On Tue, 8 Feb 94 06:59 PST, "Adam J. Richter" <adam@ADAM.YGGDRASIL.COM> wrote: > Russ, > > I would like to see some sort of conduit for connecting > linux (and other free OS) developers to commercial outfits that would > like to be confident in their ability to exchange money for tech support > at a reasonable rate. > > I have considered schemes similar to yours in the past, but > the devil is in the details. I agree that the devil is in the details. Fortunately, the only fixed fee is $2.50 for the check draft service bureau. The rest of the cost is my time. I think I would guarantee the providers a certain percentage for a period of time. At that point I would adjust the percentage so that I was making the same average hourly wage as the providers. That satisfies my sense of what is right and fair. > $5 of revenue for the typical tech support call will not be > profitable under the scenario you propose. Ahhh, sorry, I meant that as an example. > Allowing every one of your individual support providers to set up > their own pricing scheme also makes the customer spend a lot of > time on research (which is the sort of activity that the customer > is trying to avoid by calling you) Well, my assumption is that the providers will have a published hourly rate, or else a fixed fee per call. Either way, the clients will be able to find all providers and their fees by contacting me. > and may put you in the middle of payment disputes. I plan to resolve payment disputes by staying out of it. I will set up some kind of arbitration service. Clients and providers both will be required to either agree, or pay for the arbitration service. I expect that the transaction amounts will be low enough that people will just write off bad debts. > We have a 900 number at Yggdrasil. We charge $2.95/minute, of > which, we get $1.50/minute. The industry standard for payment in the > 900 business seems to be net 90. That's right. Three months after > we've provided the service, we finally get paid. I'm told that our first > payment check is on its way. The 900 number is a money loser, but > it eliminates most of the support calls from people who find it more > convenient to call us than to read a man page. (BTW, we do provide > a small amount of free tech support, but that's another matter.) > On the other hand, if we were to market the 900 number harder, it might > be profitable. The goal for TinyPay is to return much more than 51% to the provider, and to pay within 30 days. I think that if I can't return more than 80%, I wouldn't bother with it. -- -russ <nelson@crynwr.com> ftp.msen.com:pub/vendor/crynwr/crynwr.wav Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support. 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | Quakers do it in the light Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.