It’s always difficult to work out what you should charge for software. In one sense, as a digital download, the software has no ‘real‘ value. Despite what Microsoft or the record industry would have us believe, digital goods, delivered down a high speed connection, are not the same as a DVD you’d buy in a record shop or a loaf of bread freshly cooked at the local bakery.
The costs are mostly in the development, and once the product is completed, tested, and reasonably stable, that’s pretty much it. Sure, you have website costs and bandwidth costs - all ridiculously cheap these days, as well as support costs - not that high when you have a stable, easy to understand product.
Which brings me to PageFour. Over the past year I’ve played around with the pricing many times - all in an effort to determine which figure produces the greatest return. Apologies for my capitalist tendencies. The conclusion I’ve come to is that for small software products such as PageFour, there is a $30 price barrier.
Moving beyond the barrier, even by as little as $5 seems to have a seriously inhibiting effect on buyers. I’m not sure why this is, as $30 is not a vast amount of money, but the barrier does exist. People seem to hesitate, as if what might have been an impulse buy at $29.95 suddenly becomes cause for serious consideration at $34.95.
With that in mind, the price of PageFour will be returning to a more modest $29.95. The crowds have spoken.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
The price point is an interesting study. When you look at $29 you see the ‘2′ and internally rationalize that it is less than ‘3′ and so feel better. It’s interesting how the consumer’s mind works when it sees a dollar amount halfway between $30 and $40…
May 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
It’s interesting, isn’t. The 30s have quite the effect. I’ve paid 29.95 and 49.95 (psychologically because it’s under $50), but am often reluctant to pay anywhere in the 30s. Hmmm.
May 5th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
So that’s the secret! First thing tomorrow morning I’ll push the price up to $49.95.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
NO! Please!!
May 5th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I know a lot of people wouldn’t buy something that they’ve never heard of that costs fifty dollars. If you want to charge that, start making more products, like a plot helper, character designer, ect… Then start offering those as package deals, then slowly raise the price. But don’t raise it.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
First Tess convinces me to raise the price, now you convince me not to - I’m just so easily lead!
May 6th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
ROTFL - I’d no idea I had so much power (albeit briefly). And apologies to Darren for addressing him as Derek in an earlier comment.
But seriously, I was talking in general re price points. And in the end, I think holding the price at under $30 will sell more copies of PFN. It’s being discussed on an email listserv I’m on and I’ve written a lengthy email explaining the many ways it can be used
For a lot of writers, useful and affordable alternatives to Word are a huge boon.
May 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I think I’ve learned my lesson. I was hit with the very same issue about a year ago, when I tried raising the price over $30. At the time, sales were low anyway, so it was difficult to determine if the reduction was due to the price hike, or other factors.
I’ll be sticking with the pre-$30 figure for the foreseeable future.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Darren,
I have discovered your software through www.giveawayoftheday.com and I am quite impressed with it.
I am playing and enjoying it and if it fit a niche in my work tools I will be happy to support.
Thank you
Mario
May 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Glad you like it so far Mario.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I hope you make a character generator or something. I would love to have one of those. But I really love this software, and is better than word imao.
Keep up the good work!
May 7th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Darren;
I felt prety good about the price of PageFour at less than $30. I know for me, to go higher would have made me look at even higher priced software.
Under $30 is something that is easily justified, over $30 and there are other things to take into consideration.
I didn’t want an overly complicated application, but if I had to pay more, I would have looked at it from that perspective. What am I getting in comparison to others for paying X amount of dollars?
Then I think it would start to get into a “features war” which would be counter to what you created PageFour to be.
I got exactly what I wanted; a simple, elegant program that allows me to concentrate on my writing, without having to break the bank.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:17 am
You’re probably right Aaron. Too high a price and people would start expecting a colourful box and a whole marketing spiel to go with it, complete with shiny, happy people on the cover.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
This is a great program. I downloaded it free the other day and my husband tried it our. He saw right away a few features that he thought would be necessary to my writing. I was so excited when I showed him a few days later that you had already been working on these things and they were available for beta download. I am going to play with the program a bit more, but I’m sure I will be buying the full version when you release it. Thanks for such a simple, clear to use program.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Good to hear I’m on the right track Steph.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Strangely enough, I would feel hesitant about $34.95, but less so about $39.95
I hope the other visitors will not stone me for expressing this point of view
One way to satisfy your capitalist tendencies while also make some people happier, is to use bitsdujour.com to sell for a one-day discount.
That’s a great way to sell on impulse (and reach some crowds that don’t know about your site).
The discount I believe will not make you lose any money:
a] many people will buy on impulse, and some will buy after the promo has ended paying full price
b] I don’t know if you do any paid promotions, but small shareware houses usually have a lot of advertising cost to go against purchases. With bitsdujour you might consider the discount to be the cost of advertising.
They have it nicely explained on their website anyway. And the site is run by a software company that has few of their own titles on the market, so they do understand the shareware developer world.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Interesting you should mention Bits du Jour. I’ve been dealing with them for a couple of weeks now, and they’ll be offering PageFour at a discount next week - Wednesday 20th.
I’ll be posting about it the day before, just so people know, and have the opportunity to buy at the special price.