Lets vote for lower fees!

[Akado]

I'm perfectly fine with the transaction fees atm. People exaggerate when they mention we will pay a lot if the price shoots to a few cents. By then the fees will be already lowered.

Other path would be to use percentage based fees. Or even tiered percentage fees like most exchanges have. A tier per volume transacted.

[jakub]

total costs of bts2/ numbers of transaction =per transaction  cost

now  total costs of bts2 is stable 

but  numbers of transaction  is very very very low
I  guess  the numbers of transaction   is less than price feed

It is totally  waste！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！

@sudo, just to make a quick market research exercise please answer these two questions:
(1) roughly how many transactions in total have you personally made since BTS2 was launched?
(2) roughly how many times the following situation has happened to you: you wanted to make a transaction but ended up not doing it because you thought it was too expensive?

[sudo]

total costs of bts2/ numbers of transaction =per transaction  cost

now  total costs of bts2 is stable 

but  numbers of transaction  is very very very low
I  guess  the numbers of transaction   is less than price feed

It is totally  waste！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！

[Empirical1.2]

The referral programme can still be as generous with a percentage based system in fact it may be FAR more lucrative with the right pricing strategy.

The referral programme can be generous by using two sources only: inflation or transaction fees. Inflation is just another name for making BTS holders pay for BTS users. IMO this not a sustainable strategy.

No I mean a percentage based system could make the referral programme far more lucrative. I hate inflation too.

For example if you have 1000 potential customers. The average customer makes 10 transfers/purchases a month.

A. 500  make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $4 or less a month and even a percentage fee system is too high for them.
B. 250  make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $10 or less a month and $0.1 is too high for them but $0.01 is OK.
C. 125  make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $25 or less a month and $0.1 is too high for them but $0.025 is OK.
D. 62.5 make 10 purchases/transfer averaging $50 a month they would pay $0.1 but with a 0.1% system are only paying $0.05
E. 62.5 make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $100 a month and $0.1 is cheap to them.

A $0.1 fee would earn merchants/referrers $125 a month but a 0.1% system with a minimum of $0.01 would make them $150 a month. 

That's just a random example to make the numbers work in my favour but the point is while lowering fees could earn you less from one group (D in the example) total profit is actually higher.

You also end up attracting far more users who will be using BTS and BitAssets which will positively affect the CAP.

Or an even simpler analysis. If 100 out of a thousand potential customers will pay a $0.1 fee but 500 out of a thousand will pay $0.05 fee, obviously charging $0.05 is optimal if your running costs in both examples are the same.

At the moment I'm worried we're not appealing to a very large portion of our potential market. So I think we have to attempt to do some analysis and address the issue.

[jakub]

So far we have had 'average people' from Poland, Russia, Argentina and China (one of our biggest markets) saying that the fee is too high for them and in their opinion, average users in their market.

I can see it but I think they are wrong.

Even in the poorest countries it does not matter if you pay $0.05 or $0.20 if your total monthly payment is less than the cost of a bottle of water. It just does not matter whether you are rich or poor. In our case it's liquidity that matters, not the transaction fees.

I'll eat my words if they can prove to me that the "average people" they are talking about are going to make more than 10 payments a month in BTS.

[fav]

In Russia all the same. It would be difficult to average people to grasp why they would have to pay the fees.

And tell me, how many times a month do "average people" make online payments? 4? Maybe 5? Does it really matter how much you pay as long as it is in total less than a bus ticket?

The point is the fees do not matter for an average BTS user.
They matter only for heavy users and those are merchants and traders, not "average people".

When you decide your pricing strategy you need to know who your customer is. Basically there are three categories: the traders, the merchants, and "average people". The only price sensitive group out of these three are the traders, not "average people". So if you think about it, lowering the fees is a meaningless exercise that will do nothing (at this moment) but undermine our profitability.  Only if the traders start complaining it we should lower the market orders fees, but not the transaction fees for transferring money.

 

[jakub]

Over-charging for an inferior product that doesn't work, is not an effective strategy for any new business that I am aware of.

But if the product does not work it can be even for free and still nobody will use it. That's why I think we should concentrate our efforts on making the product work and not on lowering its price. Lowering the price will not compensate people for lack of liquidity. They won't use it anyway.

Traders are complaining. It looks like we need to lower fees for orders that are cancelled/not matched.

If the traders are indeed complaining I fully agree we should lower the market order fees. We should do everything to make them happy. They are our strategic partner and without them we are nothing as we don't have a product for our end-users.

The referral programme can still be as generous with a percentage based system in fact it may be FAR more lucrative with the right pricing strategy.

The referral programme can be generous by using two sources only: inflation or transaction fees. Inflation is just another name for making BTS holders pay for BTS users. IMO this not a sustainable strategy.

[Empirical1.2]

Basically there are three categories: the traders, the merchants, and "average people". The only price sensitive group out of these three are the traders, not "average people".

So far we have had 'average people' from Poland, Russia, Argentina and China (one of our biggest markets) saying that the fee is too high for them and in their opinion, average users in their market.

ElMato is also the creator of LimeWallet, a product designed to appeal to his local market and the world, he also attends local groups and does BitShares give-aways so has interacted with as many potential customers as anyone. I respect their opinions.

Anyway we agree that some form of percentage based system would ultimately be better.

[jakub]

In Russia all the same. It would be difficult to average people to grasp why they would have to pay the fees.

And tell me, how many times a month do "average people" make online payments? 4? Maybe 5? Does it really matter how much you pay as long as it is in total less than a bus ticket?

The point is the fees do not matter for an average BTS user.
They matter only for heavy users and those are merchants and traders, not "average people".

When you decide your pricing strategy you need to know who your customer is. Basically there are three categories: the traders, the merchants, and "average people". The only price sensitive group out of these three are the traders, not "average people". So if you think about it, lowering the fees is a meaningless exercise that will do nothing (at this moment) but undermine our profitability.  Only if the traders start complaining it we should lower the market orders fees, but not the transaction fees for transferring money.

[pal]

guys, you are OK with the current fee.
but in fact, Chinese and other developing country will never accept the high transfer fee.
In China we spent no fee with alipay and most  bank card.
BTS will lose these market if the fee still keep about 0.6CNY
If you don't care about these market, OK, just keep higer fees. wish enough American like BTS and can be a real user.

Here in Argentina:
* Free bank accounts (no CC, just saving)
* No transfer fees (below 30K ARS)
* Instant transfers

In Russia all the same. It would be difficult to average people to grasp why they would have to pay the fees.

So we should hide the fee? Maybe wallet provider could help. He could set low fee for transfers, but for trading would be required lifetime membership purchased. Many apps monetize this way in AppStore.

We don't pay for facebook or google every time we use it (directly), because we are the product they sell us to advertisers. It is good model, BUT bitshares not mature enough for this. Right now we don't have a lot of options except make fees lower.

[Empirical1.2]

... I think they are not using BTS because the product doesn't work yet in the first place.
...our product is far worse.

Over-charging for an inferior product that doesn't work, is not an effective strategy for any new business that I am aware of.

If the traders start complaining that the fees are too high - then we should reconsider.
Also, apart from traders there is a second group of users we should care about: the merchants. The consumers are not really sensitive to transaction fees (assuming an average consumer makes a couple of online transactions a month). It's the merchant who is sensitive to the price as currently s/he needs to sacrifice about 2% of their turnover just to be able to receive payments. So from the merchant's point of view BTS should be significantly cheaper and this is our key customer. Also, a generous referral program (and it can only be generous if we keep the fees as they are) is an attractive option that we can offer to the merchants but our competition (PayPal & debit cards) cannot. It's our unique selling point.

Traders are complaining. It looks like we need to lower fees for orders that are cancelled/not matched.
I agree merchants are key and we need to be able to undercut BitPay's 1% service fee while offering the referral programme.

The referral programme can still be as generous with a percentage based system in fact it may be FAR more lucrative with the right pricing strategy.

An analytical, data-driven pricing approach can help you:

- Optimize your pricing
- Identify pricing leaks and areas of opportunity
- Apply price discounting where it yields the highest return
- Achieve higher margins
- Sell more product
- Increase the value of your company
- Improve your profitability

By looking into the variables that influence customers’ value perception, one can determine...

- What your small customers should be paying
- Where your large customers are likely to be flexible
- Which products can support premium prices and which need to be competitive
- Whether discounts in certain areas can help you boost sales volume
- How much you can gain by implementing your new pricing structure.

I understand that we can't target the micro-transaction market, or please everyone and though I don't know how complicated it is, I do believe we need a percentage based system with a minimum fee of $0.01 or $0.02.

I agree that a percentage-based system would make sense but as it requires a hard fork I'd agree with BM that at this stage there are other things with higher priorities than that.

I think it's fairly high priority, given the current feedback.

[jakub]

Do you know Argentina is one of if not the most lucrative BitAsset markets because of capital controls and  USD demand?
These countries are the BitAsset target markets.
If they say the fees are too high we need to listen.

The key target markets that could be motivated to try it at this stage are places like Argentina, Greece, China etc.

Yes, these countries are the BitAsset target markets after we make the BitAssets actually work, i.e. there is a liquid market with low spreads allowing users to exchange BitAssets back and forth with fiat. Until that happens we don't have a working product to sell and discussing lowering its price is premature for me.

And who will make BitAssets liquid? Is it the low volume users from South Amercia, Asia or Africa or is it the high volume traders with lots of cash to play with? I bet it's the traders, so it's definitely them we need to satisfy at this initial stage. And from my understanding it's the unfinished GUI and unstable market rules that make them unhappy, not the fees.

If the traders start complaining that the fees are too high - then we should reconsider. But arguing that people in lower-income countries are not using BTS because the fees are too high does not make sense to me. I think they are not using BTS because the product doesn't work yet in the first place.

Also, apart from traders there is a second group of users we should care about: the merchants. The consumers are not really sensitive to transaction fees (assuming an average consumer makes a couple of online transactions a month). It's the merchant who is sensitive to the price as currently s/he needs to sacrifice about 2% of their turnover just to be able to receive payments. So from the merchant's point of view BTS should be significantly cheaper and this is our key customer. Also, a generous referral program (and it can only be generous if we keep the fees as they are) is an attractive option that we can offer to the merchants but our competition (PayPal & debit cards) cannot. It's our unique selling point.

To summarize: at this initial stage we should only care about traders and merchants. Ordinary users complaining about transaction fees are irrelevant.

No we don't, we have a relatively new, risky, complicated product that is not particularly liquid with very limited third party support. 
(So we're not competing with PayPal or online use of debit cards at this stage as some are suggesting.)

Yes, our product is currently far less user-friendly and more risky that PayPal and debit cards.
But for me a better strategy is to upgrade the product (by concentrating all efforts to make BitAssets liquid) than to admit our product is far worse and lower its price.

I understand that we can't target the micro-transaction market, or please everyone and though I don't know how complicated it is, I do believe we need a percentage based system with a minimum fee of $0.01 or $0.02.

I agree that a percentage-based system would make sense but as it requires a hard fork I'd agree with BM that at this stage there are other things with higher priorities than that.

[freedom]

guys, you are OK with the current fee.
but in fact, Chinese and other developing country will never accept the high transfer fee.
In China we spent no fee with alipay and most  bank card.
BTS will lose these market if the fee still keep about 0.6CNY
If you don't care about these market, OK, just keep higer fees. wish enough American like BTS and can be a real user.

 
We should charge the value added service, not the basic service.

[fav]

some thoughts,

BitShares is not a currency - don't touch the current fee system.

however, make our currency cheaper - some %based fee would be okay in my opinion.

[liondani]

I do believe we need a percentage based system with a minimum fee of $0.01 or $0.02.

 

PS and a MAX fee (a cap)