Add a pro tier to a reasonably popular free service

[benhowdle]

First-time poster, apologies if this is the wrong forum!

I built and run Reqres - A hosted REST-API ready to respond to your AJAX requests Reqres - a free tool for developers. It receives millions of requests a month (the devs using the tool), and the homepage itself gets 20-30k unique visitors a month.

I run ads on the homepage which generates $200-300/month.

I'm looking to add a Pro tier to the service to start generating monthly income (through subscriptions) from it. I have a mailing list of ~200 people who clicked "I'm interested in the Pro tier" button, and sent them a survey to try and dig into exactly what devs would want from a Pro tier. I got 4 responses back.

What would you do to find out what people want from a Pro tier? Would you even add a Pro tier? How would you monetize this free service?

 

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[benhowdle]

Include advertising in REST response.

Jokes aside, maybe offer standalone or self-hosted version for a fee?
Or maybe patreon or Github sponsors page (something like I Just Hit $100k/yr On GitHub Sponsors! ❤ (How I Did It) | Caleb Porzio)

you say that, but I offer that as an advertising option. One company trialled it and weren’t happy enough with the CPA from each click, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ seems worth exploring

 

[Kid]

Include advertising in REST response.

Jokes aside, maybe offer standalone or self-hosted version for a fee?
Or maybe patreon or Github sponsors page (something like I Just Hit $100k/yr On GitHub Sponsors! (How I Did It) | Caleb Porzio)

 

[drahz]

It looks like an alternative to JSONPlaceholder, they are not monetized only sponsorship.

You can try to limit the number of requests per IP and then force them to go pro. But you are also risking that they will move to a different free service.

 

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[Kid]

you say that, but I offer that as an advertising option. One company trialled it and weren’t happy enough with the CPA from each click, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ seems worth exploring

I meant it as a joke but something diff came to mind - what if test content itself would be somewhat endorsed - like for user account name would be -
"Johnny B.- XYZ company happy customer"
or some text ad in avatar.

This method was explored by Unsplash.com, by giving away pictures that included something that brands paid for.