Nibbled to Death by Web Applications
Posted Jul 21, 2006 in and
Every single day, start-up businesses release innovative and useful small web applications. Following 37signals’s successful model, so-called web 2.0 applications try to do one thing well, and usually offer an API to allow third-party developers to extend their services.
So far, so good. But I want to have a moan, all the same. While most of these web applications offer a free version, you’ll soon need the paying version to get anything useful done. And that’s fine. I’m not complaining about that. But what if you need half a dozen of these things? Invoicing via one; groupware and communications through another? How many services do you want to track down and update everytime your credit card expires? How many logins do you want to manage?
I think one answer is an aggregation/reseller service. You pay a monthly fee with a single broker who allows you to mix and match bundles from a range of companies’s products. Volume discounts could mean that the overall cost for the buyer goes down. I’m sure a neat US $50 for a large bundle of web applications isn’t going to be a huge problem for a small web-based business. It could also act as a nice launching pad for new products from first-time developers.
You could also manage hosting and domain registration costs, reminders for renewal of commercial software (eg. yearly anti-vir subscriptions).
But the killer question is… would you charge for the service? ;)
The ideal model would be for the central people to do all the payments for you; but then you become a broker. Great if it works, of course.