Thanks, yes we're currently excluding a lot of people from different parts of the world.

Part of my response has been that with remote work and the online gig economy, it's becoming a lot easier for any entrepreneurial person to earn some money to afford a $20/mo subscription (e.g. spending 1-2 hours a month on doing gigs on Upwork should cover it), but perhaps that's an overly optimistic view?

Either way, I think having a free-tier would definitely open up to a wider audience. And as long as we make sure we still curate for pasionate, positive and entrepeneurial people, then they should be a value-add to the community regardless of their current discretionary budget.

With regards to the online events, I'll be looking into hopin.com which @marver777 recommended to me a while ago.

Do you subscribe to the current daily WIP email?

It only shows todo activity of the people you follow, but there's a lot more we can like you suggest. Include new discussions, recently added projects, etc.

What would you like to see in such a daily email?

I've been building out our own forum software which we're having this conversation in right now. Are you saying you want more of an email interface for this, including the ability to reply to comments, etc?

Yeah I definitely don't want to give invites to everyone. That would defeat the purpose of having invites.

We'd need to find the right mechanism for deciding who gets to invite new members, but I think we can figure that out.

I like the suggestion of a Reddit-like karma system. I also thought about Reddit Gold. So maybe paying members can gift (a month of) "pro"-access to "free"-members if they want to get the involved in the paid-only sections of the community.

I think the main issue with upfront payment (regardless of the exact price) is that people aren't sure what to expect of WIP. It's not like a SaaS that solves a specific problem. For many people sharing their todos publicly already feels like an alien concept, so why would they start paying to do that?

I tried to combat that by providing existing members with invites to share that give 30-day access free-of-charge, but it hasn't been that effective at driving up memberships.

My current thesis is that part of the reason for that is it doesn't feel great giving away what's basically a free trial. But when it's actually giving someone access to something that's otherwise inaccessible, then I think it will hold a lot more value. So people would be more inclined to use invite someone, and those who get invited would value that invite more.

I looked into it, and you were one of the first to become a paying patron so thank you for that!

It was a $100/year payment that didn't automatically renew and I never reached out to ask people to renew because it didn't feel right to ask for more money.

So you had the "patron" status for that one year. But because you initially joined WIP before we made a paid membership required, you were also grandfathered into a lifelong free membership.

Ah yes! Want to do these for sure. Like diferent themes. Marketing week where we all do marketing for one week. Hackathons where we all try and ship something by a certain date. Etc.

Nice, yes these are some great suggestions for pro-only features 👍

The only thing I want to be careful with is making "invites" a perk of being a paying member. As then people might feel entitled to get them, whereas I'd like to keep the option to be selective about who get to invited other members.

But it's definitely something we can experiment with

Oh nice. You just gave me a crazy idea.

What if we showed ads to free members. But instead of regular ads, they would be ads for the products of the paying members!

Yeah people seem quite divided over Telegram. Some people like myself use it all the time with friends etc so it makes sense to also have WIP accessible there.

But if you don't use Telegram already, I can how it's not ideal having to use that for WIP.

Would you mind elaborating on a more asynchronous solution you'd prefer? Is it something where the website could play a role?

A lifetime offer is something I've been considering lately. I'm generally not a fan, as I wouldn't be as aligned with the customer (lifetime-plan products often end up over-optimizing for new sales rather than providing long-term value to customers). But to your point, it would help grow a larger community overall which has its own benefits.