I think this is a great idea, and it would be a no-brainer for me to pay if you only charged when you save me money.<p>I think customers (thinking of myself) have a huge aversion to paying money for nothing, in the event there isn't a better deal. If there's any chance I am going to pay for a service that returns no value, I am going to be hesitant.<p>Part of the problem is I didn't see any "success rate" metric, so I don't know what my chances are of saving money. If you knew it was almost 100% given enough days before the trip - then you could even give someone a money-back guarantee, which would kill the "pay money for nothing" objection as well.
You should definitely charge a percentage of the amount saved instead of a flat, non-refundable fee. You have created value here but very few people are going to use it if they have to risk $20 up front. I have killed a few of my own otherwise viable projects with unnecessarily restrictive revenue models, and that's the worst kind of death because it is entirely preventable.
I, too, will gladly pay $20 success fee, but not if you cannot find me a better deal.<p>On a separate question, where do you get the hotel inventory and pricing data from? I only ask because you had mentioned that this was a small side project. Which makes me think there are structured data sources for hotel data.<p>Thanks.
Thanks guys for all the feedback. Didn't want associate this with a specific comment but here is what we're hearing:<p>* Look at how to make this a risk free opportunity, money back guarantee, etc.<p>* Play with pricing, percentage of amount saved vs flat fee. Our biggest worry with that is trying to get someone to pay later on. As right now we aren't rebooking it, if we sent you an alert "go rebook on XYZ.com and save 500 bucks" we have no way to force you to rebook or verify if you actually got the deal we found.<p>We'll definitely be taking in all the feedback here and hopefully trying to work it all into the next version of this.
$20 to see if you might be able to save me money? You are joking. No way I'd pay this unless I knew you could do it, and in 30 seconds of looking you didn't convince me. Shut the front door.
Too many exclamation points in the copy, especially when apologizing for taking $20 from a customer without promising they'll get anything out of it.
The only way I would pay a fixed price without guarantee of savings is if it were pitched as a monthly or yearly subscription, and then I just run all my reservations through it.
You may want to look at how CruiseFish.net does their revenue model... They have an up-front fee, but it is very low relative to the price for the tracked cruise reservation. That takes a lot of the sting out of the 'You have to pay up front and you might not actually hear about a lower rate'. They also use their forum to provide 'evidence' that their site works for its users.
This is a small side project I made after finding I could make hotel reservations far in advanced and then get price matches or resubmit new ones if the prices fell. Figured there must be others who would like to save money on their reservations and threw together this MVP.<p>Let me know what you think and any feedback you have.
This is an awesome concept- I always find myself trying to get the best deals. The biggest issue for me is the upfront fee. A percentage of final savings would be far preferable.