Are you struggling to move from a freemium business model to a paid model?

Recently, I received an email from a company. The email demonstrated the best job I have ever seen a company do with moving from a freemium model to a paid model. 

Let me explain.

I received an email from Otter.ai that says, “Hello Kathleen. Given a spike in demand for our service with the launch of live video meeting notes, we need to prioritize resources for our paying customers.” 

That’s a great lead-in because it prepares the reader that there’s something coming.

“We made a change recently to Otter’s basic free plan that still gives you up to 600 minutes of transcription each month, but will now limit each transcription to 40 minutes and up to three imports per account. We understand that this is a tough time for many and we are offering a variety of options to access our premium and team plans for free. Use this code for one month of free Otter premium for unlimited imports, custom vocabulary, Dropbox integration, and more.” 

The reason this works so well is they are transparent about why they have to increase the price. They’re talking about how you can still have a very generous plan for free as long as you don’t need more than 40 minutes of transcription. 

So I immediately clicked that blue button and found out that premium was $10 a month. 

I use Otter for a lot of things, mostly to transcribe my long brainstorming client meetings where we get a lot done. 

We don’t take very many notes because a lot of times brainstorming just happens on the fly and it’s harder to stop and take notes. It interrupts the flow, and so Otter does a really good job taking the audio and turning it into text. My clients and I don’t miss anything, and Otter’s transcription is so good that even when they screw up, you just click play and you can easily change the transcription. 

I chose to sign up for a premium account, which includes six thousand minutes per month, even though that is way more than I need. I’ve never gotten to 600 minutes per month, but it started to help my writing process so I’m not stuck on a blank page. 

Instead, I’m working through some thoughts and ideas out loud, and then the transcription comes in.

Using the transcript helps to create content. I can look at it and copy it down in a second draft format and it really works well to simplify my content creation process.

So, if you’re considering moving from a freemium business model to a paid model, be transparent with your customers. Offer value and show your customers how using your premium product will simplify their lives.