Why am I not giving free accounts to first few Travel agents?
Thursday, October 9th, 2008I am starting a website where Travel Agents will be able to get in touch with potential customers who are shopping for air tickets to India. Of course tickets need to cheapest and should beat all other prices.
Mr. X runs a travel agency, selling tickets to India. Business is doing all good.
One fine day he comes across a website which claims to solve an important issue in same business and also claims that website will give boost to Mr X’s business.
For some reason Mr. X decides to give this website a shot, so that he is not left behind in competition. Within minutes Mr. X realizes that website does solve problem if it is able to attract users who are shopping out for Air tickets to India. He also finds that website is not free. There is a small fees involved in using website to get business out of it.
Is it wrong to ask your first few customers(Travel Agencies in my case) to pay for using website?
Almost all of my friend said ‘YES’. Everyone said - “make it FREE for first few Agencies”
I can guess some of the reason they are thinking:
1) Travel agencies will avoid using website because of fees involved.
2) no one wants to pay money to a new website.
3) You will get more travel agents on board if you make it free
4) Its always easy to start asking for fees once website gets bit old and popular.
However I have some different thoughts in my mind.
1) A business owner doesn’t care about some small amount of money, if in return, website is really helping his business. In fact he will surely avoid wasting time on some website which doesn’t help him(even if it FREE).
2) As business owner instead of spending small amount he is more concern about how he can get more out of this website, promote his business and sell more tickets.
3) Desicow.com is actually bringing a travel agent closer to potential ticket buyer; its way better then wasting money on other websites for advertisement.
Desicow.com is going to give Travel agents 100s of ticket leads over a period of time. Travel Agents will get access to these leads from all across USA.
I want these travel agencies to push me to add more tools and features to website. I want them to make me go crazy fixing any issues and get more potential ticket buyers. This kind of coomunication will only come in to picture if these travel agencies have paid for using website. They are serious about business and now they have paid to use desicow.com , so desicow.com better be a sincere website.