you need to pick one side of the demand/supply to start with. Preferably one that unlocks immediate value for the other side. Consider these two scenarios —
A) You pre-signup 50 day-care listings on your website — does that make 50 parents come running to you wanting to use your product? OR
B) You pre-signup 50 parents who are actively deciding on day-cares in the city and are immediately willing to pay them for service — does that make all the day-cares in. your city suddenly wanting to access those parents so they can acquire new customers?
I personally think Scenario B removes barriers for your marketplace more so than Scenario A.
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For problem validation + to launch the marketplace, I'd recommend:
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Pricing:
Hopefully this gives you some tactical ways to launch this — all the best! Feel free to DM if you want to chat about it, happy to continue guiding. 🙂
Hey, thanks so much for this. How would the strategy change if my plan was to allow parents to access the website for free? Because that is my current plan. Is to charge the daycare providers, but allow parents to use the site for free.
Talk to both sides and ask them:
You'll start seeing some patterns or getting ideas after 5-10 interviews, and you can start there. You can have plans or opinions, but ultimately your users will tell you exactly if and how they want to pay for your service or product.
Had a similar idea but with another business model. What if you provide a SaaS product to each childcare center so they can manage their business?
If you want to go with the marketplace, I'd suggest that you check out Studiotime.io story, they came up with a nice business model