Discussion of September Announcement

Sorry, have I completely missed this feature in the beta?
‘Unlimited access to over two million pieces of vector art’
How do I get access to this?

If you are signed up for pro just click the +

Oh thanks that explains it - I have the basic model.
Is there any article that explains what it looks like?
I know I can try the subscription free of charge but surely a missed marketing opportunity whilst in beta since this looks like the most useful premium feature and I couldn’t try it out!

All machines have it. It’s at the top of the workspace, click the plus symbol.

The trial of these Premium features that’s been running for a few months now finishes at the end of this month.

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Wow - how did I miss that! Thanks!!

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I read a lot of the discussion, but there are 577 comments right now - so I have not ready anywhere near all of them.

I’m not excited about subscriptions, generally speaking. I tend to use them as minimally as possible and try to do my own designs. I tend to do them sporadically for short periods of time. However, this makes sense to me. I do wish it was a lower price, but I appreciate the discount.
I would really like if we could use referrals to pay for it.

I don’t have a problem with the idea of this - it’s just how things tend to be structured now. And I very much want Glowforge to stay in business! I saw a few criticisms of the comparison of Cricut Access. Even if you have a subscription for Cricut Access, you still have to pay for many designs and fonts. Not everything is included in that subscription.

I have a few questions @dan :

  1. Is there any chance you would set up some type of premium-referrals? So if we get other people to sign up for premium, we could earn credits to cover our own subscription costs?

  2. Any plans to make different levels of premium access? For various quantity ranges of prints or various levels of use of designs?

Perhaps different tiers of subscription where the lower levels have a certain number of designs, for example, or a specific tier of the catalog, and then highest level would include everything in the catalog.

Or maybe you would get with the lower levels, let’s say, 25 prints “in the fast lane” and then after those are used up, it would default back to the regular speed.

Or maybe ways to select what you’d really benefit from, like a cafeteria plan, where you can choose - ok I only want the monthly big free design and then I want fast lane speed for 50 prints.

I’m not suggesting to do all of these things, but just to explore options for users to choose from.

I’m probably going to end up trying it for a while just to ensure I have the discount, because there is no way I could afford $50 per month right now.

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He has already explained that several times. It makes more sense to offer a single “premium” that everyone joins than have a lower “premium” that say half those people join, making the upper “premium” money short and have to increase the price more than both together.

I discovered this when I made $6 rings and thought to sell simpler to make rings for $1. All it did was eat all the $6 sales without increasing the total number of rings sold,

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ok, as I said I didn’t read all 577 comments, so that’s my bad.
But I’d like to know if there is any possibility of that in the future. I’m sure there is a model that would be profitable, allowing people who will NOT subscribe (or stay subscribed long-term) to join - therefore, gaining money that they would not be getting otherwise at all.

I think he said the reasoning was, if he offered 2 tiers, then those interested in one would only do that and those interested in the other would only do that. This way, you see all the offerings and may end up liking the other stuff that you would never have been exposed to before.

If you think of the ring example, the cheaper rings were not that much cheaper and had less silver and design, but folk would go for the cheaper if anything at all and if the cheapest was $1 or ten the number who would not go for the difference was small, so the least expensive would be what they got. If I made 60% more on each than the cost, the more money turnover would increase the income, and cutting into the better sales was what Robert Townsend referred to as pee soup

It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It could be a quantity. So - 3 designs instead of the whole catalog, or 10 prints in the fast lane and the rest is slower. I’m just saying…

Like the old netflix subscriptions where they would mail the discs to your home. You could get 1 movie at a time, or 2 or 3 movies at a time (whatever they were). I think we started out with 1 at a time, and then liked it, so we upgraded.

I could easily imagine that a person could order a hundred DVDs and drop their subscription and early Netflix had that as a problem, but it is not a problem now as one person could watch one show a week and another 60 shows a week but it makes no difference to them, and those who watch one show a week do not feel deprived.

Other networks make up for the difference with the number of ads they push off on you, but that is why we have Netflix and not the others. But they also have customers.

I appreciate the suggestions, and I’ll pass them along to the Premium team!

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Selling storage space in ever-larger chunks might be might well be something where you could just pass along what Google charges.

I generally think premium is fine as a concept and I’ll be supporting it since my business relies on the Glowforge. I don’t specifically need any of the features (yet). I appreciate that Glowforge incurs a cost every time I turn my Glowforge on - if Glowforge runs out of money and folds I imagine my business will be severely impacted.

I also see that with Premium, Glowforge need to re-evaluate how they engage with Premium customers – we are no longer an after sales support issue but now active paying clients. So @dan says ‘this is just the beginning’ – please involve us!

Specifically create a roadmap, allow people to vote for feature requests (UserVoice or at the very least a separate forum category) – this really should be prioritised now (has been asked on the community quite a few times to no effect) and would be an important step in transparency with the Glowforge community.

My own pet requests (and support said they’d pass the first two on – but I have no way of knowing whether they are being looked at which is a little disheartening (‘why did I bother’):

a) Ability to see the calculated ‘set focus’ height calibration setting for use later with manual focus settings. Set focus slows down my prints but manual focus has been tricky to get right (or at least for me to know if I got it right)

b) Ability to see the number of laser hours used / jobs printed on the Glowforge unit. This would give me an idea of how ‘old’ the unit is and would be useful if you wanted to charge by laser time.

c) Could Premium part pay for a European service center – the thought (and shipping cost) of having to return the unit keeps me awake at night!

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What’s continually irritating is the fact that the machine always does an autofocus before every print, even if you have set manual material thickness and focus height. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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or scanning when you haven’t moved the material at all (it’s held in place by honeycomb pins). But I understand why it does it (because I opened the lid). It would be nice to override that somehow, if that was possible.

Took me a few days to read through all the comments – but anywho…

Being a hobbyist and occasional user, I originally was not going to sign up for premium as I’ve enjoyed my machine without these added benefits. Then I learned I would be losing my snapmarks unless I signed up (Dan please confirm). Having enjoyed and used snapmarks successfully, it would be difficult going back. They have been extremely useful. If true, I’d reluctantly sign up for this alone.

Other comments:

  • Basic shapes (line, circle, square) should be included regardless of subscription services. These seem like core functions the Glowforge should have.
  • A $15 a month fee is steep for a hobbyist and $50 is laughable if not insulting.
  • In the premium comparison chart or announcement it would have been useful to know about the beta snapmarks if you already have them. It wasn’t until comment #543 I learned I will be losing them.
  • It would be nice to know about the future premium services the Glowforge team is rolling out. That might help decided signing up now in hopes of using these future upgrades/benefits/features. Then again you might leave us salivating over a steak that turns out to be meatloaf or worse never gets delivered.
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Ditto the request to use PayPal for Premium subscription. :slight_smile:

He already has.