
Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App - e4m
I've grown tired of giving software away. So, I want to experiment with recouping some of the costs. I'm wrestling with pricing. I don't want to go too low as I'm concerned people will think it's cheap, and not too high as I want it to be easily affordable by average folks. I see value in micro-payments, but google check-out charges 2.9% + .30 cents a pop. So, I need the range (I think) to be $5.00 to $25.00. I feel both extremes are bad. Any suggestions?
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patio11
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 possible
way, guys.)

Charge for value. It isn't a "little" app or a "simple" app. Your customers
are not programmers and do not know how many LOC it was (or, on the other
extreme, how much loving care you put into it). They only see the value
delivered to them. Price appropriate to the value.

People pay more money than you will ask, far more, for things which matter far
less to them. Always remember that!

Charge more.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _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 charging half of the current
price may easily quadruple your paying userbase.

Finding the right price can be done only through trying different prices. At
some point Amazon was giving random discounts to their users and trying to
pinpoint the ideal price for the item. It didn't last long, of course, as
people started gaming them, but it just goes on to show that the price
validation _is_ a big deal.

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.

In the end it all very much depends on the application and the target customer
base.

~~~
imp
>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.

~~~
derefr
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.)

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patio11
A domain name is $10 a year, and hosting at GoDaddy was about $4 a month back
when I used it for selling downloadable software. "Recouping the costs" is
setting your ambitions way, waaaaaay too low. (Indeed, if you're a
professional programmer, the biggest cost _by far_ is the imputed value of
your time.)

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phreanix
Have you tried putting it online with a paypal donate button? That's worked
wonders for our site and we make more than enough to break even. You'll find
that firearms enthusiasts are generally a generous and thankful bunch and if
you phrase a request for donation the right way they'll be more than happy to
contribute towards your expenses.

I know of one who made a similar app for airgun users that is free but has nag
screens but most everyone I know on the airgun forums have shot over (excuse
the pun) the small fee to get rid of them out of gratitude for the app, which
we all have found quite useful.

<http://www.chairgun.com/offset/chairgun2.htm>

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bdfh42
I would tend towards the higher price as long as your app is good value. You
always have to compete the the "I could write that myself" viewpoint - but
make it clear that the $25 will save the customer several hours work and meet
their needs and you probably have a sale.

Try before you buy is the time honoured way of proving utility and value but
that adds the cost of adding security to the app. Perhaps an unconditional
money back guarantee?

~~~
andrewf
If the software's any good, cracked warez versions will end up floating about
anyway.

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mahmud
What does it do? What other software does the same thing and why is yours
better?

~~~
e4m
It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain,
powder, etc. It's command line only. It's windows only. No GUI, but it's very
simple to use and accurate. Very useful for folks who reload their own
ammunition. Covers all calibers from smallest to largest.

~~~
pasbesoin
What about making it an iPhone/Android/similar application? I envision people
using it not just when reloading, but at the range, when buying ammo at the
store, etc. I may be completely off in my opinion, but it seems the kind of
thing that aficionados would drop a few bucks on. Some for making actual
decisions; others to use as an adjunct/reference in conversation. And those
phones are becoming a vast marketplace. For those using it for real work,
other than reloaders, it would also place it at their disposal where they most
need it: In the field.

Downside: Less of a percentage as your take. Upside: You're not hosting the
store.

~~~
mahmud
iPhone app; for some reason I don't think the intersection between gun owners
and iphone owners is big enough to justify the cost of development.

~~~
ssharp
I'd like to hear more on this cost of development. The biggest cost would be
buying the developers license. His algorithms are already written, so it's
just porting them to Objective C and slapping a Cocoa Touch interface to it
(which shouldn't take more than a day, soup to nuts with no Cocoa experience).
Plus you get the added benefit learning a useful SDK.

~~~
mahmud
_I'd like to hear more on this cost of development._

The cost of picking up a new platform to learn. The cost of hours spent
kluding an iphone development environment on whatever his current desktop is.
The cost of writing said app. The cost of submitting it to Apple and waiting
for how ever long it takes for approval. The cost of time spent polishing the
site so it fits with the glossy, round-cornered aesthetic of the iPhone
(possibly learning a graphics package or hiring a designer.) The cost of
waiting for the pennies to trickle in from the _huge_ user base of gun-owning,
bullet property measuring, badass iphone users who don't know of crackz sites.

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huhtenberg
I was going to say $19.95 (which is a de facto standard for moderately priced
installable software), but then I read your description below and I think it
just won't sell.

Expecting people to pay anything over $5 for a command line tool is
unrealistic. And if it is priced at $5, then it won't sell because $5 is just
not worth a hassle of paying for the users. Unless, of course, there is a
streamlined purchasing mechanism. One click checkout that pre-fills the credit
card info and such, but again that's not an option.

I would strongly suggest creating a GUI version of the tool and then it may
have a chance of selling at $10 to $20 range .. though again .. know thy
customers - people who make the ammunition at home typically do so because it
cuts their costs. This means that you will need to somehow convince these
cheap bastards that your app is worth paying for, and it's not an easy thing
to do.

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nailer
I expect these kinds of apps - single purpose, but useful tools - TuneUp, or
that Mac SSH filesystem thingy, etc, - to cost $15.

~~~
stuff4ben
I would say $9.99 but $15 is good too. If I find something that genuinely
helps me out, spending under $10 allows me to buy it without feeling guilty
about spending money without asking the wife. Not that I need her permission,
but in our relationship we clear most non-household purchases with each other
if they cost more than $20. If I'm spending $10, that's like spending my lunch
money. :)

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ssharp
I'd suggest $9.99 with a "trial". Give them a few calculations for free and
then shut it down until they register.

I'd also suggest setting up a free web version but under a completely
different name and domain. Slap on some relevant ads (Adsense, ebay, etc).

You're note going to destroy your market either way. You're not making
anything right now, so experiment!

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

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

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

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sireat
Oldie but goodie:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html)

In my startup one of the mistakes we made early was pricing things too low.

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CyberFonic
$19.95 ? or $24.95 ??

