Pricing suggestions - part 2

Along pricing, I would also like to mention a few words about the templates marketplace, as well as the upcoming plug-ins one - because, at the end of the day, those costs add up to the total one and therefore they are a component of pricing, even if not an immediately visible one.

My suggestion is for Webflow to completely give up on the templates/ designer/ plug-ins marketplaces as potential revenue streams. Such marketplaces are a completely different game from the visual coding tool as a product:

a) marketplaces are outside the focus of the visual coding tool - the more time and money you spend on them, the less remaining for improving Webflow. If Webflow was free, then they could have been a legitimate income model. But currently it’s the other way around - Webflow is the product you charge for. If you pursue making money on both you’d lose focus and the victim would be your value proposition - that is the visual coding tool.

b) online marketplaces are an all or nothing game. You hardly have place for more then two significant marketplaces under the sun. The simple reason for this is that the more variety a markeplaces offers, the more people it attracts, and then the more people it attracts, the more chance for greater variety… How many significant competitors of Themeforest do you know? :slight_smile: How many significant competitors of Upwork do you know? :slight_smile: Developing marketplaces is something huge.

I can guess that you would counter me by saying that you are building marketplaces for the Webflow community itself, so you do not have any competitors currently. But then, you are not taking advantage of the advertising effect. If you have all Webflow templates published on Themeforest, instead of having them on HTML5 responsive website templates | Webflow, you automatically win exposure to people who are not converted Webflow users and this is just great. But then, you would not be able to control quality of template submissions? No problem with that, you could simply make a certification program, and for a fee certify themes as Webflow approved. Then you’d have both unapproved and Webflow approved themes on Themeforest. Let the client decide.

c) extra revenie is still possible within the focus of the visual coding tool - continuing from above, you might say now, but what about the potential revenue lost by not making money on template sales? Well, let me repeat, you core product is the visual coding tool and the more you improve it, the more money you’d make on subscription plans. Let the themes be an advertising channel (which is money saved on advertising) - do not charge anything except the certification fee, let designers sell them in whatever way they find best. Plenty of good themes is good advertising, do not try to extract money from that. There are ways to make extra money on the visual coding tool alone. What about feature development on demand for example? You could make “a Kickstarter inside Webflow” - e.g. let users sponsor thefaster development of features of their choice or something like that. Or develop a form-building service (forum.webflow.com/t/business-idea-for-webflow-form-solution-builder/32212).

A post was merged into an existing topic: Pricing suggestions - part 1