You MUST See the Price for this Software

[Renegade]

OK - ready... CLICK!

So... How's the price?

[Josh]

That is a great way to sell a product. I wonder if such a policy would work for most smaller software companies. One product which comes to mind is roboform, of which I own 2 pro licenses, 1 pro portable license, and a freshly acquired pro palm license.

[justice]

Just repackaged donationware then for the cynical minded?

Actually it's similar to the radiohead album pricing. I guess the main problem with these things is, I've got no idea how much it is worth. If something is priced $20 dollars and I think it's worth its money than I'm a happy customer. If it's priced $120 for the same thing I'm unhappy. But if it's not priced then the price i pay is actually determined by the other factors in my life, how do you prioritize this purchase if you can't determine how valuable it is? I mean i'd want to give the developer a fair price for his goods but because there's always other factors and he would be happy with any amount? Becauese he mentions 'some people would pay $200-300' it's a bit of a guide price so I appreciate that as an indication of the quality of the product.

No person pays 'whatever they'd think it's worth' for software products because their value becomes apparent over time, after unlocking, using, refining and working with the software for a length of time. It's like shareware without trial. It confuses me, even though the reasons for being confused maybe are hypocritical.

[Ralf Maximus]

It's quite brilliant.  I wonder how it's working for them?

[justice]

Brave thing to do though as a developer I have to say.

[nudone]

in marketing/advertising terms perhaps "choose your own price" is better than "please make a donation". okay, okay, i shouldn't have said that - we've had plenty of discussion about donationware.

[Grorgy]

The difference to donationware tho is that you do have to pay something, according to the page you only get a trial version with limitations unless you do.

[vradmilovic]

It's quite brilliant.  I wonder how it's working for them?

-Ralf Maximus (October 29, 2007, 08:08 AM)

I think that author posted this idea somewhere some time ago. He was quite pleased with results, if I recall correctly.

Personally, I'm not sure what to think. Although reasons for this from their web page make perfect sense, I don't think that it would work for everyone. For start, it looks slightly unprofessional to me. No matter of that, I'm still tempted to run a time limited test and see how it would work for one our products.

[Ralf Maximus]

I contacted the author via email, and Christian was kind enough to respond. 

He says he just started this model 3 weeks ago, but has made more money than in the last year he's been selling the software.  He suspects a certain number of purchases are from supporters who are voting in favor of the business model, not necessarily musicians who want the software.  Thus it's difficult this early on to say how successful the whole thing is.  I think I'll write him again in six months and see how things are going.

The number of users who went for the cheapest price (50 cents) is about 30%, while the average of all puchases is around $9.

I've written back asking for permission to post his correspondence in its entirely; I'll do that if/when he says OK.

[Renegade]

That's funny. I was actually thinking of 'buying' it for $10 or $20, not because I need it, but because it just seemed rather cool of him to do that! I'm guessing that he's bang on the money there for getting the 'underdog vote/buy'.

[vradmilovic]

He says he just started this model 3 weeks ago

-Ralf Maximus (October 29, 2007, 04:19 PM)

Oh, then it wasn't him that I remember then... I stand corrected.

[Ralf Maximus]

Just got permission to post the reply from Christian ([email protected]):

Hi Ralf,

I'd say the model has been quite successful at the moment. I've only started this thing about three weeks ago, so it's probably a bit early to make a definitive statement, but in these three weeks I've earned what I've earned before in a year (with a fixed price of 40 Euros). The average price people pay is around 9 US Dollars at the moment, so people really seem to be willing to pay non-negligible amounts. The number of buyers who went for the cheapest option of 50 Cents (to cover Paypal expenses) is definitely lower than I expected, about 30 percent (which, interestingly, is of the same order of magnitude as for the new Radiohead, where also about 30 percent of the people paid basically nothing). So, all in all I'm glad I've taken this move! The only thing one might suspect is that quite a few people have bought the software just to support the idea, and if all developers would do it this way, the "marketing effect" of the new payment method would no longer be there...

By the way: I think what I do is not donation coding. There is the fundamental difference that people FIRST have to pay (albeit almost nothing) and THEN get the product. I've observed it from myself that I often download something from a donationware page and, in spite of being really satisfied with the software, never come back to donate because I basically forget it. So the order of things seems important to me.

Cheers, Christian

[Renegade]

By the way: I think what I do is not donation coding. There is the fundamental difference that people FIRST have to pay (albeit almost nothing) and THEN get the product. I've observed it from myself that I often download something from a donationware page and, in spite of being really satisfied with the software, never come back to donate because I basically forget it. So the order of things seems important to me.

That seems like a very important point there. I'm quite sure that there is donationware that I use that I've never donated for.

[nosh]

I wonder how he'd fare if he fixed the price to USD 9.00, which is what most people seem to think is a good bargain for the software. 40 Euros is over six times that amount and not a very good pricing model to compare against.

[Carol Haynes]

Actually it is an interesting idea ... a possible corollary of the 'pay what you want' approach could be that you provide a copy at that price but users would have to decide if each future update/version is worth a further purchase rather than the current model where most users assume that if they buy something they are entitled to updates (at least for a period of time if not forever).

The upshot would be that if you have a product the users value and use a lot you may generate a small but steady flow of funds and in the long run do rather better than a fixed price for a few sales and then work for nothing to keep improving the package.

[Chessnia]

It is definitely an idea worth considering...

[zridling]

It's a great idea for first-time buyers. Consider that they're using it far beyond the trial, perhaps in comparison to a competing app, and as justice hinted, over time you could more accurately gauge its value to you.