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A wierd bubble he/she lives in. "Raise your prices! Your prices are low! Raise them now!" I find most services now are extremely overpriced. Your "pay us $coff

by dgan 2y ago

A wierd bubble he/she lives in. "Raise your prices! Your prices are low! Raise them now!" I find most services now are extremely overpriced. Your "pay us $coffee$ per month", is absolutely not going to happen because your service is one of dozens or hundreds I randomly find kinda somewhat interesting in a given day. Ok If the service was a couple of pennies, i might consider it. Every single little app/service now thinks they are indispensable utility provider and by such are entitled to x% of my monthly salary. Get lost!!

stevoski 2y ago
He is the founder of WP Engine, by far the biggest WordPress hosting service.
- gaadd33 2y ago
  Is WPEngine larger than WordPress.com? Just curious since years ago WPEngine seemed like the scrappy small startup.
true_religion 2y ago
Ah yes, the bubble of having a product worth paying for. In B2C I think subscriptions are over used since products do not provide value over time but in B2B that should not be the case. Software that supports your business may be used be a daily basis, and the value can be translated into a dollar figure of time saved versus the alternative.
- dgan 2y ago
  Okey I realised I went a little too hard on this. I agree on the B2C versus B2B split and your analysis
aantix 2y ago
Are you an engineer in the U.S.? Seems like engineers rarely do the math on their productivity. A tool that costs $100/month and saves an hour or two can still be worth it.
- CamelCaseName 2y ago
  It's different for everyone, but I don't stumble across tools that save an hour or two that often. In fact, excluding the very well known tools (e.g. LLMs) I think I've found maybe 3 in my career and I only use one of them sporadically (a $20 one-time Excel add-in). The other two cost 4-5 figures and were provided by my employer at the time.
- addicted 2y ago
  This analysis is the right kind of analysis but most people use the wrong metrics. On the value of your time side, the metric that I’ve seen people always use is the average value of a person’s time. However, the real relevant metric is the marginal value of someone’s time. So,for example, if you are an engineer earning a fixed salary that works out to $100/hr, saving a few more hours will not earn you any more money. If, for example, it saves you some time, the real question is what’s the value of the time you saved. If it saves company time, then the answer is close to $0 with the only benefits being an earlier delivery (which may even be a negative in many workplaces for you personally). This may be a reason for the company to pay for the tool but not for you as an individual. Alternatively, if those 2 hours saved means you’re gonna earn an additional 2 hours of free personal time, then the question is what you will do with that personal time. If the answer is watch Netflix for 2 hours then the value of those 2 hours is likely much lower than $100/hr and in some cases may even be negative. Then there’s an incomplete analysis on the other side as well. If I save 2 hours by paying a freelancer $20 to setup my servers, I may be losing some educational value that I would have gained it by doing it myself. And for some there may also be entertainment value attached. Personally, there are several projects I can outsource that I enjoy doing myself. Paying Google to manage my emails and calendars (at least the less important accounts) is actually taking away from the enjoyment I get in setting up, tinkering with, and maintaining my NextCloud instance.

by dgan 2y ago

stevoski 2y ago

He is the founder of WP Engine, by far the biggest WordPress hosting service.

gaadd33 2y ago
Is WPEngine larger than WordPress.com? Just curious since years ago WPEngine seemed like the scrappy small startup.

true_religion 2y ago

Ah yes, the bubble of having a product worth paying for. In B2C I think subscriptions are over used since products do not provide value over time but in B2B that should not be the case. Software that supports your business may be used be a daily basis, and the value can be translated into a dollar figure of time saved versus the alternative.

dgan 2y ago
Okey I realised I went a little too hard on this. I agree on the B2C versus B2B split and your analysis

aantix 2y ago

Are you an engineer in the U.S.? Seems like engineers rarely do the math on their productivity. A tool that costs $100/month and saves an hour or two can still be worth it.

CamelCaseName 2y ago
It's different for everyone, but I don't stumble across tools that save an hour or two that often. In fact, excluding the very well known tools (e.g. LLMs) I think I've found maybe 3 in my career and I only use one of them sporadically (a $20 one-time Excel add-in). The other two cost 4-5 figures and were provided by my employer at the time.
addicted 2y ago
This analysis is the right kind of analysis but most people use the wrong metrics. On the value of your time side, the metric that I’ve seen people always use is the average value of a person’s time. However, the real relevant metric is the marginal value of someone’s time. So,for example, if you are an engineer earning a fixed salary that works out to $100/hr, saving a few more hours will not earn you any more money. If, for example, it saves you some time, the real question is what’s the value of the time you saved. If it saves company time, then the answer is close to $0 with the only benefits being an earlier delivery (which may even be a negative in many workplaces for you personally). This may be a reason for the company to pay for the tool but not for you as an individual. Alternatively, if those 2 hours saved means you’re gonna earn an additional 2 hours of free personal time, then the question is what you will do with that personal time. If the answer is watch Netflix for 2 hours then the value of those 2 hours is likely much lower than $100/hr and in some cases may even be negative. Then there’s an incomplete analysis on the other side as well. If I save 2 hours by paying a freelancer $20 to setup my servers, I may be losing some educational value that I would have gained it by doing it myself. And for some there may also be entertainment value attached. Personally, there are several projects I can outsource that I enjoy doing myself. Paying Google to manage my emails and calendars (at least the less important accounts) is actually taking away from the enjoyment I get in setting up, tinkering with, and maintaining my NextCloud instance.