
Ask HN: Why aren't the price of online services based on user location? - erkanerol
I am a software developer in Turkey. Salaries in Turkey are lower than USA but we have to pay the same as US citizen for online services or international books. For example, in Turkey standards, $40 for a book or $500 for an coursera specializations is so expensive.<p>What do you think about this situation?
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Freak_NL
Please define _online services_. Renting a VPS has a fixed cost associated
with it regardless of your location, so the hosting provider can't do much to
differentiate prices based on the customer's location.

You are probably referring to digital products that have an initial
development cost, but no or negligible transport and manufacturing costs.
Buying a digital game on Steam is a good example of this (this goes for films,
ebooks, and music as well).

Game prices on Steam can be based on the GDP of your country, because if they
used the same prices as in Western Europe or the US everywhere, a lot of
people would not be able to afford the games. For a game developer on Steam a
lost sale means less profit, whereas a sale, _any sale_ , means profit — even
if the price was heavily discounted — at no, or almost no, additional cost for
the service rendered. Not everyone does this though, because that is how a
free economy works. If a game studio thinks they can sell more games in Turkey
by lowering prices there, they will probably do it.

On the other hand, if someone is selling an ebook that no one else sells, and
they know that you are willing to pay the full price even though it costs you
more (relatively speaking), then why would they lower the price? They are a
business, not a philanthropy.

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erkanerol
Most of the books about software development in amazon can be downloaded from
libgen.io. Many course in pluralsight can be downloaded via torrent. Almost
every programs for windows are hacked. I accept those are not ethical but
unfortunately most of the people in countries like Turkey don't pay for the
products. I think those are not affordable and it increase s the use of pirate
products.

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kspaans
There are two ways to think about the price of something: cost and value. If
the services or good don't provide enough value to Turkish people, they won't
buy them!

I'd say you are right to point out that it costs more-or-less the same to
deliver digital services like Coursera. But perhaps because the content was
largely produced in the US (I'm assuming it is) their costs align with US
wages and costs.

