Is it okay to charge money for your product?

During my collaborations with other entrepreneurs and start-ups it is a very common question to ask “Should we make a free option?”, or “Should it be free to use, and earn our money on ads instead?”.

In some cases, the answer would be an obvious yes, but more and more, I believe that the world is getting tired of “Create a free account” services. When users aren’t paying for a product, their commitment is low, their engagement level will be reduced, and the overall feeling of using a product will not be to satisfaction. People that can get stuff for free, know that there is a catch somewhere. Maybe they constantly have to be forced through 30 seconds video ads every half an hour, or the free service is buggy or limited.

I am seeing more and more new coming companies, that actually do not provide a free plan, and those companies are booming I business. We are talking Shopify, Squarespace, Digital Ocean, Netflix, and so on.

I believe that the question of whether to make it free or not, is less relevant today and as a start-up you should not be afraid to make your product a paid service. Undeniably it is much more common to make B2B services paid for, whereas many B2C services should make a free option available – I just don’t think that is so important anymore. Make something that is really great and get the right people to start using it. That should be the right way of making a business today.