How Draft got me to pay for a free product

Draft is a marvelous new webservice for writing. A bit like iA Writer, but for the browser.

I love distraction-free writing and I've recently come to rely on Draft for writing my blog posts. It's simply the best writing tool out there that I can use with my fancy keyboard (linux, no iA Writer, bad wrists).

But I'm not here today to talk about the marvelous version control features, the fact I can click the equivalent of "Save back to WordPress" when I'm done writing, or even the "Get feedback from an expert" feature.

No, today I want to tell you about the brilliant trick Nathan Kontny used to convert me from a freeloader to the proud owner of a $4 monthly subscription.

I login one day, right from the WordPress dashboard (Chrome extension), and what do I see if not a big pop up sort of thing saying "Hey, you should totally subscribe!". As a geek and a nerd I find these things tacky, overdone, and rather pushy.

But this was different. There was no blackout, no flashing colours, just a friendly message from the founder saying "Hey, I'm making this thing and I need your help to keep it awesome.". More importantly, he started a conversation!

Sidenote: Wow, I was just delighted by how easy inserting an image is. Shift+Ctrl+I, drag image into browser. Beautiful.

khem

See, it's not a pushy sales thing, it's an honest ask. If you don't want to, that's fine too, but please tell me why.

I was instantly convinced.

Left a message saying how awesome I find the service and how infinitely brilliant is the fact I can reply to a "please subscribe message". Later that day I kept my promise and subscribed.

Better still, later that day I got a reply.

You have no idea how delighted I am by this little exchange. And now I'm spending $4 a month on something I use maybe twice a week for maybe an hour to indulge in what is a glorified hobby.

In comparison, I pay $5 a month for Toggl - the basis of thousands of dollars worth of invoices, I use Github daily and don't pay a dime ... actually I don't pay for most things I spend my whole days on.

Good job Draft, you're doing something right. This is probably the biggest bang for buck a service has ever gotten out of me.