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Comment by nonzeroday | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. User establishes their baseline of a Non Zero Day (5000 steps) per day. If failed to achieve the goal they pay us money.

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I can't imagine long term sustainability for any business that depends on their users failing.

I once heard a really smart marketer say that self-help is the best niche to target because perfection is impossible, so once you get a customer, you have one for life.

In reality though, any app or service that the business interests are misaligned with the users best interests, can't keep users forever. The users who benefit wont make you any money and the ones that fail will resent the service and leave.

While I see where you are coming from, this is an extremely shortsighted monetization strategy.

A better strategy would be gentle push reminders to not let the day go to waste, tools to make it easier to see progress, and monetize with premium add-ons.

There is a major chain of fitness gyms that charges you more the less often you come in.

I don't know the specifics or their attrition rates, but the barrier of leaving an app seems much simpler than canceling a gym membership and finding a new one. Plus, the value proposition of a gym is independent to their pricing gimmicks. Odds are, the gym member is planning on using a gym, and many factors go into the choice (location, hours, environment, etc...)

For me, just the thought of leaving my gym creates all sorts of anxiety of dealing with jumping through hoops to cancel and finding a good replacement gym. Just not worth the hassle.

Bottom line, a gym that charges more for using the gym less is a not business thats model entirely depends on their members failing. It is just helped along by the reality. (Its actually quite clever because no one signs up to a join without plans to go regularly,and once you sign up, cancelling is a huge pain.)

Here's our (Beeminder's) answer to that astute objection: http://blog.beeminder.com/perverse/

In short, our interests and our customers' interests turn out to be highly aligned, even though it seems prima facie perverse.

Another way of arguing the point: a manufacturer of physical goods has the perverse incentive to make pieces of crap that last just long enough to make it out of the store. Ok, maybe that's commonplace enough that I'm totally not helping my case with that analogy! :)

Ok, better argument! Beeminder has been around 4.5 years which probably wouldn't happen if we were myopically making people fail to get their money.

It seems to me that Beeminder has put a ton of thought and effort into the experience that triggers a penalty with the user always in control. I see this as much more flexible than the non zero day app. It also appears that beeminder has a freemium offering and this payment/penalty is a feature more than the whole point. In other words, I see the charges on beeminder to be similar to paying for extra lives on candy crush as a one time in app purchase... as opposed to model that the pricing gimmick is basically the core offering.

Edit: cool app btw, gonna give it a try :)

Hooray! New user! :) Our biggest issue right now is that we've gone so far down the rabbit hole with our hardcore superfans that it's a little overwhelming for newbees (as we call them; our 2nd biggest issue is our obsession with bee puns).

So we'd be super grateful to hear about things you find confusing/frustrating/offputting as you try setting up some goals.

Thanks again for trying us out!

I am a very happy beeminder, but for me it wouldn't be nearly as useful if money wasn't on the line - I have now been more than a year in the inn in Habitica for example - even though I never have had to actually pay them money.

So in short, you are monetizing procrastination?

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