Author: Omid David Tabibi
Date: 10:41:07 04/08/03
Go up one level in this thread
On April 08, 2003 at 09:38:28, Sune Fischer wrote:
>On April 08, 2003 at 07:38:34, Omid David Tabibi wrote:
>
>>On April 08, 2003 at 03:36:19, Daniel Clausen wrote:
>>
>>>On April 08, 2003 at 00:12:37, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>
>>>>If everything else is equal, then lowering the price should sell more.
>>>
>>>I don't agree with this one in general. (but I won't argue nearly as colourful
>>>as Vincent does ;) While this is probably true in many areas (like cheaper
>>>CDs/DVDs get sold more) in certain areas people (especially the manager-types)
>>>think a product must be a bad product _because_ it's cheap.
>>>
>>>Our company sells software to financial institutes, and depending on the people
>>>you talk to, it's sometimes a good sales argument to tell them "you need the
>>>best and hugest sun server there is to run this application". If we'd always say
>>>that it would also run on a small PC laptop, they wouldn't be interested at all.
>>>("Big companies need big solutions...") Whether customers of chess software are
>>>also like that, I cannot say, but based on the fact that some 1400ELO fanatics
>>>"clearly prefer the 2645ELO engine over the 2640ELO engine" makes me believe
>>>they could be as well. ;) (numbers are just wild guesses)
>>>
>>>Sargon
>>
>>I have no experience in computer chess marketing, but let me give you an example
>>from the program 'Braveheart 3D Checkers' which I released about a year and half
>>ago.
>>
>>This program was (and still is) the only fully rendered 3D checkers program, so
>>it obviously drew a lot of attention. I released it as shareware, so that the
>>users can try it for 30 days, then they have to pay $20 to register it. $20
>>seemed to be too much, and the ratio of sells to downloads was rather low. After
>>a month or two, I changed the price to $9.99, the sales more than tripled.
>>Although in the hindsight I think that $9.99 was probably too low, sending a
>>message "hey this program is so poor, that is why it is priced 9.99". Maybe
>>something like $15 would have been better.
>
>Interesting, although I don't see how people can pre-judge it as poor based on
>the price alone, if they can try out the demo first.
>
>I generally think software and music is too expensive, if a music CD only costed
>$1 I'd buy tons of them, when they go for $20 a piece I rarely buy anything.
>
>Too high price and you don't sell anything, too low and you don't make money.
>You need a market specialist to tell you the right price.
>
>I think Uri could try to set a price of $1, that's more of a symbolic value.
>There should be a few collectors wanting to buy then.
Your profit will be 0 or less for any price below $5. Just think about the time
you spend for customer support, in addition to a fee you pay to a company which
takes the orders for you (most charge something like minimum $2 plus 10%-20% of
software's price). Also consider your development costs (tools, time, etc).
For example for each $5 sale, you give 2$ + $1 to the company taking your
orders, so you are left with $2. Reduce another dollar for your customer support
time, and another $2 for your development cost. You are left with $-1. Enjoy!
>
>As Movei improves, the price can go up :)
>
>-S.
>
>>Today 'Braveheart 3D Checkers II' is available as advertising supported
>>freeware.
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