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Finally, smugmug renewals
onethumb
Administrators Posts: 1,269 Major grins
Well, we finally did it. smugmug renewal emails are winging their way to anyone who signed up before January 9, 2004.
It's sort of embarassing that it took us this long (a year late!) to get done, but I thought the curious might like to know why. So here's the real, honest answer, and it comes in two parts:
Part One: I was scared. I take my customers' personal information very seriously, especially when it comes to their money. Anything that involves billing credit cards at smugmug is something I endlessly test, review, and test again. Messing up with someone's finances isn't something I ever want to do, certainly not on a large scale. So I delayed and delayed the release until I was completely 100% sure that nothing major would blow up. (Let's hope I was right!)
Part Two: We decided early on that customer satisfaction was a higher priority than making every last cent. Our customers have asked for a lot of new features in the last 2.5 years, and I think we've delivered. We have limited resources, so we had to choose what to work on. We got so focused on improving our features, improving our support, and communicating with our customers that we put actually billing them aside for more than a year. I hope it's paid off.
Thanks for bearing with us and being the best customers we could have possibly imagined.
Don
It's sort of embarassing that it took us this long (a year late!) to get done, but I thought the curious might like to know why. So here's the real, honest answer, and it comes in two parts:
Part One: I was scared. I take my customers' personal information very seriously, especially when it comes to their money. Anything that involves billing credit cards at smugmug is something I endlessly test, review, and test again. Messing up with someone's finances isn't something I ever want to do, certainly not on a large scale. So I delayed and delayed the release until I was completely 100% sure that nothing major would blow up. (Let's hope I was right!)
Part Two: We decided early on that customer satisfaction was a higher priority than making every last cent. Our customers have asked for a lot of new features in the last 2.5 years, and I think we've delivered. We have limited resources, so we had to choose what to work on. We got so focused on improving our features, improving our support, and communicating with our customers that we put actually billing them aside for more than a year. I hope it's paid off.
Thanks for bearing with us and being the best customers we could have possibly imagined.
Don
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Comments
After reading "If you'd like to renew your account for another year, you can ignore this email and your ....."
I so wanted hit reply to that email and type in "ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore"
You're all doing a great job, keep it up.
Al
My Website index | My Blog
You have clients who haven't paid you for the service for over a year? This could be one of the reasons you have limited resources. Not to make too big of a deal out of this, but personally I hope you guys are good business people who know that in order to stay in business you need to collect more than you spend. I for one don't want to be uploading a ton of photos and sending links out to others only to find out someday the site no longer exist because the owners have no money.
One other comment or word of advise, if you have something of value to offer you needn't apologize for making people pay for it. I mean seriously, you guys think it's worth the modest fee you charge people don't you?
Interesting point. Smugmug is great and destined to be even greater. You guys are superb, and Baldy runs a first class operation.
One suggestion might be to offer upgrades to current users with a more in depth explantion of the advantages offered with higher grade accounts.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Ian
Perhaps you're not familiar with the owner of the site, Baldy? Everyone who knows him knows that he's a brilliant businessman and triathlete who believes that failure is not an option.
Baldy's on the left and Mrs. Baldy is on the right.
Chris MacAskill was a founder and the CEO of Fatbrain.com (because great minds think a lot), one of the Internet's first (and few) success stories. It grew from the family garage to a $100 million public company before being purchased by Barnes & Noble. He holds an M.S. from Stanford University.
And then there's OneThumb...
There now. Don't you feel more comfortable?
"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."-Hunter S.Thompson
Not kidding at all.
My post wasn't an apology, but more an explanation of why we're so late. We have a very open-door policy at smugmug, and we like to keep our customers informed, especially if there's the potential for misunderstanding.
We have great track records in both online and non-online businesses, so yeah, we know what we're doing. Another way to look at it is: The 2nd year sales dwarfed the 1st year sales by such a huge margin, it made financial sense to focus on that growth temporarily rather than try to milk the much smaller sales of the first year.
We're not going anywhere, your photos are very safe barring some improbable disaster (alien invasion, next ice age, etc). Without going into too much detail, smugmug's growing fast, is profitable, and doing very well. Best of all, though, we're having fun and we have ecstatic customers.
Don
Keep it going and don't stop having fun on my account! I just want you guys to fulfill your dreams and my thought is that is a bit easier when people pay you for your hard work and great ideas.
I have been a smugmugger for about 2 months and love it. Everyone I send a link to loves it. I chose smugmug after doing a trial with Image Event, and I paid for the professional version even though I am not a professional. So, I am a very happy customer.
I am glad to hear about the advanced degrees and past success as surely you guys didn't get to where you are today using bad judgement.
Thanks for the replies everyone!