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Do not talk about pricing

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Re: Do not talk about pricing

#161

Post by zodPod »

rdl wrote: post #143
zodPod wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS. When I go to a website that doesn't have prices listed and you have to "Call for a Quote" I move on. I know the prices are going to be garbage and it's not worth my time to deal with the idiots on the other end trying to scheme me into spending money with their company.

I'm ok with a mix of transparent and bespoke pricing -- it sucks to see 3 options with set prices, where you actually need something different and are willing to pay. The ideal is some kind of pricing calculator, though. 3 packages and a custom quote generator, or "call".

That's fair with custom things but when you're on a lab hardware site looking at a centrifuge for a home lab and you're curious how much it costs and they have "Call for Quote" listed, it's just infuriating. There's no customization. I want the centrifuge as pictured. How much is it?!

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#162

Post by brianwawok »

marcosdumay wrote: post #156
skylark wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's turn it around. If you invest 120 dollars into your retirement fund every year for the next 40 years, you'll end up with 33.5k. Instead, you spent 4.8k. The person who listened to a few commercials is up 40k on you at retirement. This is an extreme example (after all, you're not going to spend 10 dollars on Spotify for the rest of your life), but the principle of the matter stands: Money saved now will be worth…

How does that play at the negative interest rates times? Anyway, all that is true, and I did know that when younger. What nobody tells you is that there are a few times when your income grows faster than an exponential. Everything you save up before of one of those few times is basically worthless. Anybody's main goal should be to have as many of those income growing events as possible. Not giving-up everything when…

Stock market isn't negative interest

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#163

Post by exolymph »

50CNT wrote: post #91
corysama wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get. With an app, 90% are crap, 9% are ok but not what you personally prefer, 1% are great. So, gambling $2 with a seemingly 1% chance of greatness feels like an app costs $200. The reality is not that bad. But, it's all about how it feels. On top of that, it's not even really about the money. You don't want to feel bad about gettin…

And that's exactly why guarantees are so effective for sellers. It takes that risk off the customers shoulder, and due to the "Oh, it'd be embarrassing to refund this app, since that means I made a mistake", very few people actually go through with the guarantee. One pitch I found pretty neat goes roughly as follows. Buy now, and if within (30|90|365) days you at any point feel unsatisfied with it, feel free to ask f…

Great advice, implemented it: https://productcomms.club/product-communication-basics/

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#164

Post by exolymph »

fasteddie wrote: post #118
exolymph wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delivering games has minimal marginal cost to Steam. So they're not giving anything up by offering discounts.

They are -- the opportunity cost of more revenue. Just because you have low marginal costs doesn't mean you should train your userbase to expect discounts.

My guess is that Steam sales prompt people to purchase when they wouldn't have otherwise. I assume (hopefully correctly) that they're A/B testing this stuff and have data on the results.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#165

Post by rorykoehler »

ryanSrich wrote: post #127
wesd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the good reason? Is it because the pricing strategy is charge as much as the customer is willing to pay?

I can only speak to what we do at Catalyze. http://content.catalyze.io/blog/why-there-is-no-up-front-pri...

From the link:

>we believe strongly in a core message of the Lean Startup movement: We want to talk to people.

What if people don't want to talk to you? This should be entirely opt-in. Intercom makes this a seamless experience.

A certain large segment of people want upfront pricing information with no human involved. If you can't give exact pricing because your product/service is too complicated at least give some example setups and their respective costs. This way at least we have a ball park figure to anchor our thinking. No one wants to waste time exploring unfeasible (due to cost) options. Otherwise it becomes a turn off because it starts to feel like a negotiation rather than an exchange.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#166

Post by Iv »

What a bunch of crap. Of course people spend a lot of time arguing, discussing, even getting emotional about prices. When talking with a company you are client with you basically have two things you need to talk about :

- what you are selling - how much you are selling it

If I meet a company that does not talk about one of these two things, I'll move along.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#167

Post by ef4 »

restalis wrote: post #148
beat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing for the enterprise can be an incredibly complex thing. License management as well. I used to work for a company that provided custom pricing software for highly complex products (did you know a semi truck can have over 4000 options?). They charged hundreds of thousands for a custom pricing software solution - but it was mostly a custom job, some off-the-shelf software but mostly a ton of customization for tha…

That's not "pricing for the enterprise" you're describing, it's pricing for customizations. Yes, each customization can be negotiated separately and when there can be "over 4000 options" it makes sense to not display them all but to guide the client through. This may be a case where complexity may warrant private interaction (or at least it used to be that way as nowadays the entire array of option complexity can be…

> That's not "pricing for the enterprise" you're describing, it's pricing for customizations.

This is not a very meaningful distinction. Big enterprise software deals inevitably involve customizations and integrations.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#168

Post by restalis »

ef4 wrote: post #167
restalis wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not "pricing for the enterprise" you're describing, it's pricing for customizations. Yes, each customization can be negotiated separately and when there can be "over 4000 options" it makes sense to not display them all but to guide the client through. This may be a case where complexity may warrant private interaction (or at least it used to be that way as nowadays the entire array of option complexity can be…

> That's not "pricing for the enterprise" you're describing, it's pricing for customizations. This is not a very meaningful distinction. Big enterprise software deals inevitably involve customizations and integrations.

Yes, I wasn't trying to put them in antithesis, I was trying to point out the wider context, and yes, I agree with you (that the narrower context automatically involves all of the wider encompassing context). The meaningful distinction is that customization warrants contact requirement, for both big enterprises and individuals.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#169

Post by restalis »

zodPod wrote: post #128
josephjrobison wrote: post #2

The most surprising thing I learned from this is that even juxtaposing two options will help you get higher pricing. When thinking of product and service pricing, for me it's difficult to invent three different options sometimes, so it's relieving to know that I could create just two and it will get me most of the way there. It is also crazy to think how relational it all is. I don't really need that extra $7 beer at…

Seriously! Think about how we deal with Android/iPhone apps. I go to Five Below or a Dollar Store and stock up on $2-$3 items that are kind of neat even venturing into the $5 range occasionally for "premium garbage" yet I get on the Google Play store and see a really awesome app that fills one of my needs but it's $2! How can someone charge $2 for THAT? They only spent a year working on it and it fits my need perfect…

"if each site begins charging, using a news aggregator is going to be a very expensive proposition"

Yes, it could be, but that won't happen unless the act of publishing gets regulated (like in China, where even bloggers have to (or will have to) have publishing licenses) and forced upon an artificial asking price.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#170

Post by restalis »

What we should be aware about pay-walling broad public information is that we're not talking about some pure and simple business model here, with a publisher providing information as good for consumption (for which the clients pay). The act of information dissemination and the ability to reach an audience has value in itself. Interested parties will gladly step in to fill the void left by "independent" publishers gone pay-walled. Will the pay-walled information be of higher quality compared to the free one? Maybe! Actually it's safe to assume that the free information will be "free" only as in "free beer", but who cares? Then there is this bitch called "the network effect" which erodes that pool of "loyal customers" day by day making the pay-walled publishers gradually slipping into obscurity¹. Pay-walling information channels addressed at the broad public is a loosing strategy in the long run, no mater how one twists it under a study or another, and that is exactly because information is not in the same category with the tea lights or some other "IKEA pack".

¹ The publishers are aware of this, that's why they are using pay-walling only per article, after it reaches a number of views. By this they try to balance the the opportunity to get new clients (i.e. monetize the contents) with the risk of a complete audience drain (i.e. loss of relevance).

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