Opportunity Cost & Errors in Social Interaction
If you sell a product people have some level of expectation of value. The lower your price point is the more angry, lazy, and really demanding customers you will get. And, if your customers have virtually no ongoing opportunity cost to communicate with you, eventually those market forces will drive the value of your services toward $0. If you build a real brand you must use price to regulate demand, and if you offer an ongoing interactive service you need to charge recurring to maintain those relationships.
One of the biggest errors I made on the business front was that I charged a one time fee for a product that I kept updating, and kept the same business model for 4 years. As the field of SEO (and my product) grew more complex my ebook kept growing thicker and thicker. And as more market latecomers bought my product, many of them could not get enough of my time via email. One question would lead to 20. Some people would pre-ask if they could ask a question. I would say sure. And then they would send me an 8 page email full of questions. To which I would reply "that was not one question." What can you do when there are only 24 hours in a day?
Via email it is easy to ask for endless help because as soon as some people give you a dollar they feel they own you. They feel that your best is never good enough, but they may as well try stretching you to your limit, and they feel that you are holding back, and that their job is to squeeze water out of a rock. And you are the rock. :(
Are you chained to your email for 4 hours a day? If so, it might be time to take that conversation elsewhere. Large volumes of personalized email leads to greedy customers, rushed half answers, and miscommunication, but other information formats can be used to mitigate anti-social behavior. Take the same person who would ask you 8 pages worth of questions via email, give them an online training program and a support forum to ask questions. Suddenly they go from asking 39 questions (on the first round) to something much more reasonable, maybe a couple questions a day. Why?
Because for people to ask endless questions, not listen to your answers, and do it in front of others, they end up looking like a jerk. Meaning that they must care about what they are asking and will usually be rather clear in what they need. Nothing wrong with asking a few questions and learning, but if people want to abuse the system and have to do it publicly. And for people will probably feel to embarrassed to abuse you the way they would be willing to via email.
On multiple occasions I have answered a question only to find that someone else beat me to it and answered it better than I did. So I had to erase my answer and thank the other member for such a great answer. A group can be its own worst enemy, but if it is a private community where people help each other it can also be your best friend!
