Sharing my Experience of Selling a Digital Course with Bitcoin and Fiat 🤔 \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Sharing my Experience of Selling a Digital Course with Bitcoin and Fiat 🤔

56.8k sats \ 26 comments \ @Natalia 1 Sep 2023 bitcoin

About three months ago, I launched a digital course to teach some writing and building skills that I learned from trial and error.

The setup is quite minimalist: a simple site built with WordPress. I enabled Stripe and BTCpay ( hosting with voltage ) as payment options - I even offered a 5% discount when paying with Bitcoin.

Result 30% pay with BTC 70% pay with Fiat

I do need to say the feeling of receiving Bitcoin directly into my cold wallet feels beautiful!

But do you think is it currently a bit too early for BTC only projects? 🤔 However, the course's testing pool is currently limited in Chinese, so it can only be used as a reference.

Part of me is curious to see how the future of e-commerce works, and the best way to learn is to do it - I am in the middle of building a BTC-only project: bridging BTC with real-world goods ( stay tuned for more ), but here are some of the problems I have not thought through:

1. Pricing in sats

I know the fiat price of BTC is a distraction, but as a business, you want to make it easy for people to pay.

Would BTC-only businesses adjust the price when BTC is $600k and $60k? For hard-core Bitcoiners - 1m sats are 1m sats, so I guess there is no need. But in reality, most people still change it to fiat price when understating the value of their Bitcoin.

Understanding the value of a new currency takes time; at least, that is my experience of living in other countries. But sooner or later, you could use the local one as your default mental value calculation - like you'd know how much a coffee should be worth!

2. I could not find the pricing option displayed in sats.

The current pricing option in WooCommerce is in BTC, but I prefer to show it in sats. Does anyone know any good tool or plugin to make this happen?

Or would it be easier if pricing in USD but pay with Bitcoin during this stage? 🤯

3. I am happy to hear from existing BTConly projects' insights.

_ I do not have any Bitcoiners around to discuss these with me. Much appreciate for everyone's input. 🧡

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1121 sats \ 4 replies \ @Ribbit 2 Sep 2023

52 thousand sats for a prety generic post with a hand full of comments. Am i missing something here @Koob ?

30 sats \ 2 replies \ @Natalia OP 2 Sep 2023

I was a bit surprised too, because the article last time I wrote which with more time and effort got zapped about 17k sats - so I initially thought maybe it was a bug or something. ( I hope not a bug! )

But my takeaway from this is don't be shy away from sharing, especially first-hand experience; I didn't share much during the past year because I thought, wow here is full of smart people, but hey, sharing is the best way to learn.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nemo 2 Sep 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 2 Sep 2023

Lucky me 😼 and need to bring some balance here.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 2 Sep 2023

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140 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 1 Sep 2023

Congrats!

I struggled with this as well. How will goods and services be priced in sats? Then I read Safe’s book Principles of Economics and to me it’s quite clear. If the sat price is too high no one will buy it and if it’s to low supply might not be enough for demand so eventually the market price will be found where people who value your work will gladly pay the price you set which will hopefully compensate you enough for consumption you forgone to develop this content.

59 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 1 Sep 2023

Thanks. I guess the way to figure it out is also by different trials.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @mo 23 Dec 2023

Good on you @Natalia, how is the course going? I just created the ~Agora territory. You'd like to share your digital course there as external link?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Natalia OP 23 Dec 2023

hi @mo, thanks for the heads up, I probably won't link to my course here, but I would love to share some of the crafts I've made:)!

and what a good idea to use SN as a marketplace - with all the feedback and review from stackers, not only can makers keep improving the crafts but also solve the trust problem with the web of trust! brilliant:)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mo 27 Dec 2023

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210 sats \ 1 reply \ @sandagoriate 1 Sep 2023

Hey I found this. Maybe can help you: #82175 A Stats/BTC price view for woocommerce.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 1 Sep 2023

Thanks, let me try - it would be nice if also able to see some existing shops as samples.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 1 Sep 2023

Great experiment. More people need to do this, starting by me.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lux 1 Sep 2023

If you think about it, the Dollar is just a measuring stick. It used to measure quantity of gold and silver

210 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 2 Sep 2023

Yes - if you think about it, people are used to be so self-sufficient that they do not even have any idea about money, which still exists in some tribes. 🥸

So, I guess mental value calculation is largely influenced by the environment or conditioning, and the establishments know this - we are all being programmed from the start.

122 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lux 1 Sep 2023

Echoing Darthcoin:

10% discount for BTC payments
10% surcharge for credit card payments

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 1 Sep 2023

haha, actually it is a nice way to encourage people to learn about Bitcoin, and they might even come to thank you in the future.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @VEINTIUNO 27 Dec 2023

Hey @Natalia, congrats on testing the grounds of the bitcoin online commerce: I'd be curious to know more about your projects :) Do you have any online links yet?

For the pricing in BTC I'd to know which plugin are you using? Are you setting the price directly in BTC or using something to do the conversion BTC>fiat?

For us here at VEINTIUNO has been a good challenge too, and we ended up building a set of FOSS plugins (some of them still being a WIP), you can check them all from https://veintiuno.world/brand/wordpress/

I'd also be interested in your writing course. It's available in English? You might be looking to translate it in Spanish? It will be a good collab

Your feedback will be much appreciated

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Storyteller 3 Sep 2023

I think you need to figure out the price of your services in dollars, say $997, or $97 dollars and convert those into sats.

And if the price of bitcoin doubles in dollars you need to adjust your price in sats.

I now think in dollars (still). I also have an online course site and I want to start receiving Bitcoin and sats.

But I think in dollars as that has been the mindset. My products are priced like $1997 or $997 or $597.

People in my market see these levels of pricing and they make a decision like hmm $997 I invest in something that solves this kind of problem.

A $1997 product solves another type of bigger problem. A $1997 course is a 6 week course that helps you generate x amount of business.

A $9997 level couree is like a mastermind. Next level course.

So the key question is: what are the mental models when you translate these into sats?

Do people think that a 3 million Sats course is a great course? Currently?

Would people pay 10 million sats to get a huge problem solved?

Maybe people will also feel attached to their 10 million sats because they think it will be more in dollars in about 2 years.

So how many people will you find that want to give you 10 million sats?

I think ultimately we will start thinking in sats.

The people in Venezuela do not think in bolivares. They do not price their products in bolivares because the bolivar is changing all the time against the dollar.

Of course if I price my services in dollars like the $997 dollars I am fooling myself.

The $997 dollar of last year is not the $997 dollar of this year. I had to adjust this price with inflation. Say 4.5% or 7%.

So the sats might be a better measure because there is no inflation of sats!!

If you forget about the dollar price 10 million sats today is 10 million sats tomorrow.

You got a piece of the total supply of Bitcoin regardless of the price.

We need to start thinking in terms of “ what is the piece of the total bitcoin supply I want for my service”?

Is this effort /course 10 million sats or 5 million?

Or is this service an effort of 100 million sats? Regardless of the price.

When other people start saying to buy my villa you need to pay me 1 bitcoin you know that you need to deliver much more value, equivalent to a villa to receive 1 bitcoin.

If somebody wanted to trade 1 villa for 5 teslas would you do it?

And for 3 teslas? 2 porsches for one villa would you do it?

In the last trading examples you are kind of guessing what the value is of the villa. Not in dollars. But you are trying to guess if the value is the same.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Maximux 2 Sep 2023

I believe that one way to massify the use of Bitcoin in e-commerce is that there are Marketplaces with this payment option (I mean important Marketplaces).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 2 Sep 2023

but now it is the stage for early explorers to test things out 👀

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @2bithits 1 Sep 2023

It may still be early to price things in sats. But at some point businesses will need to make that leap. If you believe that bitcoin will succeed then you can discount it at an even number.

I also couldn't find a sats denomination so mine look like 0.000002 (lol)

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 2 Sep 2023

Same, showing 0.00xx is def not easy to understand 😅 not for me, and most likely not for potential buyers.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @edulopesf 1 Sep 2023

From my POV you still need to adjust the price especially if the BTC price goes up.

The reason is, if Bitcoin gets pricier, more expensive you product will be and probably less people will buy.

If Bitcoin gets cheaper, your product will also have less monetary value (on the other hand, more peopyare likely to buy, especially if gets a lot more cheaper compared to FIAT). But the question is, will be enough to profit?

Sadly, most people will compare FIAT and Bitcoin, also as you pay most of your bills in FIAT, you will need guarantee an income based on FIAT expanses...

But people like you, as more and more offer products and services through Bitcoin payment, the whole scenario shall change in the future.

Good job and good luck!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 1 Sep 2023

From my POV you still need to adjust the price especially if the BTC price goes up. The reason is, if Bitcoin gets pricier, more expensive you product will be and probably less people will buy.

If we are still using fiat as mental value calculation, then yes 👀

I wonder how is the experience for @darthcoin living in Bitcoin,like do you already thinking like a coffee is about xx sats, a beer about xx sats.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 15 Feb outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.