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Hi everyone,
I own a very old software utilities site, that holds about 10 free tools we've built long time ago. They are rather basic tools, but still useful today (I've recently used couple of them myself for my own needs). We had more tools but some were discarded as they were not useful anymore.
I intend to switch from free to paid, find a way to make money. And also redo the website's appearance as well, add new tools and promote it.
The site has been live for more than 10 years, and it receives a few hundreds of downloads per day. They were all free for all these years. The original idea was to offer them for free and get monetizing through ads. Building the tools incurred some costs, but they were recovered and after a while there was some profit, at least in first years.
During all this long time, the only money made were from Adwords. In the beginning, it was okay for some side revenue. But recently, the pennies received from ads only cover hosting. The tools are still useful, at least some of them. The downloads show this. Also, at some point I made a website poll and basically asked users whether they'd pay for a paid version of the products. 60% selected Yes, which I din't expect (but obviously I'd be bad at valuating my own creations).
There are two approaches I've found, to switch from free to paid:
1) Modify each tool from free to paid version (takes some work, and frankly there's little in features that can be added on top of existing ones so it's difficult to push new features as reason to go to paid); side note pricing will be in the range of $4.99 per tool or so
2) Make the products free but only for registered users. So by registering for one year (let's say $9.99 per year), you get access to members area where you can download all tools and others that will be coming next.
3) Any other possible option ...?
Both options will also allow me to improve the tools so they work better with new operating systems, add new features etc. Which is something I'd definitely like to do. I also have other ideas for brand new tools. Also, I have fresh ideas on how to promote the products now (both free and paid) so this will result in some extra revenue.
What do you think, which one is best? I would lean against Option 2) because it's quick, easy, and we don't have to modify all tools; and Option 1 will bring more revenue only if they buy more than 2 tools, which is likely not going to happen.
Normally I would simply go ahead and test options just as if was an A/B testing. But since the tools were free for so long, switching options overnight might just confuse and irate some users and I don't want to do this. So I probably have to think better before moving ahead.
I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something. Any advice will be appreciated, thanks!
TL;DR; I need your advice regarding moving a software utilities site from free to paid, and what pricing model would be best. thanks
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