Unless you are creating a huge space and/or really running it like a business where it can feel like a cafe or open space, it will usually feel more like a private space/club/office and thus won't draw 30 students looking for free wifi or bring in bums or whatever. In the eight months we've been open we are already at our third rate plan setup and ended up with exactly the same thing as Citizen Space and Indy Hall (minus the daily rate Alex offers). A few things we keep repeating ourselves or have discovered :
1. This is not a café, it's usually a community, by the way it works and by the way you find your members (unless you have a massive ad campaign or great street level visibility) so A LOT of the "what ifs" that come up in terms of abuse and needs have to be ignored. Largely you will have a bunch of kindred souls in there, people you can trust to at least be respectful of the space and not abuse what you are offering. The honor system is the best thing to rely on, not adding rules / pricing / plans, etc. 2. What people say they will like (and even what some pay for) and what they actually use are two different things. A bunch of people saying they would love to pay by the hour or even have the chance to drop by free doesn't mean they'll do it much. 3. The one huge flexibility people want is to access the space at any time. Other than the fact it just wasn't worth it to maintain the over head of our points/hourly system(s) this is why we changed, people want to be able to have a day that's from 3pm to 11pm or a week that includes the weekend but not monday to wednesday or... We now have fewer members but all have keys (some with reserved desks some without). That's the BIG point for your "how do I get people to pay for something that's free?" question, people might not pay for the same thing that's free (although you'd be surprised at how many pay in large part because they want the place to exist) but just having the flexibility of staying later or coming on a saturday does make it worth paying. 4. Unless you are running it as a business and making money out of it, do not underestimate how annoying it can get to have to be there to open the space. People with a stake (monthly fee) in it get into the habit of using it, people with much lower stakes don't and you endup showing up for not very much at all. Now that mostly everyone has a key, I can go back to the "freelance lifestyle" of working the hours I want and enjoying the space like all our members. We do now (november actually, when the points system is completely phased out) offer (mostly) free dropins but it's not because we see huge demands, it's because we and our members want to have more people coming by, a larger community, more activity and more diversity, even if it ends up being very occasional, it's new life in the place. What we've seen in terms of use at a pretty nominal $3/hour doesn't make us think we'll be swamped with dropins and, as Tara mentioned, now that our hours will be more random (ie when someone happens to be there) we couldn't charge for that anyway. It is also, as was already mentioned, a way to have people try the space / vibe and then signup for a paying membership. Finally, we get a lot more people from out of town dropping in for a few hours in the afternoon now that the system is simpler. Patrick station-c.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
