11–20 of 104 posts
An excellent example of the hacker-ethos failing. A decade ago, you could create a reasonable app in a month and make money. Now, the low-hanging fruit is gone. This app would get you kicked out of any poker-game I have ever been to, is over-priced ($20 for a glorified piece of paper), was marketed in a way that got the creator banned from Reddit, and made almost no money. That type of outcome might not be the best t…
In setting prices, remember the price elasticity of demand, which is how much people respond in terms of the quantity they buy depending on the price.
The demand curve might be such that as demonstrated two people want the app for $20 (the price charged). But perhaps ten people would buy it it for $9, maybe fifty people want it for $5, and perhaps at $0.99 no fewer than ten thousand people would buy it.
(In poker terms: you're giving them a price; how many big blinds would they call? Only the 1% of hands can call a 20 big blind raise, everyone else folds and moves on.)
If demand is highly elastic, setting the price at $2.99, $1.99, or $0.99 might be a great idea.
The author could try experimenting with discounts to see how much demand there is at various prices. It is not an exact science and there is no way to tell ahead of time. Starting at $20 and going down from there seems reasonable.
It might depend on how many customers the author wants to support.
I've drawn for you this diagram about how economists talk about quantity and price, illustrating it in a simple way (you can think of it as rows in a ledger going from high to low prices and listing how many are wanted at each price, high to low):
I have a bookmark to a personal Google Doc called “SaaS Business Ideas”, for whenever I think of a project that I think I can monetize. The Google Doc is actually view-only and says “Stop ideating about projects to make money! You probably don’t need the money. Just work on projects that you find fun.”
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While I appreciate the self-motivation idea generally - this article does nothing for me except make me grateful for free and open source types of folks.
People should mostly just not do this.
Surely that would be the infamous "I am rich" $1000 app that does nothing ? https://www.wired.com/2008/08/eight-people-bo/
Now, everyone, think about how much worse the world would be if this was a lauded or primary way to think about "how to make software." While I appreciate the self-motivation idea generally - this article does nothing for me except make me grateful for free and open source types of folks. People should mostly just not do this.