Credits look like a solution to variable cost. They're really a way of moving the variance onto the user without telling them.
In Arteza a quick edit and a full multi shot render are about 12x apart in what they cost us to run. Both are priced in the same unit. So someone learns an exchange rate from the cheap action, builds a mental model, then spends a third of their balance in one click and feels robbed. That isn't a pricing bug. We asked them to hold a cost model in their head that we never showed them.
What's worked is putting the credit cost on the button before the click instead of in a docs table. Boring fix, and it cut the where did my credits go messages more than any price change we made.
The part I haven't solved is failures. A bad output still burned the compute. Refund it and people retry until they like the result. Don't refund and credits feel like a slot machine. We refund and eat it, which won't scale.
I m not really a person who likes sharing my everyday life online =) That s one of the reasons I m really happy to be part of the Product Hunt community.
I like being able to stay in touch with like-minded people and have everyday conversations about things we re building, learning, and interested in. But I understand that social media is a big part of today s lifestyle, and it s absolutely great that it gives people a way to connect, share, and find each other.
