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Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

cardsagainsthumanity.com

131–140 of 168 posts

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#131
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? I'm an Android guy myself so I might be wrong here (and your app is an example of non pirate usage for jail-breaking), but I often hear young relatives talking about jail-breaking their iPhones to save those $1-2 on apps, which to be honest, is pretty shitty behavior IMHO (yeah, I lecture them, they look…

>aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? Careful not to fall into the trap of conflating jailbreaking with piracy. There are many, many good reasons to JB not even counting apps that end in -ous. Google voice and SMS extensions, f.lux, theming support, wifi tethering, and a great deal more low level customization than Apple gives you.

As I said, I'm an Android user primarily because it gives me much more freedom without rooting, and the few iOs devices I have (and hardly use) are not jail-broken. But people I've met who jail-break their iPhones do it mainly to pirate apps.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#132
post #81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a couple months back I released a WebGL Enabler for iOS with a pay-what-you-want model: http://demoseen.com/webglenabler/ I keep meaning to write a blog post about the results, but ~99.5% of people paid $0. Of the people who paid, probably around 50% paid the $1.99 I had as default, but what's really interesting to me is the way people priced it if they changed the value. I got a number of payments for amounts li…

aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? I'm an Android guy myself so I might be wrong here (and your app is an example of non pirate usage for jail-breaking), but I often hear young relatives talking about jail-breaking their iPhones to save those $1-2 on apps, which to be honest, is pretty shitty behavior IMHO (yeah, I lecture them, they look…

At least when I was a teenager, I didn't have a credit card number of my own and it would have been a PITA to negotiate my parents to let me use theirs every time I wanted something that cost just a couple of dollars (some shareware at that time I guess). So it was easier for me just to find a keygen/crack for those apps. Might something like this be in play with these jailbreaking kids?

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#133
post #81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a couple months back I released a WebGL Enabler for iOS with a pay-what-you-want model: http://demoseen.com/webglenabler/ I keep meaning to write a blog post about the results, but ~99.5% of people paid $0. Of the people who paid, probably around 50% paid the $1.99 I had as default, but what's really interesting to me is the way people priced it if they changed the value. I got a number of payments for amounts li…

aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? I'm an Android guy myself so I might be wrong here (and your app is an example of non pirate usage for jail-breaking), but I often hear young relatives talking about jail-breaking their iPhones to save those $1-2 on apps, which to be honest, is pretty shitty behavior IMHO (yeah, I lecture them, they look…

I'm an "Android guy" and the first thing I do with my new Android devices is at least gain root (so "jailbreaking"), and sometimes install a custom ROM. I'm sure some people do it to get apps for free, but for me it is solely because there are a number of things (such as complete backups) that can't be done without rooting the device.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#135

It seems like one takeaway is that a significant portion of people will just pay the default as stated, even if given a choice. I think people just have a hard time deciding what something is actually worth, so they'll take whatever advice is given. So, when pricing your products, if you're wondering if you should charge more, the default answer should be "Yes"

As a customer, I support this thinking. Most people (at least in USA) are encouraging the race to the bottom by caring only about price, consequences be damned. But I can honestly say, after thinking about it, I can't really see a large number of cases where slightly higher price would be bad. As a merchant, you can take that money, use it to make your next generation of products better, pay a better wage, heck even…

> Most people (at least in USA) are encouraging the race to the bottom by caring only about price, consequences be damned.

Are you serious? People have cared mainly about price since the dawn of history. Obviously people have particular quality level they want, but once that's met if it's a tradeoff between quality and price, price virtually always wins.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#136

It seems like one takeaway is that a significant portion of people will just pay the default as stated, even if given a choice. I think people just have a hard time deciding what something is actually worth, so they'll take whatever advice is given. So, when pricing your products, if you're wondering if you should charge more, the default answer should be "Yes"

I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#137
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? I'm an Android guy myself so I might be wrong here (and your app is an example of non pirate usage for jail-breaking), but I often hear young relatives talking about jail-breaking their iPhones to save those $1-2 on apps, which to be honest, is pretty shitty behavior IMHO (yeah, I lecture them, they look…

>aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free? Careful not to fall into the trap of conflating jailbreaking with piracy. There are many, many good reasons to JB not even counting apps that end in -ous. Google voice and SMS extensions, f.lux, theming support, wifi tethering, and a great deal more low level customization than Apple gives you.

SBSettings alone is worth the time that it takes to jailbreak!

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#138
post #136

It seems like one takeaway is that a significant portion of people will just pay the default as stated, even if given a choice. I think people just have a hard time deciding what something is actually worth, so they'll take whatever advice is given. So, when pricing your products, if you're wondering if you should charge more, the default answer should be "Yes"

I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.

That's engineers' whole problem really, we think we deserve little so that's what we settle for. The flipside of what you're saying is that people will pay the price for something even if they value it much more highly than the price. Capitalism is amoral, sorry.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#139
post #136

It seems like one takeaway is that a significant portion of people will just pay the default as stated, even if given a choice. I think people just have a hard time deciding what something is actually worth, so they'll take whatever advice is given. So, when pricing your products, if you're wondering if you should charge more, the default answer should be "Yes"

I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.

How do you know what anything is worth? If something will make me $100, but you think it is only worth $10, then what is it worth? $10 or $100?

Finding the price that the market will bare is precisely how you determine a product's monetary value.

Side note: if you want to see a entrepreneurial community without morals, I could point you to some places that would make you reconsider your opinion of HN.

Re: Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

#140
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a couple months back I released a WebGL Enabler for iOS with a pay-what-you-want model: http://demoseen.com/webglenabler/ I keep meaning to write a blog post about the results, but ~99.5% of people paid $0. Of the people who paid, probably around 50% paid the $1.99 I had as default, but what's really interesting to me is the way people priced it if they changed the value. I got a number of payments for amounts li…

I'm not sure if you considered this and your payment model made that easy or even possible, but I would guess that many people would like to try it first without paying anything and after that, they would pay whatever they think it is worth for them. I would have done this. And if there wouldn't be an easy way later on to pay/donate, I would have just leave it unpaid.

I've been toying with the idea of making a simple service like that. You can download file X for free, only by leaving your email address. Then, after a few days/weeks/months, depending on what the author wanted, the service emails you and asks you to pay for the thing you downloaded, and gives you a link to easily pay.

I've found that I'll definitely pay for things after I've tried them, but I'm more hesitant to do it before.

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