Something That's Tricky...

Well it's been almost a year since BudgetSimple was launched. Since then thousands of people have signed up for the service, which a smaller percentage becoming regular users. I honestly haven't put more then maybe 2-3 hours of development into it since it launched since I've been busy with so many other things. BudgetSimple was my first "freebie" idea I've put out there. The service is free, and I don't even have any ads or anything to monetize the traffic.

I believe because of that altruism, the emails I get from BudgetSimple are absolutely the best. Anyone that's had a product out there knows you get some rather nasty customer support emails every now and then. I've found a direct correlation between the nastiness and the price people are paying for the product :). So I get these great heartfelt emails about how I'm helping so and so out of debt. And despite some of the glaring features missing from the early BudgetSimple, people are almost apologetic when reporting bugs that are really stupid on my part.

So now the service is out there, and in fact it's the #1 hit for "free online budget", a search that's valuable enough that a bunch of people are paying for AdWords on the topic. All this traffic and popularity are somewhat tempting... lately I've been considering making some sort of premium service, but it's almost a catch-22 because it's obviously popular for being free. Anyone out there have an opinions on the topic? It wouldn't take too much work to make a premium service, but I don't want to give up any goodwill, especially when I'm already busy with other ideas.