I wrote a private message to Alice MacGillivray to enquire as to her whereabouts and she responded with a message that contained advice for me that I wanted to share with you. She agreed.

She said:

Life is a bit too mentally cluttered to think out a public post right now. This is a busy week for consulting and I'm getting ready for my dissertation defence. Here are some of the things I've been thinking about on various levels.

* competitors was written up because early on that was a topic for us to work on
* I'm not sure who is a competitor, but I thought concrete examples from various people might help us carve out a commonly understood niche. "Yes, I like periodical X, but they are more Y than we plan to be" etc. That said, we don't want conversations to get too scattered, so I pulled back on that one.
* I'm not sure how much faith I put in 100. Dig around, and you can find all sorts of justifiable magic formulae: 100, 50, 15 and 150 come to mind!
* Don't lose confidence; don't let perceived or real criticisms or lapses in energy drag you down. Remember we are all busy people with very different talents.
* I have some strengths and I have LOTS of gaps for this stage of the project. I do think about trends, quality, effectiveness, relevance, leadership etc. To be honest I have less interest and far less expertise with things like market share, business models, price points etc. etc.
* Think about the complexity-oriented approach of try-and-see. Where is this good for your project; where is it too risky. Think about the many many things (Twitter being a recent one) that were tried off the edge of a desk and took off. And about the many many things (the book "Gone with the Wind" being one) that were rejected over and over and over, then exploded with success.
* Share anything from this that you want to. I know I've had other thoughts but they've escaped me for the moment and I need to get ready for a teleconference

Would anyone like to add to, take away from that?

URGENT: Pricing Smart People

Hi everyone. I've written an email to Boris Jaeger this morning that both of us think should be shared with the work group, partly for transparency and partly to seek your advice. Here's the critical email"

Hi Boris.

Thanks for raising the issue of price, Boris.

Michele and I were just talking about the price. It started when she proposed $3.95 for a back issue. I pointed out that we were using a round figure for a subscription -- $20. She favors $19.95 instead. Established online magazines charge as high as $39.95 and occasionally more, which I certainly think we are worth.

I've been leaning toward a low introductory price because Michele keeps saying people won't pay for 'information' on the Internet; too much is free. Yes, people could find much of the content (or similar content) on the Internet, but would they? No. And if they did search out similar content online, it would take them as long as it has taken me. As for competition, we have none. Smart People is totally unique. And, we have a huge potential market since almost everyone is a 'smart people'.

But will people see that and recognize the value of Smart People as an aggregator and thought leader? I worry.

Still, there's a good argument that if people don't want to pay, they don't want to pay at any price. And common pricing strategy works on cost of production. And so you are right to bring up the cost issue. That's coming clear right now and I will, as you suggest, share that with everybody (transparency).

Of course, we need to get this resolved before April 15 when we go live. I am attaching the detailed financial facts. These are monthly costs. I have spread your site development fee over 10 issues.

As you can see, at $20 we will need to reach 5,720 subscribers to break even. At $40 that drops to 2,860.

There is no guessing how many subscribers we will have in a year. Smart People could catch on like wildfire, or it could be slow going. Conservatively, I would have to admit that 5,720 subscribers in a year is unrealistic. The 2,860 is more realistic. The wildfire scenario would drive our revenue off the charts and then we could start thinking about a print version of the magazine! So, which vision do we follow in setting the price?

I'm going to share this email with the work group and see if anyone has useful knowledge or opinions. Thanks for forcing me into reality. Darn you

Jerry

P.S. All the staff fees are based on usual and customary charges. My fee is the same as I was paid at Inside Knowledge magazine (I was part time).