When sending a $17 USD product international, what shipping option makes the most sense? (Cheapest) USPS 1st Class VS (Reliable) recog int'l carrier?

I'm concerned that I don't see a back end to your funnel here. Looks like you only have small, medium, and large of one service. Rather than concentrating on discounts and discounting methodology, why don't you look at Cost of Customer Acquisition? If you knew that number, you'd know what you have to make to break even. I also think you're hamstringing your lifetime customer value by limiting yourself to one service. There's nowhere 'up' for your customer to go. If you knew the CAC and LTV of your buyers, then you would know exactly what you had to charge. You'd understand even taking a loss on the front end because it lead to a big profit on the back end would be a possible strategy. But right now, you don't have a clear picture; that's why it's so hard to decide.

As your question is a little open-ended, I’ll avoid going too in-depth, but I’ll try to give an overview based on my own experience running E-commerce stores with multiple dropship and non-dropship suppliers. The first question you need to ask yourself are your reasons for wanting multiple suppliers rather than just one. This will give you an overall criteria to assess whether or not you need a particular supplier in your network, because more relationships = more time and resource to manage which inevitably equals more cost. The main reasons are 1) Availability of new Products New suppliers will allow you to broaden your product offering. I would tend to avoid any suppliers that carry a very narrow range of SKUs (product lines). The exception is suppliers that sell a unique product that will sell significant units at a volume, or an average amount of units at high margins. 2) Redundancy In the event a supplier of a key product runs out of stock, increases their prices or fails to maintain the service quality you’ve agreed upon, it’s useful to have alternative options. If anything, it gives you confidence to negotiate on price without fear of losing everything if it all goes wrong. 3) Cross country / state routing Having multiple suppliers set up in all of your key countries will greatly reduce shipping costs and time-to-customer, which in turn increases customer loyalty. Finding Suppliers and Original Products From experience, the best dropship suppliers are those that don’t advertise the fact they dropship. In fact, the suppliers who will usually put the phone down on anyone who asks that question will usually mean you’re onto something, as the barriers to entry for that particular niche are likely to be high. Also, original products don’t have to be products that aren’t sold anywhere else, just products that aren’t widely available to resellers. This means getting to know your niche, finding out what’s in demand, and making contacts amongst sellers. Here are a few places I’ve found successful: - Trade Shows and Exhibitions. As well as being a tax deductible business trip (the kind of ‘business trip’ where the nights are more important than the days!), Exhibitions and Trade Shows are packed with new product ideas, and manufacturers and retailers keen to make more sales. Try to find overseas exhibitions; as well as the benefit of seeing a new country under the guise of work, you’re also likely to find products that currently aren’t being sold in your home-territory, giving you a significant head start. Frankfurt in Germany is the exhibition capital in Europe and well worth visiting if you’re based in the US and there’s a relevant exhibition taking place. - Niche / Industry Print Magazines. Assuming the newspaper and print magazine industry still exists when you read this, the classifieds at the back of these publications usually feature small independent manufacturers with good products and poor marketing skills. - Private Advertisers on related blogs and forums. Use a tool like Whatrunswhere or Adbeat to find advertisers in your niche who produce a product. Many will already have an affiliate program in place, but will often also consider a dropship arrangement if you speak to the right person. Technology There are platforms such as Hybris or Saleswarp that can do clever things with supplier management and inventory load balancing, but I’m assuming you’re looking for an overview at this stage and nothing too in-depth. Personally, I’ve always started with a one size fits all solution (basic supplier chain management built into the ecommerce platform) and as the business grows I’d usually move to something more custom to manage things like - Location based order routing - Inventory on hand management - Delivery tracking and reporting - Supplier Payments The cost to have something similar developed will be relatively expensive, so it’s worth starting lean and using something off the shelf in the early days. Agreements I could talk about SLAs and aiming to establish exclusivity or territory rights, but apart from being expensive to setup, it wouldn’t be realistic to expect this until you have some reputation in your industry. In the early days, it’s simply a matter of selling in volume, paying for your goods on time and not being a jerk when you need something done. Taking your supplier’s sales rep out to lunch once in a while never did any harm either!

The answer really depends on many factors. You are correct that many SaaS companies valuation falls into the range of 3 to 9 times revenue. I would say that companies that have a very high net income % (25%+) would fall more to the range of 7x-9x and companies that are closer to breakeven or low single digit net income percentages would fall to on the lower range. Also you need think look at how your company will be viewed from a competitive perspective. If you dominate your market but many many new competitors are entering that may discount the overall valuation. But if you are increasing market share within new market with little or no competition the future looks brighter from a valuation / cash flow perspective due to lower overall cost per acquisition of new customers. Hope this help. Let me know if you need anymore help.

In my experience, and based on the way I coach my clients, creating a pricing model without first creating a business model is an indication of a poor strategy. That said, here are my thoughts based on the information you've provided: 1. You are incorrect about your assumption of "the less the fee, the greater the potential # of clients". What you will very likely discover in practice is that there is a "sweet spot" in pricing such that any price above or below you'll see a drop off in members. In other words - any price LESS THAN or GREATER THAN your "sweet spot" price will result in FEWER members. This is one of those "non-intuitive" components you'll run into as an entrepreneur. 2. If you choose to price based on "competition" you are all but announcing that you are a commodity. Once again I'd suggest that this is a poor strategy. Instead consider your USP (or if you haven't yet done so...create one). Once you are properly differentiated YOU control and set pricing based on the VALUE you provide to the marketplace that they can't get anywhere else (i.e. Ferrari and Harley Davidson and Starbucks, etc). 3. Even with a solid strategy, a strong USP, a great product and a well-thought-out business model - you will likely still need to do some market testing (i.e. A/B testing) to find that "sweet spot" price I mentioned earlier. (I have yet to personally see anyone hit the mark right out of the gate.) 4. The last piece of info you provided - regarding monthly vs discounted annual membership pricing - would be a part of your OFFER. This is NOT the same as a pricing strategy - which should ideally be developed FIRST (at least conceptually). This is not to say you couldn't launch with the offer, but I'd suggest you figure out pricing FIRST and then develop offers based upon your deep understanding of your market. For assistance with any / all of the components I mentioned - give me a call. And be prepared that (in my opinion) whomever you decide to enlist this is going to take several calls to work out unless you have much of the groundwork already figured out. I apologize for this assumption - but I'm basing it on the information you provided and with hopes that this response will be helpful to others. I wish you great success!

Can you give more information on what your product is? Then we can figure out what you need in it. Sounds like electronics...but what?