Zos_Kia

Jesus Christ man 😂 you’re looking for a moral angle but there is no moral angle here. A business has the right to design their transactions however they want, even if that design explicitly excludes people like you.

Some people are easy-going, they are more prone to trust, they want to test a product they don’t write an essay about it about it they just put their CC info in, try the thing, and cancel the sub if it’s not for them. If they forget to cancel i refund their money cause i need a happy customer more than i need 20 bucks. You don’t need to call them rubes just because they’re invited to the party and you’re not.

Hey man I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you’re touching on another important thing which is trust. On average, high trust people are just easier to manage, especially when you’re a small outfit. It’s better for everyone if low trust users bounce away because of the cc wall. They’ll come back once the product has some brand recognition or social proof.

Again, it’s a filter. You give me card details, that means you seriously want the product and also that you trust me. If i treat you right and give you a great experience you’ll be subscribed for years, purchasing add-ons, and recommending me to your friends. That’s much more valuable for me than skimming 20 bucks a month because you forgot to unsub.

When it’s a big corpo sure they’ll do it cause they don’t give a shit about their customers or even their reputation. I’m honestly not saying it doesn’t happen. But when it’s a no-name with a small online product they can’t afford that shit. If they put a credit card wall it’s most likely because they were getting too many people on the free trial, and were having a hard time telling actual future customers from drive-bys. This solves that.

lmao what a nuanced point of view, you seem to have vast personal experience of this kind of things

Or maybe they should keep their free trial and just filter out randos with a credit card wall. It’s a simple and cheap way to keep your user base high value. And as attested by the OP’s meme, it just works!

Yes, it’s a classic.

Pre-market fit it makes sense to be 100% free, as you want to gauge whether your product is attractive to people.

Post-market fit you already know the product has traction, so now you want to gauge whether it is attractive enough for people to pay for it.

Having worked at a bunch of SaaS products, it’s actually not that shady (at least in those cases i’ve seen). Free users are low value but they can cost a ton in support and commercial effort. Asking for a credit card upfront is just a simple way to filter for people who actually intend to maybe buy the product.

OP’s reaction is not a bug, it’s the feature.

93!

But we are talking about freelancers, not about SEO or content marketing, more like content filling

Most SEO is done by freelancers (at least in my industry). When i talk about content marketing i mean anybody who writes blog posts and LinkedIn posts for companies. It was already shit long before AI arrived.

Yeah I’m not bashing anybody, my wife did that for a couple years I know how it is. There was a kind of golden period where it would even pay enough to let you do some quality stuff but when VC money stopped raining the market slumped almost immediately.

I think the bitter lesson here is that there’s a bunch of jobs where quality has zero importance.

If you take for example, content marketing, SEO, and ad copy writing… It’s a lot of bullshit, and it’s been filling the web with gpt-grade slop for 20 years now. If you can do the same for cheap I don’t see a reason not to.

Obligatory Premodernist reference : https://youtu.be/-aSdFrPnlRg?si=Tc8hwfEfZZn_HEuJ

I’ve been getting back into anarchy Minecraft as an old buddy of mine is kinda resurrecting a base I used to be active at.

The scene is mostly dead, on our main server it’s 2 to 4 players on average which is crazy to me. It used to be from 50 to 100 most evenings.

Now I’ve got a 2 million blocks trip to make, even auto walking on the nether roof that’s gonna take some time. But it’s also an occasion to revisit some historic milestones along the way! I was able to get my hands on one signed book a friend had given me some time before passing away so it’s also kind of an emotional journey.

The exact lyrics are :

Jaaaacques Chirahac

Jacques Chirahac

Jacques Chirac, Jacques Chirac (Jacques Chirac?)