Personally, those rates seem very reasonable and I wouldn't shy from making that more clear.
1) I love that it isn't strictly locked into a subscription model but could be either pay as you go or pay monthly
Paying monthly would remove my stress of his usage and if it was clearly set up as a 'pause any time' subscription model I'd be even more inclined. Ie. He may be REALLY into it for a month or two and then hard pivots to a new thing so being able to pause easily month-to-month while I wait for his attention to cycle back is a great thing.
2) I think you could also explore saying, 'We know AI is moving fast and their models are always evolving, we're committed to offering credits to our amazing community at fair market rates plus a Ball2 platform fee of 10% which helps us improve Ball2 and add more features. And since we're able to pool the buying power of the whole Ball2 community, we hope to keep the cost of creating as low as possible. Currently those rates are...'
I think you're also set up to offer a really incredible maker community as kids share their games and iterate off one another. If you don't have plans for a basic community forum I'd lean in to that. Would be cool to sponsor monthly challenges or organize mini-hackathons where kids spend a weekend collaborating virtually to come up with new more elaborate games or solve design challenges that employ the balls capabilities etc. -- Also helps keep kids engaged and using credits ;) or looking forward to Ball3!
I could also see you offering school stem kit packs or school PE packs etc.
Do ad slots purchased go live instantly without review? Is there an option for site owner to review and approve/reject sponsors?
It wasn't immediately clear to me if sponsor slots would always be as basic and clean as shown on your site. Or is there a risk those will be image laden and distracting?
Would also imagine your target audience would benefit greatly from features that would suggest market prices for sponsor slots based on their site traffic and user demographics. As a site owner opening up sponsoring slots for the first time or reviewing quarterly etc. how do I know what I can or should charge? Am I charging on conversions, page views, a set sponsor fee, a monthly fee etc.
For context, I'm someone who would at least consider this model over traditional ads, when/if my site reaches levels you're targeting.
(not promoting our site yet but nearing the finish line!)
I love this. I am your target -- a parent of a 7 year old who had no idea this was a pathway toward growing retirement savings for him through age 18! (Albeit easier to max out yearly $7500 contributions as he gets older)
I'm also a lawyer by training married to a very risk averse spouse, so the guardrails here tick every box.
I do generally worry though about subscription models like this that --in theory-- I want to use for the next decade. Will it still be around? will it still be supported and kept legally up-to-date? However, since it should pay for itself fairly quickly each year I'd be slightly less concerned. Not sure how you'd best speak to that concern.
Last quick thing I noted (especially for parents with younger kids or kids who would strugggggggle to stay on task) can you set up non hourly rate tasks?
For instance it would take him a fair while, but he'd happily weed the garden beds and do a phenomenal job, but logging true time to completion would look silly. Could it be set as a simple $10 task with before and after photos? Think more like a taskrabbit fivr type job I'd pay for but not on a per hour rate?
Cheers.
-Bret
PS- As a US expat living in New Zealand...is this even still a possibility? I'm sure I'm the very margin of your core user in that way but I didn't readily see anything about potential eligibility if living abroad.
This looks like a fun product I suspect my 7 year old would love. We're also just beginning to teach him to code (using scratch with Lego Prime and Makey Makey) so it would be cool if there were future plans to allow kids to code their own games around the ball and the amazing in-built sensors-or to be able to explore the AI generated code and play around with it.
One glaring call out for me as a parent looking at the product itself -- the in app purchase. Wanted way more clarity around those.
For instance it wasn't super clear how many credits would typically be used when creating and dialing in a game (my 7 year old is unlikely to be super efficient in prompts!)
The biggest issue though was I couldn't find the cost of in-app credit purchases listed anywhere. I wouldn't go near a product like this without being able to wrap my head around the scope of on-going costs.
Perhaps highlighting the existing number of free-to-play games would show the value proposition apart from the AI coding aspect. Better yet, provide a way for potential buyers to explore that database and see for themselves how many great, diverse options exist?
Site looks great and really made me want to give it a go.
Cheers from New Zealand...where I'll either consider myself on the waitlist for international delivery, or add it to our 'ship to parents and pick up when in the US list'