10 ms·

I feel Coursera's pricing strategy is located at two opposite extremes and misses out an entire range of options in the middle. They either make an entire cours

I feel Coursera's pricing strategy is located at two opposite extremes and misses out an entire range of options in the middle. They either make an entire course completely free with no option to pay even if the student wants to, or they put it behind a paywall where one can't even start without paying. They along with their institutional partners are missing out revenue from people like me who'd like to pay some amount, but not the amount they fix. I'm happy to pay some amount without a certificate. They should consider giving a pay-what-you-like option for all their courses.

akg_67 10y ago
Are there any successful ventures with such "pay-what-you-like" pricing strategy? Having unsuccessfully tried such a pricing model myself, I have serious doubt about it's viability. Majority will not pay anything, very few will pay reasonable amount, and some will pay very little but will be very high maintenance. Payer: God dammit, I paid for your service and I want one hour of your support time. Company: How much did this payer paid? 50 cents! We need to hire someone who will take 30 cents to support this payer for an hour. This is one of those pricing strategy that sounds good and people will claim to support but in reality wouldn't.
- aaggarwal 10y ago
  As far as I remember, edX used to follow this 'pay-what-you-like' strategy for honor-code certificate, along with fixed pricing for verified certificate.
- zacketysack3 10y ago
  Bandcamp?
- lovelearning 10y ago
  It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data. Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it. Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it. [1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq [2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 [3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.html http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-l... [4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-for-you http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-wan...
  - akg_67 10y ago
    Thanks for sharing examples. These along with music related examples appear to be of one quick transaction of a fixed specification product with no commitment of ongoing support unlike 'longer duration' courses from Coursera or a subscription based ongoing relationship. Also these examples seem to avoid the free option and offer a broad pricing range. A quick 'back of the envelope' estimate of revenue and cost of BandCamp service (enough public info available) seem to suggest this pricing model might have low profitability.
  - peterarmstrong 10y ago
    Leanpub co-founder here. We're really happy with our minimum price + suggested price strategy, and have no plans to change it. When coupled with our sliders which clearly show the (very high, 90% minus 50 cents) royalties that are earned by the author(s), and with our free update distribution, we get a lot of benefits for our authors, including: 1. When there is a low or a free minimum price, readers who otherwise could not afford a book can get it legitimately. This can help build a community around the book. For example, https://leanpub.com/rprogramming https://leanpub.com/rprogramming has over 80,000 readers (free + paid), and while it has a free minimum price, it is also our top book by lifetime revenue. 2. Quite often, there is so much extra income earned by readers paying above the minimum price that it entirely offsets refunds. (We have a 45-day 100% refund policy.) 3. Because of the royalty transparency, variable pricing, 45-day refunds and the fact that readers are supporting authors by buying in-progress books, there's a very, very low amount of nastiness. I really like seeing author and reader email; quite often "I love Leanpub" is part of the sentiment, regardless of whatever issue is occurring. (We also sell completed books, but much of what Leanpub is based on is our writing workflow and our focus on selling in-progress books...)
    - lovelearning 10y ago
      I'm really happy to find out that a business model based on a sense of goodness and fairness is working out well for you at LeanPub. I feel cynicism and pessimism about people should not stop us from trying out different models.
    - 10y ago
- Illniyar 10y ago
  Well the "humble indie bundle" is doing well with this pricing strategy. Not sure if it's applicable outside that market, but it might. http://humblebundle.com/ http://humblebundle.com/
  - draven 10y ago
    I think it works well because there are incentives: pay more than the average to unlock a few additional games, and pay more than X to unlock everything. I don't know if unlocking everything by default would work that well.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      AFAIR it used to work well that way. I.e. I don't recall the first bundles to have "pay more than average" and "pay more than X"; as far as I can tell, it was clean "pay what you want". I don't know why they decided to include those tiers. Also, funny thing, looking at payment logs you can clearly tell the average is often purposefully inflated by some people (I guess the dev studios).
- golergka 10y ago
  Humble Bundle. Their pricing idea is great and can be applicable to a lot of different businesses.
aaggarwal 10y ago
I had been using such platforms (coursera, edX) since their inception, and they were delightfully helpful to me. They were free of cost at that time and I really appreciated that as a student. I feel a more apt pricing strategy would be to provide free/low-cost yearly access to students and a free basic course + paid advanced courses to non-students.
- r3bl 10y ago
  I would be more than happy to pay up to $200-$250 (note: close to half of my monthly salary) to get a yearly access to Coursera courses and not having to pay any additional money to them what so ever. Now that I think about it, I would like to see that as an option.

akg_67 10y ago

Are there any successful ventures with such "pay-what-you-like" pricing strategy? Having unsuccessfully tried such a pricing model myself, I have serious doubt about it's viability. Majority will not pay anything, very few will pay reasonable amount, and some will pay very little but will be very high maintenance. Payer: God dammit, I paid for your service and I want one hour of your support time. Company: How much did this payer paid? 50 cents! We need to hire someone who will take 30 cents to support this payer for an hour. This is one of those pricing strategy that sounds good and people will claim to support but in reality wouldn't.

aaggarwal 10y ago
As far as I remember, edX used to follow this 'pay-what-you-like' strategy for honor-code certificate, along with fixed pricing for verified certificate.
zacketysack3 10y ago
Bandcamp?
lovelearning 10y ago
It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data. Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it. Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it. [1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq [2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 [3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.html http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-l... [4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-for-you http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-wan...
- akg_67 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing examples. These along with music related examples appear to be of one quick transaction of a fixed specification product with no commitment of ongoing support unlike 'longer duration' courses from Coursera or a subscription based ongoing relationship. Also these examples seem to avoid the free option and offer a broad pricing range. A quick 'back of the envelope' estimate of revenue and cost of BandCamp service (enough public info available) seem to suggest this pricing model might have low profitability.
- peterarmstrong 10y ago
  Leanpub co-founder here. We're really happy with our minimum price + suggested price strategy, and have no plans to change it. When coupled with our sliders which clearly show the (very high, 90% minus 50 cents) royalties that are earned by the author(s), and with our free update distribution, we get a lot of benefits for our authors, including: 1. When there is a low or a free minimum price, readers who otherwise could not afford a book can get it legitimately. This can help build a community around the book. For example, https://leanpub.com/rprogramming https://leanpub.com/rprogramming has over 80,000 readers (free + paid), and while it has a free minimum price, it is also our top book by lifetime revenue. 2. Quite often, there is so much extra income earned by readers paying above the minimum price that it entirely offsets refunds. (We have a 45-day 100% refund policy.) 3. Because of the royalty transparency, variable pricing, 45-day refunds and the fact that readers are supporting authors by buying in-progress books, there's a very, very low amount of nastiness. I really like seeing author and reader email; quite often "I love Leanpub" is part of the sentiment, regardless of whatever issue is occurring. (We also sell completed books, but much of what Leanpub is based on is our writing workflow and our focus on selling in-progress books...)
  - lovelearning 10y ago
    I'm really happy to find out that a business model based on a sense of goodness and fairness is working out well for you at LeanPub. I feel cynicism and pessimism about people should not stop us from trying out different models.
  - 10y ago
Illniyar 10y ago
Well the "humble indie bundle" is doing well with this pricing strategy. Not sure if it's applicable outside that market, but it might. http://humblebundle.com/ http://humblebundle.com/
- draven 10y ago
  I think it works well because there are incentives: pay more than the average to unlock a few additional games, and pay more than X to unlock everything. I don't know if unlocking everything by default would work that well.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    AFAIR it used to work well that way. I.e. I don't recall the first bundles to have "pay more than average" and "pay more than X"; as far as I can tell, it was clean "pay what you want". I don't know why they decided to include those tiers. Also, funny thing, looking at payment logs you can clearly tell the average is often purposefully inflated by some people (I guess the dev studios).
golergka 10y ago
Humble Bundle. Their pricing idea is great and can be applicable to a lot of different businesses.

aaggarwal 10y ago

I had been using such platforms (coursera, edX) since their inception, and they were delightfully helpful to me. They were free of cost at that time and I really appreciated that as a student. I feel a more apt pricing strategy would be to provide free/low-cost yearly access to students and a free basic course + paid advanced courses to non-students.

r3bl 10y ago
I would be more than happy to pay up to $200-$250 (note: close to half of my monthly salary) to get a yearly access to Coursera courses and not having to pay any additional money to them what so ever. Now that I think about it, I would like to see that as an option.