Hello friends, fans & well wishers of Chandoo.org,
I am happy to announce our new product – Vitamin XL, a membership program for you. I want to make sure that Vitamin XL offers you the best possible features & value. I need your help in designing this product. Please read this short article and give me your feedback.
What is Vitamin XL?
Just like vitamins you give you strength and health, Vitamin XL ups your Excel mojo, gives you new ideas & powers. Here is what I have in mind:
Vitamin XL is a membership program with 3 distinct benefits
- Excel Training
- Excel Resources
- Excel user community
1. Excel Training
There is no such thing as 100% knowledge. More so when you are talking about a technical & versatile platform like Excel. That is why I have included many aspects in our Excel training part.
- Excel School & VBA Classes forever: Access all our Excel School, VBA classes & Dashboard lessons – more than 100 videos, 100 workbooks & presentations at any time. Its like having an Excel trainer on call. Just login when you want to brush up on any area of Excel (or VBA) and you are ready to go.
- Monthly video class: Every month a new concept or use of spreadsheets will be explained using videos. These lessons will be highly practical with lots of details & novel uses of Excel.
- Live Webinars: Once in a while, we will have a webinar. The purpose is 2 fold – (1) Teach you a new concept (2) Take up questions from you. I am also planning to invite fellow MVPs & prominent Excel authors to this so that you can learn from them too.
- Articles: Over the years, I have written more than 400 articles, tutorials, tips & examples on Excel, VBA, Dashboards here at Chandoo.org. As a Vitamin XL member, you can access all these articles & many more right from your membership area. I will be curating the articles so that you can learn about any area of Excel with ease.
2. Excel Resources
While we all want to learn, often we don’t have time to understand a concept and apply it. That is where our resources section comes in. As a Vitamin XL member, you will get:
- Excel Vault: Imagine walking in to a vault where you can find an example or template on almost any aspect of your Excel use. That is our Excel vault. To start with, the vault will contain more than 400 excel workbooks containing formula tutorials, chart templates, models, macro examples, dashboards, excel technique demos etc. The best thing is every month, we will be adding more files to it.
- Template & Add-in Gallery: This is where you can find dozens of templates, ready to use macros for your work situations. Download, Deploy & Delight your users.
- Books & Sites: There are probably 1000 books, 100s of sites of offering Excel help, instructions & ideas. But what should you choose? Every month, I will be reviewing a book or sharing a collection of useful resources with you so that you can be even more awesome.
- eBooks & Guides: Download ebooks, handy guides, printable posters & cheat sheets. Every few months, we will be adding more guides & electronic books for you.
- What formula is that? Struck with a formula and need help? Enter our exclusive formula section, where more than 75 day to day formulas are explained with easy to understand syntax, examples. You can also download our interactive sandbox and play with formulas yourself to learn better.
3. Excel user Community
Knowledge multiples when you share it. That is why Vitamin XL is a community. In our user community you will get:
- Members only forum: Share your excel solutions, problems, new ideas & information with fellow members. You can also ask questions and our in-house Excel ninjas will be helping you.
- Member directory: Learn more about fellow Excel users like you, see how they are becoming awesome using it. Connect with them and make new friends.
- Spot light: Every now and then you come across a truly novel idea, use or example of what Excel can do. In our spot light section, you will get such wonderful ideas both from our community and around web.
- Monthly Newsletter: Get a curated selection of latest articles, tips & examples once a month. As a Vitamin XL member, you will also get discounts and offers on any future Chandoo.org purchases.
Who is this for?
Anyone who loves Excel & Chandoo.org is going to enjoy Vitamin XL. If you are a data junkie, analyst, manager, MIS or dashboard professional, heavy-dose spreadsheet user, Excel consultant or enthusiast, then you will certainly benefit having access to Vitamin XL.
But how much?
Vitamin XL comes with 2 levels of membership:
- Basic membership for $30 per month.
- Advanced membership for $50 per month*.
With Advanced membership, you can access all Excel School, VBA & Dashboard videos too. Other than that, everything else remains same.
* Pricing and features are not yet finalized.
What do you think about it?
I want to make sure that Vitamin XL gives you best value & features. Can you please tell me how you feel about it and what additional features would you like in it?
Please share your suggestions and feedback using comments. If you want to keep it private, please email me at chandoo.d @ gmail.com
Thank you
Thanks for your continued support to Chandoo.org. I am so humbled and happy to be in a position to share my knowledge, mistakes, ideas and progress with all of you. Special thanks to scores of Excel School & VBA class students who emailed and suggested that I create something like Vitamin XL. I am eager to roll this out very soon.
52 Responses to “Please help me design our new product: Vitamin XL”
Interesting concept. But i think the pricing is too steep. USD 50 should be equivalent of 6 months pricing.
Hi Chandoo,
It is a good idea, but was just wondering, does this mean that non- members will no longer be able to access the existing free resources that you have on the site?
Thanks
Nope, Chandoo.org will continue to be just as awesome and valuable as it is today for several more years 🙂
Such a Relief 😀
Sounds like a good idea. Couple things:
For people that have already purchased the classes of some sort, is there really any benefit of becoming an advanced user? Seems like I could have just waited and paid the $50 for a month and got what I needed. Not saying purchasing the classes wasn't worth it, because it was!
The current forum now seems outdated. Other forums out there are much more up-to-date feel, as well as functionality, like easily posting screenshots, and downloading/uploading directly from message board as opposed to going to a third party. Just makes it more stream lined.
Other all, I think it sounds like a great idea. The only thing I'd be wary of is the amount of people that would be part of the community. If it's only a few people, then I really don't see that being a great benefit.
Thank you. Few more details:
Interesting concept - it's not real clear to me what the difference is between the basic and advanced package. In #1, you say "Access all our Excel School, VBA classes & Dashboard lessons – more than 100 videos, 100 workbooks & presentations at any time.", but in the description of an advanced user you say "With Advanced membership, you can access all Excel School, VBA & Dashboard videos too. Other than that, everything else remains same."
Does that mean the basic version will not be able to access video? I'm kind of confused of exactly what advanced gives me.
Thanks Derek. I am sorry for the confusion. In #1, I described all the benefits of Vitamin XL. As mentioned further down, only advanced option users can access course videos.
Thanks Chandoo for the reply, I have personally found your site very very useful, infact to me, I feel that there are very few sites that offer the wealth of knowledge you have in your site. You have become an inspiration to me and am sure to many of your fans. As mentioned by you your site will still offer the free content that it currently offers which is really good, however when implementing your new vitamin XL, I would suggest that you be cautious about the pricing as not everyone will be able to pay $50 a month, maybe revising the pricing structure or making it affordable to majority of the people would me more beneficial to the fans as wells at the commercial interesst of the site.
Thanks
So how is this different from just visiting your website?
Time to go and hunt for something cheaper. Chandoo is now just pimping his site to get more money. Think this was the objective from day 1
I feel very proud to run a business which satisfies countless people. If money is the only thing, you would never have seen even 10% of this 🙂
Either you are new or you are Jealous.
Every1 knows Chandoo & his intentions here. And yes, He is doing business but at the same time he cares for his readers. If you have the money & you want to make it big then join it or else just leave it.
It has become an habit for me to search anything related to excel in Google with the name "chandoo" in it becuase I know the way Chandoo's blog simplify things abt excel there might be very few sites on Internet.
Haha, me too! Adding "chandoo" to the search query usually gets me to the right answer quicker
My dear friend, firstly we need to understand that even a freesource site like chandoo.org needs money to run business and pay for its resources. In the world where nothing is free except for uncalled advice and opinion, we should appreciate Chandoo for turning novices to pros in excel. So chill, take it or leave it. I never paid a paisa to get any help anytime from team chandoo.
🙂
Would love to join but it's but way too expensive - especially for individuals trying to gain skills to get a good job. Pricing is fine if you have an employer who will pay for it or are self-employed and can deduct the cost. Perhaps US$99/yr or US$10/mo for a basic individual membership? Thanks
The training is closed off for me, as my agency won't pay for outside training, and my Excel use is strictly for work (my wife won't even let me near the computer at home), so there's no way I could pay for any of the above. So the exciting things for me are the Excel resources and the user community. Both of these are available at other Excel forums (there are a lot of them out there, both good and bad) free of cost. I like visiting Chandoo because the posts are consistently helpful or unique. But if you bring a cost factor into it you invite me to seek elsewhere. So, overall I'm not in favor of this idea, although I do agree that you bring a valuable service and deserve some recompense. Maybe you could sell some Add-ins, like some of the other blogs do?
Chandoo, your work is important not only because of the wealth of Excel knowledge you bring to the world but also because, in many ways, you've pioneered a new format of online Excel community where everyone can participate. For my own part, I would love to join your membership community, but I'll be honest and say $30/month is a bit steep for my budget. I'm sure the knowledge offered is actually far greater than $30/month, but the reality is that it is still a lot of money to me. In any case, I think Vitamin XL is a good reflection of how far you've come, and how much more there is to go to 'share the love.' Cheers!
At the listed price point I would not consider a subscription, though I would feel bad that I'm not helping to support a site as awesome as this (I've visited a number of other excel sites but this has always been my favorite place for helpful tips for a broad range of uses)
I *MIGHT* pay for a 1 month subscription and try to suck everything I can out of the premium content during that month (cancelling at the end), but that is just a might.
I feel like I should be helping support such an awesome site, but honestly I would not sign up for those services (or honestly any level of excel services) for 30$ a month on a continual basis
I understand that there is stuff here that could and should be paid for, but something just feels wrong with this.
Happy to pay for things, and I've done so... but something feels wrong. Not sure exactly what.
- Juanito
I can't see any additional benefit to signing up for a $30 basic membership.
The other classes also have gone up in price recently as well, your products will soon only be affordable for those who can get this courses paid by their work.
If they were licensed CPE courses, I guess the cost might be justified.
Declan
The concept is interesting but way too expensive. While Chandoo is indeed an awesome excel resource the same information can be had from a myriad of other places. To have it centralized here is great but $600 a year is serious money. For $50/year basic maybe but at $50 month i would expect a huge amount of personal support, not community
Hey Chandoo,
You can think of differential pricing mechanism to deal with this confusion i.e. a higher price for the first month and a lower price from the second month onwards for those who want to show their loyalty by continuing to visit. But if you focus on the voluminousness it would be greatly help you monetize the knowledge you share. It reminds me of Bill Gate's Microsoft products' pricing and the world's reaction. I always think Microsoft's case in Indian scenario why it failed to make Indians use the original Microsoft's products. My point is clear, let the price be reasonable and capture the market. Don't miss anybody. Get on with the volume. It will be no pain for anybody.
Sanu George.
Hi Chandoo,
I hope you researched your market. Entry level price point seems to be too high. I am not sure how not so serious users of Excel will benefit from long term membership.
But anyway good luck on the new venture.
Like Chandoo site a lot and tends to be my first port of call when stuck on a solution and I am an 'advanced' user at work. For those who say he is 'pimping his site', a lot of work is invested in this site and on an on going basis to keep us and that person who said 'pimping' coming back, so why not make some money from his time and expertise.
Having said that, I'm afraid I think even the basic subscription is way to high as there are many sources that offer free or cheaper solutions. Personally I think $40-50 is pitched about right and will attract plenty of subscribers as opposed to those where money is no object (they I suspect are few and far between).
Keep up the good work but rethink your fees please.
Sorry I meant $40-50 per year and not month:-)
Dear Chandoo,
Yes, I agree with most of the awful Chandoo fans, that as we love Chandoo and all his products but it would be extremely difficult for majority of fans to allocate a budget of $60 or even $30 pm for excel. So I can only hope that Chandoo will consider this fact to enable majority of us benefit from Chandoo's excel vitamins.
Thanks and regards
Yeah. No beef, sounds like a great idea: but 30 bucks a month is a bit on the high side.
Dear Chandoo,
1st I would take this opportunity to wish you all the very best for your new concept. Sure, Its going to be a awesome idea,,,
There is no doubt, as Jordan said, "’the knowledge you offered is actually far greater than $30/month".
Yet I would kindly request from chandoo to reconsider on pricing Vitamin XL.
Thanks
You're likely to make MORE money with a lower price point due to, as someone already stated, an increase in the volume of subscriptions. I would love this service but couldn't stomach more than $10 a month for the advanced.
Please look more into this market to figure what's going to make you attractive re: the price, because there are others offering plenty of knowledge but I've never seen anything costing anything near this much.
I absolutely agree with others. The idea about Vitamin XL is very good, but the point is that 50$ is too much. The highest price I would have paid on continous basis id 20$/mo for the advanced option.
Yes...This IS redundant...UNDERscoring, but have to think there is value in you, Chandoo, hearing from as many as possible...
How little will be the incremental Cost to you of each Member for the THOUSANDS that join at something that ALL can afford...??
Say ONE TIME cost of $20-30.... OR, Monthly, >>CONTINUING<< subscription of say $2-3-5/month...
Be "Walmart", Chandoo...not Tiffany, if you truly want to help ALL of the 'Excel Community" become 'AWESOMW!!"...
You DESERVE TO MAKE A S-LOAD OF MONEY...! your site is,has been AMAZING...! Now...YOU, Chandoo, can 'pay it forward" by opening up your treasure chest for ALL >>Members<< to enjoy, at a price that doesn't keep deserving EXcelers from it just because they don't have ready cash...
Chandoo.org is perhaps the best practical, free Excel website out there. I have purchased the Excel School course and found it very useful. I use the site on occasion (perhaps 2 to 3 times per month) and find it extremely helpful. Excel is part of my job, but it is not my entire job.I would not even consider $30 - $50 per month for vitamin XL. I certainly can understand the desire to move to a subscription model, but the price point is way too high for me. Like some of the other commentors suggested, I feel like $50 to $100 per year is something I would be willing to pay, pretty much for the existing site plus a few extra's - wouldn't have to be everything you've listed in vitamin XL.At $30 to $50 per month, you are in the range of my cable bill, my mobile phone, and at multiples of a monthly Netflix subscription. If Excel is everything about your job, I could see where your suggested cost would be worth it; but for me, where Excel is simply a component of my job, I could not justify $30 to $50 per month. Perhaps the pricing structure could reflect more the differing needs of your users at lower pricing levels for someone like me.I want to thank you Chandoo for making your site available. It is a wonderful resource and I am grateful to you for sharing a great deal of your knowledge for free! I'm sad to see you move to a subscription model if it comes at the expense of the free site, but you are entitled to and deserve some recompense for you knowledge and work. I know you say the free site will continue, but realistically it's hard to see how it could not be affected by your subscription offering. I wish you good luck with your vitamin XL offering and hope you are able to design and price it in a way that is appealing to the current and future users of Chandoo.org.
Love the concept but pricing is an issue for me too. My company wouldn't pay that rate and I couldn't afford it either. Not to say that it wouldn't be worth it, it's just out of my range.
Do we get membership ID cards? 🙂
Hi Chandoo
First of all, Congratulations for coming up with a product like this . 🙂
I have been a consistent follower of your blog since long, and my feedback for this would be :
* As you already run Excel School and other training programs (That gives and additional benefit of downloading) so the Basic and Advance differentiation is a big No No from me..instead you can come up with a single holistic program covering all area.
* With already present HUGE FREE stuff I think the Excel Vault should contain stuff that is exculsively for members (Although i do not support blocking the free stuff :P)
* Similary I would not pay for seperate member's forum If i can get my excel problem solved on your free forum.
Although "Vitamin XL" is a good product but still I didn't find it Charismatic.
Rgds,
Akash
Hi Chandoo!
I think you risk dividing your community into two parts. I would spend the effort on developing new courses and updating them with the material made for VitaminXL instead. The price is just way too high for a subscription service like this. Remember that you are competing with free. Sure, your stuff might be some of the best out there. But for most people the price is too high.
What will happen is probably that people buy one month, get all the stuff, then maybe buy another month in a year or so when there is a lot of new content. This will give you a very uneven cashflow. But you would still have to update weekly or monthly with new content for the few that are regular subscribers.
As much as I want you to be able to pay your bills, I think this might be a bad idea. It is very hard to go from free to paid.
I'd be interested around $9.99 per year or up to $14.99. Even if you get 5000 users that is still a good chuck of change on your end for this information. 10,000 users which shouldn't be a problem and it's even better.
I love this site and all the awesome helpers but dont have an income to support the new vitaminxl. It is way out of my range 🙁
Hi Chandoo,
This is a great idea... but I have to agree that the pricing is just too high... please reconsider.
This is a very well done site with lots of good information presented very well. However, I get slightly more value from the comments, many from the top Excel guru's in the field. If you price them and most of us out of the site I would have no compelling reason to join.
Like many of the others here, I can't afford what you aer suggesting. $10- $12 per year is about it for me. As someone else said, go for the volume.
Good point. Do you want the community to pay you to answer questions for other community members?
If I'm to answer questions and help others, I want a piece of the monthly fees. Or at least a rebate on my own fee.
Hi Chandoo,
As I have now seen several comments posted after my own response, I assume you, or your staff are exercising a form of censorship?
If not, please contact me to assure me that all is well and your site is open and fairly operated. I would very much like to take part in this debate and have a lot to offer. I have re-read my own submission again and cannot find anything offending or any more inflamatory than the comments already posted.
Kind regards,
LeonK
I really doubt there's any censorship going on. WordPress (which this blog uses) is notorious for thinking regular posts are spam - it's likely, your comments went into the spam blocker unintentionally.
Nah. It just went to spam folder for some weird reason. If its any consolation, our spam filters do this (ie mark a valid comment as spam) about 0.06% of time. I have no idea why this happens but I cant blame our comment engine for being right 99.94% of time.
Hi Chandoo,
Firstly - I respectfully apologise for my last post, It must have been my own server preventing my response getting through as my last message was posted instantaneously.
Regards,
LeonK
At over 40 and with a family and mortgage, I’ve started a Business Degree in order to become an MBA. Your frank blog and clear love for your family inspired me back in Sep 2011 when I found myself in a job I was not equipped for.
With the aim of becoming awesome, you taught me Excel from scratch. I attended dashboarding, Excel and VBA School at great financial cost and I intend to go on to the other 2 schools when I have the time and money. I’ve also bought one of your online books. I have an immense amount of respect for you as a person and the ethics you have displayed through providing Chandoo.org.
Now, as a public sector health worker on GBP22,000 pa, I was saddened to read your advert for VitaminXl; was this your conclusion after musing over the salary data you collected earlier this year? That you want your users to help create it is quite disturbing.
Only you know what you want to achieve with Chandoo.org. I can’t see how a subscription service cannot impact on the current free access of data, especially if you are going for corporate membership. What is clear is that your original goals, values and objectives, as outlined in previous years have now changed and you want more from Chandoo.org.
if you decide to go for it, good luck to you and thank you for all that you have given to me personally. Could I just ask that you do it with purpose and commitment, and without potentially exploiting the consumers and customers that made you awesome in return?
Hi Leon,
First, let me thank you so much for learning from me & fellow members at chandoo.org. Your support to Chandoo.org is wonderful. I am so glad you found this inspirational, useful & awesome.
Let me clarify several points next:
The reason for Vitamin XL:
Almost all the products I have designed & sold on Chandoo.org have been developed by doing some sort of market research. I want to make sure that our community values these products and gets them in best possible form. And that is why we have this post in first place.
Over last 12 months, many customers told me that a subscription service would be a good idea for Chandoo.org. They told me this thru emails, thru phone calls & some even during face to face meetings (when I was in Australia).
As a smart businessman, at any given time I usually work on several new ideas (new posts, new features for this site, new products, new Excel techniques). So I wanted to make sure that if a subscription program should be offered, it should first have good support from our community. That is why I launched this discussion.
But after the initial few comments were posted, it was clear to me that many of our members find this either too trivial, too expensive or poorly designed.
Since I did not want to make rash decisions, I wanted to wait on this idea for a week before making any progress. So I let our community discuss this with comments & personal emails.
My initial plan is to announce an update about Vitamin XL's future yesterday (26th October). But due to 2 reasons, I have postponed this to Monday (29 October).
(1) I already wrote 3 articles this week, that means more than 40,000 people have been emailed thrice this week. I did not want to keep all of them busy once again, that too on a Friday.
(2) A classmate & close friend got married yesterday. Jo and I had to leave the house early. Thus I had very little time to compose all my thoughts, write the post, stay online in the evening to respond to few comments.
But you will see more about this on Monday 29 October.
Since you are a very valuable customer & supporter of Chandoo.org, I am going to personally send you my thoughts on Vitamin XL's future in email.
Finally: I am so thankful for your concern & love for Chandoo.org. I truly feel lucky to have supporters like you in this journey. More awesomeness to you.
Jordan,
Many thanks. I've attempted to post my actual response again to no avail.
Any ideas how I could galvanise it against spam detectors?
LeonK
Ha, not that I know of. WP's spam blocker seems random to me. Usually I have to email the blog's owner to have it released from quarantine (or, they will just copy and paste it with my name on it). It happens to me at least once on almost every WP blogs - except for Chandoo's.
Compare that protection to Google's bBogger, which seemingly blocks nothing (at least on my blog).
Thanks.
I had written Chandoo dot Org but as a http://www. On converting it, the post was, as you can see, accepted.
At over 40 and with a family and mortgage, I’ve started a Business Degree in order to become an MBA. Your frank blog and clear love for your family inspired me back in Sep 2011 when I found myself in a job I was not equipped for. With the aim of becoming awesome, you taught me Excel from scratch.
I attended dashboarding, Excel and VBA School at great financial cost and I intend to go on to the other 2 schools when I have the time and money. I’ve also bought one of your online books. I have an immense amount of respect for you as a person and the ethics you have displayed through providing Chandoo dot org.
Now, as a public sector health worker on GBP22k pa, I was saddened to read your advert for VitaminXl; was this your conclusion after musing over the salary data you collected earlier this year? That you want your users to help create it is quite disturbing.
Only you know what you want to achieve with Chandoo dot org. I can’t see how a subscription service cannot impact on the current free access of data, especially if you are going for corporate membership. What is clear is that your original goals, values and objectives, as outlined in previous years have now changed and you want more from Chandoo dot org.
if you decide to go for it, good luck to you and thank you for all that you have given to me personally. Could I just ask that you do it with purpose and commitment, and without potentially exploiting the consumers and customers that made you awesome in return?
Hi Chandoo.
Thank you for your public and private responses to my post. I've always considered myself privilaged to be a member of this community and continue to feel so. I, as will everyone, look forward to your Monday post.
yours respectfully,
LeonK