[stomachmonkey]

Not paying them is not harsh. We never pay, in fact we have even started a new way to monetize it called early access. We get people to pay us a discounted price to play broken code. How awesome is that.

We get far better results and a stronger community than when we just do open betas.

Admittedly easier to do in gaming.

Give them 6 months of free access in exchange for the beta testing. That does not mean do 6 months of testing. That means give them access for 6 months for free in exchange for 2 weeks of testing.

It's a startup, why give money away when you don't have to.

As far as the pricing, the tiers are too close. Taking a guess I think your rationale is the 11.99 is not THAT much more and if they are willing to go $10 they'll go $12.

What that does in actuality is devalues the higher tier or inflates the lower tier and confuses the consumer resulting in they are more likely to choose neither.

Do one price, the Gold at $9.99. As your user base grows add the Platinum as an offer and grandfather the early adopters.

With respect to my comment on content, it's not the signed up users who care about it. No one cares whether they search or not. It's about acquiring users.

You need to give them a reasonable value proposition. You are asking them to give you money, you need to provide as many compelling reasons as you can for them so do so.