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[scottobear]

Woo... good news for developers and beta-testers of There

There's Future Pricing plan

From Tom's There forum post

Note: Page is constantly updated, except for when I’m on a break.

Choose post to read:

• The pricing plan letter
  • List Pricing Plan
  • Optional Premium Services
  • Beta Tester Pricing Plan
  • Charter Member Plan
  • Friends and Family Plan
  • Referral Plan
  • So, what do you think?
• The PayPal payment plan
• FAQ-style questions, part 1

Or just read the actual long, untouched Thread from the official forums here: "What will There cost?" forum thread

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Author Topic
Tom
09/09/03 09:00 AM

Pricing details - 1 Reply
Dear Public Beta Tester of There,

As promised, I’m writing to explain how much There will cost, both for you (our Public Beta Testers), and for everyone who joins after the end of the beta test (which will be ending on October 12 at 9:00p PST, as explained below, assuming everything stays on schedule). This post is pretty long, but there is a lot of information to convey (we assume that most people who use Forums are interested in more detail rather than less. ‘smile).

First of all, I wanted to sincerely thank everyone who has posted opinions about pricing. One of the reasons we’ve delayed announcing pricing is that we are genuinely interested to hear how members want to pay for There, and what they think the experience is “worth.” I hope that many of you will recognize that your suggestions have been actively incorporated into the plans.

The other reason we’ve delayed this announcement is that we wanted to have every last detail figured out, and all the sign-up systems fully ready. However, since some of the pricing details inadvertently “leaked out”, we’ve decided to announce the whole plan now. As you’ll read, that means we haven’t nailed down every last detail, and in fact hope you can help us do that by asking great questions. We also don’t have all the systems ready to sign people up, but we have come up with simple “work-arounds”, and we’ll be rolling out the sign-up pages shortly.

So here goes…

Based on everything we’ve heard from our beta testers, we have come up with a set of pricing plans that we hope are fair and easy to understand. We’ll be posting web pages that hopefully make it all crystal clear, but since this is Forums, we’re limited to text. In a way, though, that’s good, since we have more space to explain things.

Because it’s a long post, we’ve divided it into 6 sections:

• List Pricing Plan: the “normal” price for There (beginning sometime next year)
• Optional Premium Services: special options and features (beginning in mid-October)
• Beta Tester Pricing Plan: the special offer for YOU, our Beta members (and your friends!) (available now)
• Charter Member Plan: what early adopters of There will pay (beginning in mid-October)
• Friends and Family Plan: a way for small groups to join and save money (beginning in mid-October)
• Referral Plan: how you get your friends in There, and what you’ll get in return (available now).

Each of these is explained below.

LIST PRICING PLAN

Let me start by explaining our “List Price.” We have based all of our pricing plans on the List Price, which we will start using sometime next year. The software CD (or download) will be free, and can be freely copied. We are not currently planning a retail box. Prospective members will get a free 14-day trial to check There out. They won’t get any initial Therebucks, but they will be able to try out many things for free by using “lending machines”, which are launching in the Limited Access version.

At any time during the free trial, people can join There by signing up for a monthly plan or a discounted yearly plan:

• The monthly plan involves a one-time registration fee of US$29.95, and a monthly fee of US$9.95. Therebucks will be included with the one-time fee and the monthly fee. The exact amount of Therebucks has not been defined.
• The yearly plan involves a one-time charge of $99.95, which includes a to-be-defined amount of Therebucks upfront. No additional Therebucks purchases are required.
• As we’ll explain in detail below, “Charter Members” get about half off this List Price, and Beta Testers get an even better deal. Read on!

OPTIONAL PREMIUM SERVICES

This section explains the pricing for the Explorer Pack, Music Service, and Voice Service. As a beta member, you will get all of these Premium Services for free because you have come to enjoy these services and expect them as a part of the “basic” There experience. Going forward, though, we have decided that we should price them separately. This helps keep the overall There price point low, and lets those members who value these services pay for them. It’s really that simple. Here are the details:

• Explorer Pack. After October 12 at 9:00p PST (when the beta test ends), new prospects coming to There will have the option to buy a set of four powerful features that make it even easier to explore There: favorite places, compass, summon, and map links. As a beta tester member, you have already tried these features, and know how great they are. You will get them for free! If the non-beta member wants them, s/he pays a one-time fee of US$10. We didn’t have these features originally, and people had a great time without them. We then rolled them out to universal acclaim. As a start-up, we think it’s fair to find ways to generate revenue, provided that we deliver value. In this case, given the overall low price of There, we are hopeful that many new members will sign up for the Explorer Pack.
• Music. If you are connected by broadband, it’s pretty cool to listen to music together with others in There. That said, some people don’t like the feature. We’ve therefore made it optional by asking for a one-time US$5 activation fee. Paying this fee lets you hear music in There (but remember, Beta Testers get this feature for free). If you want to control the selection of music, you can buy your own jukebox/stereo/boombox, which will be priced in Therebucks.
• Voice. Some people really like voice; others don’t. Voice also incurs bandwidth costs for us in a way that music does not. We have therefore decided to charge a one-time US$10 activation fee, and a monthly charge of US$3.95. By paying this up-front and monthly fee, you get unlimited voice-over-IP calling, in three dimensions, anywhere on the planet Earth. We hope you’ll agree that voice is much better in the Limited Access version. Best of all, as a Beta tester, you get it for free – no activation fee and unlimited global calling!

We hope our rationale for offering premium services makes sense. We’re trying to make There as affordable as possible, while also letting members pick and choose what they want to pay for. We want There to be fun, and as inclusive as possible.

BETA TESTER PRICING PLAN

So how much do beta testers have to pay for There? Here’s the answer: a one-time payment of US$29.95, for a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP, including free Premium Services. Period. No monthly payments. No required Therebucks purchases. In other words, a massive discount from the List Price.

With this payment you get:

• Your avatar, everything you’ve purchased so far, all your skills, your clubs, etc.
• A free “Explorer Pack”
• Free music activation
• Free voice activation, and unlimited free voice usage

(Please remember that music and voice are broadband only. If you are currently on dial-up and upgrade to broadband later, just contact us and we’ll give you the services for free when you upgrade).

As a special thanks to our longer-term beta testers, we will be giving you a grant of 2,000 Therebucks for each month you have been a part of the public beta test. In other words, if you started with us in January, you’ll get a special “Thank you!” bonus of 18,000 Therebucks.

So that we can do capacity and business planning better, we really want to get you to sign up for the “Beta Tester Pricing Plan” as soon as possible. We are therefore offering a special “Signing Bonus” to you, depending on when you formally join (we’ll explain how to do this below):

• If you join between today and Tuesday, September 23 at 11:59p PST, you will receive a Signing Bonus of 20,000 Therebucks;
• If you join between September 24 at 12:01a PST and October 4 at 11:59p PST, you will receive a Signing Bonus of 5,000 Therebucks;
• If you join after October 5 at 12:01a and before October 12 at 9:00p PST, you’ll still get the great “lifetime” deal, including the premium services, but no Signing Bonus.
• If you join after October 12 at 9:01p PST, you will be able to enjoy the “Charter Member Plan” (explained below), but the Beta Testing Price will no longer be available. In other words, assuming we stay on schedule and don’t hit any nasty “speed bumps” (meaning the “Shakedown Cruise” of post-release bug-fixing was a success), the Public Beta test of There is scheduled to end on October 12 at 9:00p PST.

So to sum it all up, here’s what you get if you started beta testing in January and sign up today:

• You pay US$29.95 once, for a lifetime membership, including all Premium Services
• You get 18,000 Therebucks as a “Thank You!” bonus
• You get 20,000 Therebucks as a “Signing Bonus”

As you’ll read below, There will cost more to people who join after the beta program ends, depending on when they join and what features they want. But we wanted to really demonstrate how much we appreciate the time, energy, and patience our beta members have invested with us. In short, we want to “put our money where our mouth is” -- if you are a beta member, you only need to pay us a one-time fee of US$29.95 for a lifetime membership to There. To keep your account active, you need to spend at least 2 hours a month in There (if you’re going on vacation or are otherwise indisposed, contact us to make special arrangements).

So what do you do to get this?

To be honest, we hadn’t planned to start taking orders this week. But since we’re trying to be as responsive as possible to your questions about pricing, we’ve decided to “jump the gun” with this post. Since our online ordering pages are not yet live, you can sign up in a very simple way: send an email to SignMeUp@There.com. If you like, tell us to charge your credit card on file. If you haven’t given us your credit card yet, please email us your phone number and a good time to call, and we’ll call you back (including international numbers). Once you email, please give us a few days to acknowledge your email – since we’re announcing pricing earlier than we expected, our systems are not completely set up.

Finally, as is explained below (in the Referral Program section), you can also refer your friends to There before the beta test period is over, and they get this special price too! This is a BIG deal – your friends will get a super price, and you’ll earn Therebucks. Win-win.

We hope that the bottom line is clear – we really appreciate your energy, enthusiasm, and patience! Since talk is cheap, we decided to simply take the plunge and offer our beta testers a really good deal.

We hope you agree, and that you’ll email us at SignMeUp@there.com. There is really no reason to wait, since it’s a lifetime plan. In other words, you won’t be getting any “extra” free time by waiting. In fact, you’ll lose out on the Signing Bonus if you dawdle…

Now, read on for all the details about what everyone else is going to pay…

CHARTER MEMBER PLAN

As you may know, this week’s release of There is called “Limited Access”, since we won’t be open all the time, and since we’ll have a “velvet rope” in place (“velvet rope” means we will limit the number of people we invite each day in order to ensure everyone has a good experience). We expect to remain in “Limited Access” mode through the end of 2003 (though we are planning several major releases during that time!). Due to these restrictions (and since we expect to still have a few bugs), Charter Members pay about half of the Regular price. Specifically:

• The monthly plan consists of a US$19.95 one-time registration fee (which includes a 10,000 Therebuck bonus), and a minimum monthly purchase of US$4.95 worth of Therebucks. This means that we automatically sell you US$4.95 worth of Therebucks each month. It’s kind of like a country club where you have to spend so much per month in the restaurant, but you can order anything you like.
• The yearly plan consists of a one-time US$49.95 charge, which includes 20,000 Therebucks upfront. No additional Therebucks purchases are required.
• Members on either plan can order the Explorer Pack, Music Service, and Voice Service as explained above.

As you can see, the Charter Member Plan is about half the List Price. Monthly Charter Members save US$10 up-front, and US$5 per month. Yearly Charter Members save US$50! Plus, both types of members get to grab their avatar name early!

We’re not sure when we will shift from Charter Member Pricing to List Pricing. It will depend on lots of factors. In any case, prices are guaranteed. If members sign up as a Charter Member, they will continue to enjoy that price, even after we move to List Pricing.

FRIENDS AND FAMILY PLAN

Because it’s more fun when your friends and family are There too, we have created a special program: There Friends and Family. It works like this: the first member signs up normally, and then up to 5 people who agree to use the first person’s same credit card number can sign up and only pay a one-time registration fee. Here’s an example: Sue signs up as a Charter Member. She pays US$19.95 and gets 10,000 Therebucks. She also must agree to buy a minimum of US$4.95 worth of Therebucks a month (or she can buy the annual plan for US$49.95, and receive 20,000 Therebucks). Then, Sue can sign up to 5 friends/family members, each using Sue’s credit card, for a one-time registration fee of US$29.95 per friend/family member for a year of There. These friends/family members get 10,000 Therebucks each up-front, but are not required to purchase a minimum amount of Therebucks per month.

We won’t be offering the Friends and Family program to Beta members, since the one-time lifetime member offer is actually better, and since we won’t be ready to administer the Friends and Family program by then. That said, if you refer friends to There and they sign up before October 12 at 9:00p PST, they will also get the special Beta member price (which is a really good deal).

REFERAL PLAN

Since it’s more fun when you friends are in There, we’ve made it easy to refer them. It’s also a great way to earn Therebucks! Here’s how it works:

• When a beta member refers someone, that person is invited right away, without waiting in line behind the velvet rope.
• If you have referred someone a while ago (pre-PB3), you might have received an email that said “as soon as your friend’s account has been active for 90 days, we’ll take $10 off your next monthly statement.” This is exactly what will happen. If your friend becomes a paying member (of any kind), and is still a paying member in good standing 90 days after joining, we will credit your account with US$10.
• If you’ve referred someone since PB3 was launched (or plan to this week or later), here are the new rules. When you refer a friend, you receive 5,000 Therebucks when your friend signs up for any membership plan (including the beta plan), and an additional 10,000 Therebucks if your friend is still a member in good standing 60 days later. Do that math – this is a great way to earn Therebucks!

Here’s the best part. If you move fast and refer your friends starting this week, and they sign up before October 12 at 9:00p PST, your friends will get the special lifetime Beta price, AND you get the Therebucks for referring them! After this deadline, your friends will get the Charter Member price (still a great deal), and you’ll still get the Therebucks referral bonus.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Now you know how much There will cost! We hope you’re excited as we are! We really wanted to keep There affordable, and offer discounts for longer-term commitments. We also wanted to stay away from “subscriptions”, and instead simply require a minimum purchase of Therebucks. That way you are getting something for your money, and you can buy whatever you want. We also wanted to make it easy (and cheap) to get your friends and family in There with you. Finally, we wanted to show our beta members how much we appreciate their dedication and support, and give our pioneering Charter members a discount for joining There early.

We’d love to know what you think. Specifically:

• What questions do you have? What’s not clear? Your questions will help us flesh out and double-check the FAQ (because we “jumped the gun” here, the FAQ isn’t ready yet…). There are no dumb questions!!! If you have a question, someone else will too.
• What do you think of the overall pricing? Too high, too low, just right?
• What do you think the reaction of the “Charter Members” will be?

I realize that your answers won’t be scientific, and that you can’t speak for anyone else in There. But your opinion really matters to us, so thanks in advance for your feedback (and thanks for reading this far – whew!).

Sincerely,

Tom
CEO of There

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Tom
09/09/03 09:42 AM

Re: What will There cost? Reply
AkAUk (and others),

First of all, we certainly don't want to lose to you just because you don't have a credit card! Here's what you do:

Simply send an email to SignMeUp@there.com, and tell us how you would like to pay. Give us a phone number and a good time to call. We'll then call back and get your payment info over the phone. This may take a few days, but it's foolproof.

When the automated payment pages are posted, you will be able to fill in Paypal information securely (in addition to a credit card). If you don't have a credit card or Paypal, you will be able to contact us to arrange alternate forms of payment, including money order, wired funds, US$ personal check, cash, and anything else we can mutually figure out.

In short, if you are excited about joining There, we'll work tgoether with you to figure out how to handle the money thing.

Hope this makes sense!

Tom
CEO of There

P.S. In the future, we hope to set up billing in local currencies, tied into things like cell phone bills (which is popular in Europe and Asia). But that's not happening anytime soon, so we're taking the old-fashioned approach for now. 'smile

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Author Topic
Tom
09/09/03 09:51 AM

Re: Pricing details - 4 Reply

Mescad,

This _IS_ FAQ material, so thanks very much for asking! While I'm at it, a personal and heartfelt thanks to you for your continued posts on the subject of economy, business, and pricing. Your comments and thoughts have been REALLY helpful to us!

Here are the answers to your questions:

1.Does this mean that even when List Pricing starts we'll be able to get people in right away?
Yes, Beta Testers are Special to us. Are now, will be. You are truly the pioneers of There and deserve our continued thanks. Your friends are our friends.

2.Will 14-day trial people be able to sign up to be developers?
Yes, since we have found that creating and selling objects is a really fun activity that can turn a tire-kicker into a committed member of the community.

3.The big question that (unless I missed something) was not answered: Can any of this be paid in Therebucks? If not, good for those of use running therebuck-paypal exchange services but I expected this to be addressed somewhere.
Right now you cannot pay for any of this with Therebucks. Down the road, we hope to roll out mechanisms to use Therebucks to pay for US dollar-demoninated goods and services. This privilege will likely be skill-restricted, since it's a major benefit. Given the strong interest in this topic, we plan to gather a group of members together to help us figure out the best design. Your name has been on that list for some time. 'grin

Hope this answers your questions. Keep them coming, and thanks again!

Tom
CEO of There

Long Story Short, lifetime membership for beta testers for $30, no monthly fees, just be sure and log on for at least 2 hours a month. plus you get a gang of Therebucks. Very cool, and highly appropriate.

Comments

[sedefendendo.livejournal.com]

could this be explained to me in very simple language.

What is this for, do i need it?
i am so serious, with a giggle! I am the biggest computer baffooooon ever!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

http://www.there.com/ check out the website to see. :)

[ldy.livejournal.com]

NO FREAKING WAY!!!! That's so awesome!

I've missed my There :)

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

well, if you sign up, and ge tpoet in there soon, you can have free time! :)