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Comment by maukdaddy | Hacker News Reader

I was going to make my own reply, but as usual patio has succinctly made the point. So I'll give some examples of what $15 really means.

- I spent $18 a month on Netflix without a second thought.

- $15 is one less meal per month at Chipotle (for 2 people). I'd gladly give that up for a decent service

- Average cable bill in the US is probably $80+. Give that up and you not only waste less time, but can afford at least 6 of these services.

- Once you're out of college, you will GLADLY give up $15/month to save time. Time with family is precious and anytime I can spend a small amount of money to gain more time I consider it a win-win.

- Most middle class families probably spend more than $15/week at Starbucks alone.

- From a business standpoint, $2/user/month is simply not sustainable.

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Parking in Chicago next to my office costs $25/day. (The train costs $5/day for me, but I'm unusually close to it).

I assume you're talking about Metra? The el costs me $4.50/day or ~$80/month for unlimited. Although that's extraordinarily cheap compared to parking!

The blue line and a two transfers. I'm a short walk from the green line, but I I'll pay to avoid riding it.

The green line is that bad? (I wouldn't know... I always take the blue in from Oak Park.)

(a) Long time no hear!

(b) Yes.

Continued: the green trains are older, they have no airflow, they're slower, they're consistently much more crowded, and they're rowdier.

The #91 bus down Austin is so much better than the green that it's a no brainer just to bus down to the blue line station. It helps that the train stops right outside our office, though.

average cable bill in the US in 2008 was $71. http://www.multichannel.com/article/196364-Study_Average_Cab...

increases since then seems to be 5-7% per year.

good guess!

I pay $25/year for Flickr Pro, which is almost exactly $2/user/month.

But are they profitable or are they expecting to make it up some other way?

Just because a discounted price for a year up front works out to be a low amount per month, doesn't mean it's worth little to the business charging it. Depending on the business, it might actually turn out to be $4 a month if that user were prone to cancelling after 6 months. Additionally, there is alot to say about money in the bank now to fund development now.

I would be happy if our 20k users all payed for a year up front discounted by 30%, rather than a full-price for every month. Why? Because we don't have much income now, and getting the money now would allow us to expand much faster, so the next 20k users would signup quicker, and would not have the big discount for an entire year up front.

Also, the overheads (credit card fees etc) are often lower on $25/year billed yearly then $2/month billed monthly (once you are at Yahoo's scale this might not apply, but for a lot of businesses there is a flat fee for processing credit cards below a certain threshold).

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