5 ms·

Did you take into account how much time it will take you to process a non-trivial order? $20 seems quite low to me when you want to achieve a good hourly rate.

by middus 16y ago

Did you take into account how much time it will take you to process a non-trivial order? $20 seems quite low to me when you want to achieve a good hourly rate. Maybe you should bump it up a bit (> $50). It would still be a commodity price. edit: By the way, I totally love the design!

chaosmachine 16y ago
Thanks, you're right, I've increased the price to $50 for new orders.
- perlgeek 16y ago
  I was about to use your service for $20, but I wouldn't pay $50 for a hobby project of which I'm not sure yet how seriously I'll pursue it. I guess you just can't be everybody's darling...
  - zoba 16y ago
    Same. $20 sounded worth the risk, but I'm not going to do it for $50, especially without seeing any evidence of past names generated. Perhaps a Hacker News special? Or perhaps a different price for those who don't mind sharing the outcomes of your service, and a more expensive price for those who do mind?
    - middus 16y ago
      Why don't you go and try? He offers a refund in case you are not happy. Does not sound too risky to me.
      - zoba 16y ago
        As a graduate student, $50 seems like a lot of money to spend on anything except rent... Plus figuring out the return process and if its not super simple just seems like quite a lot of hassle.
- pbreit 16y ago
  $20 sounds low. $50 is reasonable.
- tptacek 16y ago
  $50 is also too low. Price according to the value you generate. You generate obvious value in three ways: (1) Company operators waste tons of time coming up with names. SWAG the number of hours you think people typically take to settle on a name (it took us several days). Back that out to a dollar figure by dividing the typical yearly salary of a funded company operator by $2000 and multiplying by hours. (2) Companies frequently rename. Put a dollar figure on the cost of a company rename 6 months in, then multiple that by the percentage risk you think the typical company has of renaming (how many renames do you see? how many companies do you think there are in your market?). (3) Better names generate business (or, they ostensibly do). By the way, I'd probably use Mint vs. Wesabe as my primary example here, since both sides mentioned Mint's name as a key asset. There is no way these three factors add up to just $50. A side benefit of charging something closer to your value is, working with people who think $20 is OK but $50 is too much will absolutely inevitably cause you heartache. The people that think $50 is too much are going to be bad customers (as a group). For any business, be it outsourced order management for prop trading firms or hobby figurine sales, $50 is a rounding error. Geeks have a hard time remembering that pricing isn't just about optimizing customer acquisition vs. customer value. It's also a key component of your positioning. If you charge hobbyist rates, you will serve the hobbyist market. Look at graphic design. It is very possible to get good-looking illustration done near your price point, but impossible to get it done by anyone with a reputation. Designers that serve real companies charge multiple orders of magnitude more just for piecework. And real companies wouldn't dream of slumming with the $50-$100 illustrators, even when those people have more talent. Pick the market you want to serve, and then tailor the price point to that.
  - sssparkkk 16y ago
    Apparently you missed the part where he quoted PG saying: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity" It's because he's charging a commodity price that I decided to give it a go and pony up. I would never ever pay the going rate for a 'professional' in this business.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      No, I got that part, and also the part of his positioning where he said "name consulting was previously only available to big companies and we want to make it available to smaller companies". Pricing isn't a binary decision between "cheap" and "nosebleed". This is another geek pricing pathology. I think $50 is too cheap. I think, if your market is "people that actually need names but are smaller than PepsiCo", there are very few three-figure prices that aren't rounding errors. Why would he want your business? How many entities are there like you, and how often do they pony up for names, and how much does it cost to support them?
jorgem 16y ago
I had this same service a few years ago, and even at $99 it is a money loser. And kinda boring after a while -- even if you autopick the names, you still have to review them before giving them to the client.

by middus 16y ago

chaosmachine 16y ago

Thanks, you're right, I've increased the price to $50 for new orders.

perlgeek 16y ago
I was about to use your service for $20, but I wouldn't pay $50 for a hobby project of which I'm not sure yet how seriously I'll pursue it. I guess you just can't be everybody's darling...
- zoba 16y ago
  Same. $20 sounded worth the risk, but I'm not going to do it for $50, especially without seeing any evidence of past names generated. Perhaps a Hacker News special? Or perhaps a different price for those who don't mind sharing the outcomes of your service, and a more expensive price for those who do mind?
  - middus 16y ago
    Why don't you go and try? He offers a refund in case you are not happy. Does not sound too risky to me.
    - zoba 16y ago
      As a graduate student, $50 seems like a lot of money to spend on anything except rent... Plus figuring out the return process and if its not super simple just seems like quite a lot of hassle.
pbreit 16y ago
$20 sounds low. $50 is reasonable.
tptacek 16y ago
$50 is also too low. Price according to the value you generate. You generate obvious value in three ways: (1) Company operators waste tons of time coming up with names. SWAG the number of hours you think people typically take to settle on a name (it took us several days). Back that out to a dollar figure by dividing the typical yearly salary of a funded company operator by $2000 and multiplying by hours. (2) Companies frequently rename. Put a dollar figure on the cost of a company rename 6 months in, then multiple that by the percentage risk you think the typical company has of renaming (how many renames do you see? how many companies do you think there are in your market?). (3) Better names generate business (or, they ostensibly do). By the way, I'd probably use Mint vs. Wesabe as my primary example here, since both sides mentioned Mint's name as a key asset. There is no way these three factors add up to just $50. A side benefit of charging something closer to your value is, working with people who think $20 is OK but $50 is too much will absolutely inevitably cause you heartache. The people that think $50 is too much are going to be bad customers (as a group). For any business, be it outsourced order management for prop trading firms or hobby figurine sales, $50 is a rounding error. Geeks have a hard time remembering that pricing isn't just about optimizing customer acquisition vs. customer value. It's also a key component of your positioning. If you charge hobbyist rates, you will serve the hobbyist market. Look at graphic design. It is very possible to get good-looking illustration done near your price point, but impossible to get it done by anyone with a reputation. Designers that serve real companies charge multiple orders of magnitude more just for piecework. And real companies wouldn't dream of slumming with the $50-$100 illustrators, even when those people have more talent. Pick the market you want to serve, and then tailor the price point to that.
- sssparkkk 16y ago
  Apparently you missed the part where he quoted PG saying: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity" It's because he's charging a commodity price that I decided to give it a go and pony up. I would never ever pay the going rate for a 'professional' in this business.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    No, I got that part, and also the part of his positioning where he said "name consulting was previously only available to big companies and we want to make it available to smaller companies". Pricing isn't a binary decision between "cheap" and "nosebleed". This is another geek pricing pathology. I think $50 is too cheap. I think, if your market is "people that actually need names but are smaller than PepsiCo", there are very few three-figure prices that aren't rounding errors. Why would he want your business? How many entities are there like you, and how often do they pony up for names, and how much does it cost to support them?

jorgem 16y ago

I had this same service a few years ago, and even at $99 it is a money loser. And kinda boring after a while -- even if you autopick the names, you still have to review them before giving them to the client.