I just recently launched my free Twitter bookmarklet app called BigTweet http://bigtweet.com and got my first review http://bit.ly/TiPs<p>I'm interested in pursuing the freemium model and would like to begin working on some "pro" subscription based features for interfacing to Twitter. Should I let BigTweet grow on its own and work on the advanced features, or spend most of my time enhancing the free version and develop some viral components?<p>How much time do you spend on developing versus promoting?
Start work on your next project, or apply for a better job with this as a portfolio piece. To be honest, it's probably much easier to get a 5-10k raise somewhere else with this extra experience than it will be to get people to pay.
You need a dedicated audience first before you can begin charging money. You need to just build the app and make this app something the users come to rely on. Twitter is a service designed on simplicity of use and so it isn't exactly prohibitive for them to just not use your app. Charging money might see a few conversions but on the whole, you're not ready for it.
improve the application itself, first. before you start charging for anything, it at the very least needs some polish.<p>as for development vs promotion, most of the work you'll do to promote your app will probably not generate much attention. figure out what will be most effective and go do that. you're on your own right now, so you don't want to waste a lot of time on things that may or may not work out.
As I improve the application, would it be reasonable to mark some features as "pro", but not charge for them yet? The idea is to let users know that these particular features are free for now, but will eventually require a subscription.<p>I suppose I could include a checkbox to "enable" pro features rather than label them directly.
I'd agree with some folks that there is no business here.<p>If you envision a business here, I'd write down exactly what you're going to build that people will pay for, then ask 50 Twitter users if they'd pay for it. If 10% say yes (and you believe them). If not, punt.
Like others have said, the site looks horrible. My first reaction was to turn and run. After trying it out, I actually found it pretty cool. It's similar to tr.im's bookmarklet.<p>I'd spend the majority repeating the cycle of adding/refining features and getting feedback from users. Eventually you'll could evolve the project into something new & innovative.<p>Don't spend too much time on promotion, but do a few things to get the word out. Do you have a business twitter account & blog? Use it to announce new features.
I have been using bit.ly and this is cool, but automatically when i hit bigtweet bookmark thing I think it should create the short URL and plop it right into the twitter text box.<p>Im lazy I want to click bookmarklet toolbar thing..see the short URL in twitter box, type my twitter around it and hit submit.<p>Overall nice job..something I will use and Im sure others will too.