You are spot on. There are so many alternative fee-generating sources and maybe I've been too stubborn at ignoring them. My motivation going into this was that I wanted to create something that provided a definitive value of x, and have customers happily pay a function of x. The known value / known cost approach seemed fair to me.
Pitching additional product for me is troublesome because of the intrinsic fees associated with them. I look at my service as something that accelerates debt repayment in the most efficient way. But to encourage customers to roll-over into a cc balance transfer, mortgage refi, or student loan consolidation, it just pushes their obligations further out in the future. Now, this might not be a bad thing for some people. But ultimately you could get a lot of people into the fee roulette game and it becomes a never-ending cycle where every economic peak and trough of high->low interest rates creates a new incentive for a financial services company to pitch new product.
So, I struggle with this. Do I want to maximize my revenue, or do I want to just provide a really good service for the small group of people willing to pay for it...
Pitching additional product for me is troublesome because of the intrinsic fees associated with them. I look at my service as something that accelerates debt repayment in the most efficient way. But to encourage customers to roll-over into a cc balance transfer, mortgage refi, or student loan consolidation, it just pushes their obligations further out in the future. Now, this might not be a bad thing for some people. But ultimately you could get a lot of people into the fee roulette game and it becomes a never-ending cycle where every economic peak and trough of high->low interest rates creates a new incentive for a financial services company to pitch new product.
So, I struggle with this. Do I want to maximize my revenue, or do I want to just provide a really good service for the small group of people willing to pay for it...