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Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

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Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#61

Post by imp »

huhtenberg wrote: post #56
patio11 wrote: post #25

The single best advice I've ever heard for pricing: charge more. Seriously. Whatever number you're thinking of, it is too low. Think of a number that makes you wince. That number is too low, too. Many people here will suggest you charge like $5 or $10. These people are unwilling to buy your application at any price. They are not your customers. Their opinion on your price is irrelevant. (I mean this in the nicest pos…

> Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases cha…

>Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent.

Are you suggesting that the other direction is preferable? I would think that it would be worse to keep jacking up the price.

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#62

Post by xenophanes »

jamesbritt wrote: post #50
petercooper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the sort of stuff technical folks want to be able to use (and script) from the command line. This guy has written an app for people who are into guns .

"This guy has written an app for people who are into guns." How many gun owners do you know? I know a bunch. They're an odd group, insomuch as they are not as simple to peg as some might think. Sure, some are Dukes of Hazzard beer swilln' hicks, but others are top-grade software developers, teachers, and engineers. I'm skeptical about selling CLI apps in general, but I don't think it's made any better or worse when t…

Quit being offended. If we take "gun owners" to mean "people completely at random" (i.e. no prejudice) then what he said is true. Random people don't like CLIs. Random people are completely different than people who want to write database archiving scripts. Script writers like CLIs better.

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#63

Post by paulgb »

jsonscripter wrote: post #44
khangtoh wrote: post #33

This is a great indication of the potential of a desktop "appstore". If it works for the iPhone, why not desktop?

It always has? 99% of all software sold is for the desktop.

Mostly sold through brick-and-mortar retailers, though.

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#64

Post by patio11 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #56
patio11 wrote: post #25

The single best advice I've ever heard for pricing: charge more. Seriously. Whatever number you're thinking of, it is too low. Think of a number that makes you wince. That number is too low, too. Many people here will suggest you charge like $5 or $10. These people are unwilling to buy your application at any price. They are not your customers. Their opinion on your price is irrelevant. (I mean this in the nicest pos…

> Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases cha…

Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent.

I think you will find in the typically B2C sales cycle -- which is a term that makes me laugh, since it typically fits inside a browser session -- customers do not have access to the contents of your lunchbox from last Tuesday or your pricing strategy from yesterday. The only thing they see is your price, today. This is one reason that nearly everyone who starts at $200 and goes to $20 fails -- not because they "lose credibility" (no one saw the $200 price -- really, no one, the no sales problem in software is almost always caused by the marketing strategy "Put up a website and pray someone discovers it") but because charging $20 for applications communicates that the value provided by them is negligible.

(Relatedly: your competitors' pricing does not matter because your customers will probably never see it.)

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#65

Post by huhtenberg »

imp wrote: post #61
huhtenberg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases cha…

>Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. Are you suggesting that the other direction is preferable? I would think that it would be worse to keep jacking up the price.

Well, no, not really. Overpricing by much is really bad. Underpricing is not good either, but can be remedied by releasing new versions under new pricing. Overpricing by little is the best though, because it allows fine tuning the price with sale or coupon discounts. So again it comes down to knowing the target userbase and making a reasonable initial guess.

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#66

Post by Rob15283 »

davidw wrote: post #15
cosmo7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get more money from making the application into a web application and getting commission from click-through sales of actual hardware.

Or you could try both... limit the web version some, and sell the desktop one.

It sounds to me like this would be a good candidate for an iPhone and BlackBerry app. How many people shoot guns when they're sitting in front of the computer (other than us developers)? ;)

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#67

Post by derefr »

imp wrote: post #61
huhtenberg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases cha…

>Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. Are you suggesting that the other direction is preferable? I would think that it would be worse to keep jacking up the price.

I would say that you sell the program at several different price ranges: call one Standard and one Enterprise, and another Home, and so on. They don't have to be any more different than the various versions of Windows are—that is, about 1% alteration, basically features flipped on or off in the shipped client using flags built into the reg. key.

Put them at drastically different price points. See which one(s) sell. Eliminate the price points/versions that don't, and roll their "benefits" upward (or downward, if you want to be nice.)

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#68

Post by binarycheese »

tom_rath wrote: post #40
patio11 wrote: post #25

The single best advice I've ever heard for pricing: charge more. Seriously. Whatever number you're thinking of, it is too low. Think of a number that makes you wince. That number is too low, too. Many people here will suggest you charge like $5 or $10. These people are unwilling to buy your application at any price. They are not your customers. Their opinion on your price is irrelevant. (I mean this in the nicest pos…

Exactly what I hopped on here to say. To add to it: If someone is going to open their wallet and bother to enter a credit card number on your site, $10 is the same as $25. If your product saves someone a few hours of effort, $25 is a trivial amount of money to buy that time -- you will have a sale. Don't compete on price -- compete on provided value. Make your app the best way to resolve 'Task X' and people will buy…

My story exactly. I get more issues, how to-s etc. in support email and site forum from people using the "Free Version" of my software

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#69

Post by crux_ »

e4m wrote: post #7
torr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if there is other software that does what yours does, what is being charged for it?

The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. So to clarify. I have to pay for web hosting, bandwidth, storage... as those things cost me money.

?????????????? That's it?

Sign up for one of the millions of free blog/file hosts. Don't bother with a real domain name. Google pages seems nice.

Re: Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

#70

Post by jamesbritt »

xenophanes wrote: post #62
jamesbritt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This guy has written an app for people who are into guns." How many gun owners do you know? I know a bunch. They're an odd group, insomuch as they are not as simple to peg as some might think. Sure, some are Dukes of Hazzard beer swilln' hicks, but others are top-grade software developers, teachers, and engineers. I'm skeptical about selling CLI apps in general, but I don't think it's made any better or worse when t…

Quit being offended. If we take "gun owners" to mean "people completely at random" (i.e. no prejudice) then what he said is true. Random people don't like CLIs. Random people are completely different than people who want to write database archiving scripts. Script writers like CLIs better.

"Quit being offended."

Who was offended? Not me. I'm pointing out a false view of gun owners. If Peter had in fact said "people completely at random" or "but they're not geeks", that would haven fine.

But emphasizing gun ownership as if it were particularly relevant (e.g., they are more likely than people completely at random to have trouble with the CLI) is bogus.

Oh, and quit being touchy. :)

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