This is a side project Iāve been working on for the last couple months and Iām finally launching it today. Iād be happy to hear your feedback on the concept and the templates themselves.
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Why āname your priceā? Any business reasons, or just a fear of placing a price tag?
Good question. Two reasons:
- It allows me to avoid having to provide support for the templates, which I have little to no interest in doing.
- Iām banking on it drumming up more interest/attention than if these had the usual set price tag, which is one of the main goals of this particular project.
Youāre still taking some money for them, and the buyers implicitly believe they are entitled for support. If you do not provide support, that should be made explicit, price or no price.
I guess that was my second-level-why. Why do you believe it would drum up more interest?
I can imagine a conversation in a forum like this āthem are great templates and they are cheap!ā. Makes sense - people are looking for templates, and found ones and below their budget. Great find!
But I can much less imagine a conversation āthem are great and the payment method is curious tooā. It rather would go as āā¦ and you can pay $1 for them!ā. I.e. from the promotion I do not expect much difference comparing to a fixed low price.
What message āchoose your own priceā and ādonationā models always send me is āI do not know a thing about this internet business and will fail you in other businessy things such as support (oops) or updatesā.
It may be just my perception, but I think if youāre looking for a promotion, a lead generation for something else - you better make them explicitly free. If youāre looking for making money from them, apply a fair price tag. Maybe list a comparable prices on other platform for a reference point, or even just some random large non-price number (āthese templates served 2,000,000 pages last month!ā) that will make your price look small in comparison (thatās directly from Pre-suasion book - apparently it works tho it shouldnāt if we were rational).
Cool man! Nice work getting your side hustle launched, thatās a big accomplishment.
I know itās v1 of your site, so I wonāt give too much feedback regarding design and UX. As far as the pricing model, I think itās asking a lot of your users at the point of checkout to name a price. Not only do they have to assess all these other features that they would consider when buying any landing page, but yours also comes with the addition of determining the value. I would at least start with a suggested price and then users could adjust from there if they want to.
Iām a subscriber to Envato Elements and, personally, I would have a difficult time being convinced of the value here vs. a service like that which has 100s of LPs for ~$29/month. You may have a difficult time setting yourself apart with just the āpay what you wantā model as a differentiator because this particular commodity has become so cheap.
Is there something else about the product that is particularly compelling?
To be clear: This is, and will always be, a side project. I do not expect this to turn into a full-fledged business or make tons of money. Itās just something fun I did on the side to run a little experiment, to create some self promotion, and to make a small amount of side income along the way.
Iāve done one pay what you want HTML template in the past. I didnāt even promote it very much (less than what Iāve already done with Papaya) and it got downloaded thousands of times and made more money than I thought it would. Thatās the background on why I chose this particular side project.
I love all the feedback, thanks guys.
buyers implicitly believe they are entitled for support
I donāt actually agree with this. When I go to Lost Type Co-op and download a pay-what-you-want font, I donāt expect to receive support from the creator. Maybe thatās because I wouldnāt expect support for a free product, and Iām making the choice to pay anything over $0.
Having said that, I may not have been clearāI will release bug fixes and it wouldnāt hurt to include more info about support. Iām just saying I donāt want to help people build entire websites.
Why do you believe it would drum up more interest?
Iām not banking on the payment method being curiousāIām banking on what you described with the āthey are cheapā conversation. Pay what you want means you can pay whatever you can afford, including $0. So the downloader decides if itās cheap or not.
I would at least start with a suggested price
Thatās a good idea, and Iāve actually already put that into the download modals.
Iām a subscriber to Envato Elements ā¦ You may have a difficult time setting yourself apart
If this were a business I would be concerned, but Iām comfortable with where this is at from the standpoint of market positioning.
I should have figured werenāt too concerned about monetization or you probably wouldnāt have the name-your-price model, to begin with. 
One tiny piece of feedback: I wish the images were clickable on the home page. I click them every time to preview the template. You might even have the link open in a new tab.
Good luck!
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