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Software Revenue/Licensing Thoughts

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f0dder:
Commenting on the original post:

As an end-user, I hate it. It's too confusing, and it smells of the developers trying to confuse me.
As a developer, I hate it - it's a maintenance and support nightmare.
As a reverse engineer and protection developer, I like it - sounds like a fun 6+ month project to implement.

40hz:
FWIW I got to the line that read "$5 for 4" and stopped reading...

I understand where you're going, but I'd never be able to present it to any of my clients. They hate tiered or granular pricing schemes. Their attitude is: "Don't give me details, just quote me a firm price for XXX copies of the whole package. I'll either hand you a check - or thank you for your time and have someone escort you back to the lobby."

In my experience, business buyers usually don't want to know how you run your business. They just want a single number (or at most two) they can negotiate from. Anything over that tends to jeopardize the sale and make them think you're gaming them.

Most people start shopping with their head. But most make the buy based on a feeling. Which is why it's been said that you hardly ever get - or lose a sale - purely because of price. It's always price plus one other thing. Something to think about...

I used to give several options when I first started quoting on projects or services. Now I go in with one firm price and sometimes allow a little room if I seriously want "in" enough to dicker.

Guess what? My sales closure rate went up from around 15% to over 60%. That's a fourfold improvement gained by offering my clients much less to think about.

Weird I know. But that's the way it works in my business. :)

mwb1100:
My own personal opinion on this idea is that simpler is better than complex, and too many choices increases complexity.

I think that having 3 'tiers' of feature sets is about the maximum you should consider.

Having a menu of a slew of features is just kind of crazy.  And if you throw in the additional complexity of discounting for bundles of features, it'll make my head explode, and I don't think that's good for business. Yours or mine.

I'd end up spending all day trying to figure out which set of stuff I should buy to reduce my cost to the minimum ('cause I'm a cheap bastard) while still getting the features I want or need.  And if that sounds like a word problem for your linear algebra class - it is.  And believe me, customers really aren't looking for additional classwork when they're going to buy stuff.  At least I'm not.

Not to mention that it would almost certainly make licensing a pain, and 'd probably end up wondering why done feature wasn't working 6 months later - when I forgot exactly which set of features I had licensed.

Just thinking about this is making my head hurt...

mouser:
As everyone has said, complexity is a killer and you pay a real price for it..

I know that DC methods are more complex and confusing than they should be and it scares away people.

Renegade:
Hmmm...

Yeah... It's a bit over the top.

My goal there was to target emerging markets and present something that's flexible enough to make the software at least partially affordable.

I have a large portion of users in the third world.

Back to the drawing board...

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