Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 15:36:24 04/08/03
Go up one level in this thread
On April 08, 2003 at 13:41:07, Omid David Tabibi wrote:
>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!
But you have to consider this case here as a bit special.
Movei is his hobby, he has already done the work and now wants to see if he can
get some "cool cash" returns. Zero development costs in this case, mostly he
spent his free time. That's the great thing about software, very cheap to
mass-produce :)
No need to get involved with any business here, just use paypal or something,
sell it off his own webpage.
Customer support? Just refer them to the winboard faq. ;)
-S.
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