软件公司怎么定价它们的项目

by Tigran Hakobyan

由Tigran Hakobyan

如何为副项目定价 (How to price your side-project)

介绍 (Introduction)

If you had asked me a couple months ago if I could ever write an article about pricing, it probably would have made me laugh.

如果您几个月前问我是否可以写一篇有关定价的文章，那可能会让我发笑。

Until a few months agao, I didn’t know anything about product pricing even though I’d launched my first SaaS project. The way I priced my product was by solely relying on my own intuition, as well as looking at how other similar SaaS products priced their services. I think this is what most beginners do.

直到几个月后，即使我启动了第一个SaaS项目 ，我对产品价格一无所知。 我为产品定价的方式是完全依靠自己的直觉，以及研究其他类似的SaaS产品如何定价其服务。 我认为这是大多数初学者所做的。

Then why on earth write an article if I’m not an expert on pricing? Because I’ve come to realize that it’s totally okay to write about topics you’re not expert on.

那如果我不是定价专家，为什么要写一篇文章呢？ 因为我已经意识到，撰写您不擅长的主题完全可以。

Chris Coyier’s tweet inspired me to start writing about things I wish I could find on Google.

克里斯·科耶尔(Chris Coyier)的推文启发了我开始写一些我希望可以在Google上找到的东西。

I started to use blogging as an excuse to learn a specific topic. This article is the fruit of that inspiration, and I’m happy to share it with you all.

我开始以博客为借口来学习特定主题。 本文是从中获得灵感的成果，我很高兴与大家分享。

There aren’t many articles on the pricing of side-projects, even though the number of revenue-generating side-projects is growing. If you go to Indie Hackers you can see many of them there, and many makers in the community wonder and ask questions about pricing as well.

尽管产生收入的副项目的数量正在增长，但有关副项目的定价的文章并不多。 如果您访问“ 独立黑客”，您可以在其中看到很多人，社区中的许多制造商也想知道并询问有关价格的问题。

In this article, I’ve summarized everything I’ve learned about side-project pricing. For the last two months or so, I’ve been reading about pricing and talking to people who are knowledgeable about pricing. It really helped me to understand the basics and create a more successful pricing model for an SaaS project.

在本文中，我总结了我所了解的有关副项目定价的所有内容。 在过去的两个月左右的时间里，我一直在阅读有关定价的信息，并与了解定价的人们交谈。 它确实帮助我了解了基础知识，并为SaaS项目创建了更成功的定价模型。

I’ve used Cronhub (my side-project) as an example to better explain my view and thinking process, because I believe it’s easier to digest new information using an example.

我已经使用Cronhub (我的附带项目)作为示例来更好地解释我的观点和思考过程，因为我认为使用示例更容易消化新信息。

All my learnings here apply to SaaS products, but I think other types of businesses can benefit from them, too.

我在这里的所有学习都适用于SaaS产品，但我认为其他类型的企业也可以从中受益。

为什么要获利？ (Why monetizing?)

Monetizing your project from day one is very important. You can think of the “monetization” as a feature that you want your product to have. This feature significantly increases your product’s chances of success. Usually, you build features for your customers but this one is for you, to keep you more motivated to work on your project.

从第一天开始就利用您的项目获利非常重要。 您可以将“获利”视为您希望产品具有的功能。 此功能显着增加了产品成功的机会。 通常，您为客户构建功能，但这是给您的，以使您更有动力进行项目。

Your motivation and persistence are the key drivers to move your project forward. If you value something, it keeps your motivation high. What’s the easiest way to know whether your project is valuable? Asking people to pay for it. In my opinion, if you can find 10 people willing to pay for your project, you know you’ve got something that people are ready to pay for. After that, you can find the next 100, 1000, and even more. Finding the first customers is the hardest part.

您的动力和毅力是推动您的项目前进的主要动力。 如果您珍惜某些东西，那么可以使您的动力更高。 知道您的项目是否有价值的最简单方法是什么？ 要求人们付款。 我认为，如果您能找到10个愿意为您的项目付款的人，那么您知道您已经准备好为人们付款。 之后，您可以找到下一个100、1000，甚至更多。 寻找第一个客户是最困难的部分。

Because finding the first customers is hard, it’s important to set the right pricing model in the beginning. Pricing is a living feature, and as any other feature, it requires multiple iterations until you get it right. It’s totally okay to make mistakes in the beginning. In fact, for Cronhub, I’m still not sure whether I’ve got it right or not. ?

因为很难找到第一个客户，所以一开始就设置正确的定价模型很重要。 定价是一项实用功能，与其他任何功能一样，定价需要多次迭代，直到正确为止。 一开始就犯错误是完全可以的。 实际上，对于Cronhub来说，我仍然不确定自己是否正确。 ？

However, I’m open to changing it if that’s what’s best, and that’s what matters.

但是，如果那是最好的，那是很重要的，我愿意改变它。

If your intention is to build a business from your side-project, then you should charge for your project. It’s hard and more often demotivating to work for free. You value your time and others should, too.

如果您打算通过副项目建立业务，则应为项目付费。 这很困难，更经常激励人们免费工作。 您珍惜时间，其他人也应该珍惜。

定价策略 (Pricing strategies)

Since I’m not an expert in this field, I can’t give you very technical answers to pricing strategies. However, one thing I can do is to explain these strategies in a more human way with simple words.

由于我不是该领域的专家，因此我无法为您提供有关定价策略的非常技术性的答案。 但是，我可以做的一件事就是用简单的话语以更人性化的方式解释这些策略。

Maybe that’s even better for you? ? Good. Let’s go for it.

也许对您来说更好？ ？ 好。 我们去吧。

The primary goal of a pricing strategy is to maximize your product’s revenue. According to a book that I’ve read, “The anatomy of SaaS pricing strategy” (which a great book btw), there are three pricing strategies for SaaS products.

定价策略的主要目标是最大化产品的收入。 根据我读过的一本书《 SaaS定价策略剖析 》(这是一本很棒的书)，SaaS产品有三种定价策略。

成本加成定价 (Cost-Plus Pricing)

This is the most basic pricing model you can think of, because it really makes sense. First, you calculate everything that costs money for your project and then add a healthy margin on top of it. The margin is your profit, and it represents the value that you give to your customers.

这是您可以想到的最基本的定价模型，因为它确实有意义。 首先，您要计算出为项目花费资金的所有内容，然后在其之上添加可观的利润。 保证金是您的利润，它代表您提供给客户的价值。

Let’s take Cronhub as an example. Cronhub is a cron job (or any scheduled task) monitoring tool. Monitors cost me money, because they send emails and SMSs to my users. Sending emails and SMSs is costly for my business. Having more monitors will increase my cost, and that’s why I priced Cronhub by the number of monitors. If you want more monitors, you should pay more.

让我们以Cronhub为例。 Cronhub是cron作业(或任何计划任务)监视工具。 监视器要花我钱，因为它们向我的用户发送电子邮件和SMS。 发送电子邮件和SMS对我的企业来说是昂贵的。 拥有更多的显示器会增加我的成本，这就是为什么我根据显示器的数量为Cronhub定价。 如果您想要更多的显示器，您应该支付更多。

I think most first-time side-project builders take this approach, because it’s simple and it covers the costs. The challenge with this pricing strategy is the unpredictability of the future. If your costs unexpectedly go up in the future your profit margin will drop and you will have to increase your prices.

我认为大多数初次使用外部项目的构建者都采用这种方法，因为它很简单并且可以覆盖成本。 这种定价策略的挑战是未来的不可预测性。 如果您的成本在未来出乎意料地上升，则您的利润率将下降，您将不得不提高价格。

基于竞争对手的定价 (Competitor-Based Pricing)

As the name implies, this pricing strategy is influenced by your competitors. When you don’t know the initial value of your product, you usually turn to your competitors. You check their pricing tables so you can come up with yours. Well, I’ve done it for Cronhub, too.

顾名思义，这种定价策略受竞争对手的影响。 当您不知道产品的初始价值时，通常会求助于竞争对手。 您可以查看他们的价格表，以便提出您的价格表。 好吧，我也为Cronhub做过。

If you’re launching a product in a new industry, it makes sense to check competitor pricing because you don’t want to go too high or too low. We’re always afraid of losing customers because of the big price difference from our competitors.

如果您要在新行业中推出产品，那么检查竞争对手的价格是很有意义的，因为您不想太高或太低。 由于与竞争对手的价格相差悬殊，我们始终害怕失去客户。

This pricing strategy is simple and less prone to be wrong. You can probably spend an hour or so researching competitors and come up with a pricing table that is similar to your competitors. This way your future customers won’t think that your product is too expensive or too cheap.

这种定价策略很简单，不太容易出错。 您可能需要花一个小时左右的时间来研究竞争对手，并得出与您的竞争对手相似的价格表。 这样，您的未来客户就不会认为您的产品太贵或太便宜。

The one downside I see for this model is that you don’t want to be guided by your competitors from day one. You want your product to have its own personality, and it should be reflected in the pricing as well. Use competitor pricing as an inspiration and benchmark, but not your guiding strategy. For me, I see this strategy mostly used in combination with other pricing models.

我看到的这种模式的一个缺点是，您从一开始就不想受到竞争对手的指导。 您希望您的产品具有自己的个性，并且价格中也应体现出来。 使用竞争对手的价格作为灵感和基准，而不是您的指导策略。 对我来说，我看到这种策略通常与其他定价模型结合使用。

基于价值的定价 (Value-based pricing)

This strategy is also called customer-based strategy and is solely based on your customer surveys and research. You want to know how much your customers are willing to pay for your product, and the only way to do so is to go and talk to them. Most companies use in-product surveys to collect this data.

此策略也称为基于客户的策略，仅基于您的客户调查和研究。 您想知道客户愿意为您的产品支付多少钱，而这样做的唯一方法就是去与他们交谈。 大多数公司使用产品内调查来收集此数据。

There are many other benefits with this strategy, too. You get to know your customers and their needs, which helps you to build the best product. I think that by following this strategy, you’re most likely to come up with a better pricing table.

此策略还有许多其他好处。 您会了解您的客户及其需求，这有助于您构建最佳产品。 我认为，按照这种策略，您最有可能提出更好的定价表。

However, this model can only be applied after some initial iterations when you have a decent customer base. That’s why I believe that this model should be used as part of the last pricing iterations on your pricing table. It doesn’t mean that you should not talk to your customers from early days. Just set a goal for yourself that you eventually want to use this strategy to decide your pricing table.

但是，只有在拥有良好客户基础的情况下，才能在某些初始迭代之后应用此模型。 这就是为什么我认为该模型应该用作定价表上最后一次定价迭代的一部分的原因。 这并不意味着您不应该在早期就与客户交流。 只是为自己设定一个目标，即您最终想使用此策略来确定定价表。

You may want to re-apply this strategy often, because your customer base and the market needs keep changing.

您可能希望经常重新应用此策略，因为您的客户群和市场需求不断变化。

将您的客户分为几类 (Break down your customers into groups)

I strongly believe that breaking down your user base into groups is not only important for building a better product, but also for modeling your pricing. When you start thinking about pricing, you naturally measure it with only one dimension using just a single variable (like I used only the monitor count as a pricing measure for Cronhub).

我坚信将您的用户群分成几组不仅对构建更好的产品很重要，而且对定价模型也很重要。 当您开始考虑定价时，您自然会只使用一个变量就仅用一个维度对其进行度量(就像我仅将监视器计数用作Cronhub的定价度量)。

However, you want to add another dimension based on your customer groups. There is a term called “Pricing Axes” which I first heard from Joel Gascoigne in our company retreat this year in Singapore. These axes represent variables that you can use to better model your pricing. For instance, Cronhub has two pricing axes now after launching the team plan: the number of monitors and the team member count.

但是，您想根据客户群添加另一个维度。 我今年在新加坡的公司务虚会上首次听到乔尔·加斯科因 ( Joel Gascoigne)的话 ，有一个术语叫做“定价轴”。 这些轴表示可以用来更好地对定价进行建模的变量。 例如，启动团队计划后，Cronhub现在有两个定价轴：监视器数量和团队成员人数。

Breaking down my customers into groups helped me come up with the second axis for Cronhub. I have divided my potential customers into two groups, solo developers, and developer teams. It naturally makes sense that there should be different pricing for each of these groups, because their needs are different. Following this strategy, I’ve created two pricing plans for the team depending on the number of team members they need.

将客户分为几类，帮助我提出了Cronhub的第二个原则。 我已将潜在客户分为两个组，即独立开发人员和开发人员团队。 这些群体中的每个群体应该有不同的定价，这是自然的道理，因为它们的需求是不同的。 按照这种策略，我根据团队所需的团队成员数量为其制定了两个定价计划。

Of course, you can add more axes along the way, and it depends on your product. I think keeping your pricing axes around 2 - 3 makes sense at least in the beginning. Adding more variables may confuse your users, and you don’t want that.

当然，您可以在此过程中添加更多轴，这取决于您的产品。 我认为至少在开始时将定价轴保持在2-3左右是有意义的。 添加更多变量可能会使您的用户感到困惑，而您不希望这样做。

将策略应用于Cronhub (Applying the strategies to Cronhub)

I want to also talk about how I’ve applied the above-mentioned pricing strategies for Cronhub and the pricing challenges I’ve faced when starting Cronhub.

我还想谈一谈我如何将上述定价策略应用于Cronhub，以及在启动Cronhub时遇到的定价挑战。

Cronhub is a product for developers. I knew that the developer market is not an easy one to be in, but it didn’t stop me starting something I’m very passionate about. I really enjoy hanging out with developers and getting to know them better. For me, what mattered most was to launch a product that would serve this market.

Cronhub是面向开发人员的产品。 我知道开发人员市场并不容易，但是这并没有阻止我开始我非常热衷的事情。 我非常喜欢与开发人员一起聚会，并更好地了解他们。 对我而言，最重要的是推出一种服务于该市场的产品。

Being a developer, I know how much developers love to use free tools. However, they’re also willing to pay for a product that provides significant value to their flow and productivity. I want Cronhub to be one of these tools. I launched Cronhub with only two plans, “Free” and “Developer ($7/month)”. I wanted to see whether this was something other developers would pay for or not.

作为一名开发人员，我知道有多少开发人员喜欢使用免费工具。 但是，他们也愿意为能为其流量和生产率提供可观价值的产品付费。 我希望Cronhub成为这些工具之一。 我启动Cronhub时只有两个计划，“免费”和“开发人员(每月7美元)”。 我想看看这是否是其他开发人员会付钱的东西。

My very first pricing model was mostly a symbolic strategy to validate my idea. I didn’t spend much time thinking about the pricing plan and followed Cost-Plus pricing strategy to use the monitor count as a divider between the free and the paid plan. In the first month, I got a couple of paid customers which made me revisit my pricing. That’s when I’ decided to invest a little bit of time to learn about this topic.

我的第一个定价模型主要是验证我的想法的象征性策略。 我没有花太多时间考虑定价计划，而是遵循“成本加成”定价策略将监视器数用作免费计划和付费计划之间的分配器。 在第一个月，我有几个付费客户，这使我重新考虑了价格。 那时我决定花一点时间来学习这个主题。

After two months of reading and seeking advice from product people, I’ve come up with these key learnings that I’ve applied to Cronhub.

经过两个月的阅读并征求产品人员的建议，我得出了我应用于Cronhub的这些关键知识。

免费计划中不要放弃太多东西 (Don’t give up too many things in the free plan)

We tend to give up too much in the free plan, especially in the beginning. It’s quite possible that your product doesn’t offer any free plan. But for Cronhub, I wanted to use this channel as a way to acquire customers. Limit the free plan to the minimum.

我们倾向于在免费计划中放弃太多，尤其是在开始时。 您的产品很可能不提供任何免费计划。 但是对于Cronhub，我想使用此渠道来获取客户。 将免费计划限制到最小。

了解您的客户群 (Know your customer groups)

Knowing your customers is important, because it helps you understand how much they can afford to pay for your product. Cronhub’s free and developer plans are intended only for solo developers who have projects on the side.

了解您的客户很重要，因为它可以帮助您了解他们有能力为您的产品支付多少费用。 Cronhub的免费和开发人员计划仅适用于侧边有项目的单独开发人员。

I now also have two team plans: “Startup $19/month” and “Business $49/month,” and they are intended for engineering teams. Engineering teams should collaborate together, so the team support is necessary. Team sizes are different and that’s why I’ve priced these plans by the number of team members.

我现在还有两个团队计划：“启动每月19美元”和“业务每月49美元”，它们是针对工程团队的。 工程团队应该一起协作，因此团队支持是必要的。 团队规模是不同的，这就是为什么我根据团队成员的数量为这些计划定价。

考虑一下您的转化流程 (Think about your conversion flow)

Picturing the customer conversion flow in your head is really helpful in understanding how pricing may work, and that’s why I’ve decided to offer a free plan.

描绘出您脑海中的客户转化流程，对于理解定价的工作原理确实很有帮助，这就是为什么我决定提供免费计划的原因。

I imagine the flow like this: a developer signs up for the free plan to use it for their personal projects. If they like my product very much, the chances are high that they will also promote my product within their company. It’s the word-of-mouth effect. Now someone from their company signs up to try the team plan, and there you have your potential lead who is very likely to become a customer.

我想像这样的流程：开发人员签署了免费计划，将其用于个人项目。 如果他们非常喜欢我的产品，那么他们也将在公司内部推广我的产品的机会很高。 这是口碑效应。 现在，来自其公司的某人签约尝试团队计划，然后您就有了可能成为客户的潜在领导。

您的价格可能太便宜了 (Your pricing is probably too cheap)

Don’t be afraid to raise your prices. We tend to undervalue our product, because we are afraid that no one will pay if it’s expensive. This is true especially for people who don’t have experience with pricing.

不要害怕提高价格。 我们倾向于低估我们的产品，因为我们担心如果价格昂贵，没人会付钱。 对于没有定价经验的人尤其如此。

Unfortunately, pricing your project very cheap may discredit the value your product provides. It can make people question the quality of your product. That’s why you want to find the sweet spot where it’s not cheap and also not expensive.

不幸的是，以非常低廉的价格为您的项目定价可能会破坏产品所提供的价值。 它会使人们质疑您的产品质量。 这就是为什么您想找到既便宜又不贵的最佳地点 。

定价会影响您的长期生产力 (Pricing will affect your long-term productivity)

If you’re a single person team, then you probably do the product support as well. Higher paying customers tend to create fewer support requests compared to the customers who have signed up for the lowest pricing plan.

如果您是一个单人团队，那么您也可能会提供产品支持。 与已签署最低价格计划的客户相比，收入较高的客户倾向于创建更少的支持请求。

Think about your time and how you want to spend it. If you’re planning to stay a one-person team, then this will make a huge difference.

考虑一下您的时间以及如何度过。 如果您打算保留一个人的团队，那么这将有很大的不同。

For Cronhub, eventually, I’m thinking I’ll only have two plans: a free plan and a business plan. The free plan will be for developers and the business plan for small and medium-sized engineering teams. Instead of having many low paying customers (and spending many hours answering support questions), I would prefer having a small number of high paying customers (and enjoy building a product).

最终，对于Cronhub，我想我只有两个计划：免费计划和商业计划。 免费计划适用于开发人员，而业务计划适用于中小型工程团队。 我宁愿拥有少量高薪客户(并喜欢制作产品)，而不是拥有许多低薪客户(花很多时间来回答支持问题)。

Thank you very much for your time. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and learned a little bit about side-project pricing. Writing is what I enjoy doing most after programming, and I hope to write more articles in the future. If you don’t want to miss any of my writings, follow me on Twitter. Feel free to send me a message or ask questions below!

非常感谢您的宝贵时间。 我希望您喜欢阅读本文并学到一些有关副项目定价的知识。 编程是编程后我最喜欢做的事情，希望以后能写更多的文章。 如果您不想错过我的任何著作，请在Twitter上关注我。 请随时给我发消息或在下面问问题！

Finally, If you’re a developer or part of a developer team that uses cron jobs, you can try Cronhub for free to monitor all your cron jobs in a beautiful dashboard.

最后，如果您是使用cron作业的开发人员或开发人员团队的成员，则可以免费试用Cronhub ，以在漂亮的仪表板上监视所有cron作业。

Originally published at blog.cronhub.io on May 27, 2018.

最初于2018年5月27日发布在blog.cronhub.io 。

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-price-your-side-project-f4e0f86dbfde/

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