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$20 for a browser extension that blurs text on a page! Yikes! This strikes me as the sort of generic productivity tool that might be worth a buck or two, but

by jawns 7y ago

$20 for a browser extension that blurs text on a page! Yikes! This strikes me as the sort of generic productivity tool that might be worth a buck or two, but for $20, it had better blur text AND file my taxes for me. I would be really surprised if there were not free extensions that did effectively the same thing. And if there are not, someone could probably whip it up in a day or two, and there goes your business.

grenoire 7y ago
$15 if you read the copy atop, I don't think that's so steep.
- folkhack 7y ago
  Most extension devs can knock something like this out in a weekend. It's steep.
  - draugadrotten 7y ago
    If you price your weekend at $20, it is. Many devs would say $20 is 20 minutes billed time.
    - folkhack 7y ago
      Well - frankly I price this at "free-fiddy" because I hammered this out in 5m (just drop it into your console): https://kopy.io/sAgzt https://kopy.io/sAgzt Yes it's jQuery (and I know everyone on HN hates jQuery!) - a vanilla JS version would be just as trivial! Wrapping it in a Chrome manifest w/a simple "enable/disable" browser button-type interface would be about 20 minutes I guess.
      - jakear 7y ago
        And by the time you’ve wrapped it up, tested it, made the UI nicer (blur selected text, put a box around what will be blurred, allow for unblurring, etc.), don’t you think there’s something else you could have done for your company that would provide more than $20 value to them?
        folkhack 7y ago
        I'm in a competitive place and my company pays me to keep my sword sharp. I do that with lots and lots of solid tooling... a ton of it being stuff I've developed myself over years =) "Don't try the blood and guts routine, let technology do the work." Myself, I wouldn't ever put this into an extension because I'm certain it already exists and if not, I can bang out the base functionality in a console within 5 minutes and throw a gist in my GitLab or do a URL-JS thingy. 5m is worth $20 to me! $20 is a case of beers yo!
onion2k 7y ago
Pricing is incredibly hard to get right. It's very, very likely that the market for a tool like this is small, so charging $2 would actually net the author far less than charging fewer people $20. In that regard it's correctly priced at $20. The apparent simplicity of some code has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the amount you should charge for it. What you charge for your product should be based on the value that the customer gets from it and not the amount work that you've put in to it. If you decide a price based on the level of effort it takes you then you are almost certainly not charging enough. I would be really surprised if there were not free extensions that did effectively the same thing. And if there are not, someone could probably whip it up in a day or two, and there goes your business. The danger that someone could release a free version of your app exists regardless of what you've made. That's not a very good reason not to make an app and try to sell it.
- jawns 7y ago
  > What you charge for your product should be based on the value that the customer gets from it and not the amount work that you've put in to it. Go one level deeper. How much effort would a competitor have to put into building a competing product and undercutting you? If the answer is "one afternoon," then you either need to figure out a way to make competition less likely or set a more realistic price.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Maximising revenue while the isn't a competing product is a good idea though. Why would you reduce your price before there's any competition? That would just be giving money away. Also, people often trust a product they pay for more than something that's free. A plugin that's free could be doing all manner of nefarious things under the hood. A paid product comes with a level of implicit trust (wrongly, in my opinion, but still).
  - jakear 7y ago
    If it really takes the competition a whole afternoon to implement this, $20 is an incredible price. Even just an hour for any in-house SWE in America is going to cost the company at least $20.
skrebbel 7y ago
Most people can't code. If you can hack it together in hour then you're not the target audience. This is priced well, or even a bit low given the probably-smallish market size. We programmers should really learn to value our time and our skills better. Charge more.

by jawns 7y ago

grenoire 7y ago

$15 if you read the copy atop, I don't think that's so steep.

folkhack 7y ago
Most extension devs can knock something like this out in a weekend. It's steep.
- draugadrotten 7y ago
  If you price your weekend at $20, it is. Many devs would say $20 is 20 minutes billed time.
  - folkhack 7y ago
    Well - frankly I price this at "free-fiddy" because I hammered this out in 5m (just drop it into your console): https://kopy.io/sAgzt https://kopy.io/sAgzt Yes it's jQuery (and I know everyone on HN hates jQuery!) - a vanilla JS version would be just as trivial! Wrapping it in a Chrome manifest w/a simple "enable/disable" browser button-type interface would be about 20 minutes I guess.
    - jakear 7y ago
      And by the time you’ve wrapped it up, tested it, made the UI nicer (blur selected text, put a box around what will be blurred, allow for unblurring, etc.), don’t you think there’s something else you could have done for your company that would provide more than $20 value to them?
      - folkhack 7y ago
        I'm in a competitive place and my company pays me to keep my sword sharp. I do that with lots and lots of solid tooling... a ton of it being stuff I've developed myself over years =) "Don't try the blood and guts routine, let technology do the work." Myself, I wouldn't ever put this into an extension because I'm certain it already exists and if not, I can bang out the base functionality in a console within 5 minutes and throw a gist in my GitLab or do a URL-JS thingy. 5m is worth $20 to me! $20 is a case of beers yo!

onion2k 7y ago

Pricing is incredibly hard to get right. It's very, very likely that the market for a tool like this is small, so charging $2 would actually net the author far less than charging fewer people $20. In that regard it's correctly priced at $20. The apparent simplicity of some code has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the amount you should charge for it. What you charge for your product should be based on the value that the customer gets from it and not the amount work that you've put in to it. If you decide a price based on the level of effort it takes you then you are almost certainly not charging enough. I would be really surprised if there were not free extensions that did effectively the same thing. And if there are not, someone could probably whip it up in a day or two, and there goes your business. The danger that someone could release a free version of your app exists regardless of what you've made. That's not a very good reason not to make an app and try to sell it.

jawns 7y ago
> What you charge for your product should be based on the value that the customer gets from it and not the amount work that you've put in to it. Go one level deeper. How much effort would a competitor have to put into building a competing product and undercutting you? If the answer is "one afternoon," then you either need to figure out a way to make competition less likely or set a more realistic price.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Maximising revenue while the isn't a competing product is a good idea though. Why would you reduce your price before there's any competition? That would just be giving money away. Also, people often trust a product they pay for more than something that's free. A plugin that's free could be doing all manner of nefarious things under the hood. A paid product comes with a level of implicit trust (wrongly, in my opinion, but still).
- jakear 7y ago
  If it really takes the competition a whole afternoon to implement this, $20 is an incredible price. Even just an hour for any in-house SWE in America is going to cost the company at least $20.

skrebbel 7y ago

Most people can't code. If you can hack it together in hour then you're not the target audience. This is priced well, or even a bit low given the probably-smallish market size. We programmers should really learn to value our time and our skills better. Charge more.