4 ms·

Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

28 points by e4m 17y ago

I've grown tired of giving software away. So, I want to experiment with recouping some of the costs. I'm wrestling with pricing. I don't want to go too low as I'm concerned people will think it's cheap, and not too high as I want it to be easily affordable by average folks. I see value in micro-payments, but google check-out charges 2.9% + .30 cents a pop. So, I need the range (I think) to be $5.00 to $25.00. I feel both extremes are bad. Any suggestions?

patio11 17y ago
The single best advice I've ever heard for pricing: charge more. Seriously. Whatever number you're thinking of, it is too low. Think of a number that makes you wince. That number is too low, too. Many people here will suggest you charge like $5 or $10. These people are unwilling to buy your application at any price. They are not your customers. Their opinion on your price is irrelevant. (I mean this in the nicest possible way, guys.) Charge for value. It isn't a "little" app or a "simple" app. Your customers are not programmers and do not know how many LOC it was (or, on the other extreme, how much loving care you put into it). They only see the value delivered to them. Price appropriate to the value. People pay more money than you will ask, far more, for things which matter far less to them. Always remember that! Charge more.
- tom_rath 17y ago
  Exactly what I hopped on here to say. To add to it: If someone is going to open their wallet and bother to enter a credit card number on your site, $10 is the same as $25. If your product saves someone a few hours of effort, $25 is a trivial amount of money to buy that time -- you will have a sale. Don't compete on price -- compete on provided value. Make your app the best way to resolve 'Task X' and people will buy it. Ignore those people who say you're too expensive. If they're wincing about $25 you really do not want them as a customer. Back when I priced software to be competitive 'on price', I attracted people who were looking for the cheapest solution and those people are, by far, the biggest pain in the tail for support that you will ever run into.
  - binarycheese 17y ago
    My story exactly. I get more issues, how to-s etc. in support email and site forum from people using the "Free Version" of my software
- huhtenberg 17y ago
  > Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases charging half of the current price may easily quadruple your paying userbase. Finding the right price can be done only through trying different prices. At some point Amazon was giving random discounts to their users and trying to pinpoint the ideal price for the item. It didn't last long, of course, as people started gaming them, but it just goes on to show that the price validation is a big deal. Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. In the end it all very much depends on the application and the target customer base.
  - imp 17y ago
    >Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. Are you suggesting that the other direction is preferable? I would think that it would be worse to keep jacking up the price.
    - huhtenberg 17y ago
      Well, no, not really. Overpricing by much is really bad. Underpricing is not good either, but can be remedied by releasing new versions under new pricing. Overpricing by little is the best though, because it allows fine tuning the price with sale or coupon discounts. So again it comes down to knowing the target userbase and making a reasonable initial guess.
    - derefr 17y ago
      I would say that you sell the program at several different price ranges: call one Standard and one Enterprise, and another Home, and so on. They don't have to be any more different than the various versions of Windows are—that is, about 1% alteration, basically features flipped on or off in the shipped client using flags built into the reg. key. Put them at drastically different price points. See which one(s) sell. Eliminate the price points/versions that don't, and roll their "benefits" upward (or downward, if you want to be nice.)
- mediaman 17y ago
  Best advice. It has to hurt people when they type in their credit card details. If it doesn't, it's too cheap. You'll make far more money turning a few cheap customers away while capturing the surplus of people who actually have a serious problem to fix. What others haven't mentioned yet is that this also gives you an excellent user base for any future products you decide to create and release. Would you want to market your next product to an existing customer base of a bunch of cheapos, or people who have prequalified themselves as individuals whose time is worth serious money and are willing to pay up for good quality fixes to their problems?
mahmud 17y ago
What does it do? What other software does the same thing and why is yours better?
- torr 17y ago
  And if there is other software that does what yours does, what is being charged for it?
  - e4m 17y ago
    The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. So to clarify. I have to pay for web hosting, bandwidth, storage... as those things cost me money.
    - davidw 17y ago
      > The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. That's not what he asked, though.
    - cl3m 17y ago
      if it is just the webhosting bill, you can certainly break even with adsense
      - weaksauce 17y ago
        I doubt that. It is not a webapp that the OP was asking about so the common pattern of usage would be download the software, use it, maybe come back and download an update. I don't think that adsense would be enough in this situation. I could be wrong though.
    - joel_feather 17y ago
      Yikes, you can sell nothing and break even. No, I actually sold an app for while, then took it down. People would still buy it occassionally, even though it was clearly stated that the app was discontinued.
bdfh42 17y ago
I would tend towards the higher price as long as your app is good value. You always have to compete the the "I could write that myself" viewpoint - but make it clear that the $25 will save the customer several hours work and meet their needs and you probably have a sale. Try before you buy is the time honoured way of proving utility and value but that adds the cost of adding security to the app. Perhaps an unconditional money back guarantee?
- andrewf 17y ago
  If the software's any good, cracked warez versions will end up floating about anyway.
nailer 17y ago
I expect these kinds of apps - single purpose, but useful tools - TuneUp, or that Mac SSH filesystem thingy, etc, - to cost $15.
- stuff4ben 17y ago
  I would say $9.99 but $15 is good too. If I find something that genuinely helps me out, spending under $10 allows me to buy it without feeling guilty about spending money without asking the wife. Not that I need her permission, but in our relationship we clear most non-household purchases with each other if they cost more than $20. If I'm spending $10, that's like spending my lunch money. :)
- space_cowboy 17y ago
  I would also trial 19.99 to see if I could get more revenue. Experiment! Start high, run a sale a few weeks in and see if it makes a difference.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- dchest 17y ago
  I though it works by charging one customer for three items in one transaction (like iTunes Store). Is it really a single transaction when you charge three different customers?
huhtenberg 17y ago
I was going to say $19.95 (which is a de facto standard for moderately priced installable software), but then I read your description below and I think it just won't sell. Expecting people to pay anything over $5 for a command line tool is unrealistic. And if it is priced at $5, then it won't sell because $5 is just not worth a hassle of paying for the users. Unless, of course, there is a streamlined purchasing mechanism. One click checkout that pre-fills the credit card info and such, but again that's not an option. I would strongly suggest creating a GUI version of the tool and then it may have a chance of selling at $10 to $20 range .. though again .. know thy customers - people who make the ammunition at home typically do so because it cuts their costs. This means that you will need to somehow convince these cheap bastards that your app is worth paying for, and it's not an easy thing to do.
patio11 17y ago
A domain name is $10 a year, and hosting at GoDaddy was about $4 a month back when I used it for selling downloadable software. "Recouping the costs" is setting your ambitions way, waaaaaay too low. (Indeed, if you're a professional programmer, the biggest cost by far is the imputed value of your time.)
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
khangtoh 17y ago
This is a great indication of the potential of a desktop "appstore". If it works for the iPhone, why not desktop?
- jsonscripter 17y ago
  It always has? 99% of all software sold is for the desktop.
  - paulgb 17y ago
    Mostly sold through brick-and-mortar retailers, though.
- CyberFonic 17y ago
  If you could make it run on iPhone / iPod Touch then you have the GUI handled as well as an outlet for sales.
phreanix 17y ago
Have you tried putting it online with a paypal donate button? That's worked wonders for our site and we make more than enough to break even. You'll find that firearms enthusiasts are generally a generous and thankful bunch and if you phrase a request for donation the right way they'll be more than happy to contribute towards your expenses. I know of one who made a similar app for airgun users that is free but has nag screens but most everyone I know on the airgun forums have shot over (excuse the pun) the small fee to get rid of them out of gratitude for the app, which we all have found quite useful. http://www.chairgun.com/offset/chairgun2.htm http://www.chairgun.com/offset/chairgun2.htm
ssharp 17y ago
I'd suggest $9.99 with a "trial". Give them a few calculations for free and then shut it down until they register. I'd also suggest setting up a free web version but under a completely different name and domain. Slap on some relevant ads (Adsense, ebay, etc). You're note going to destroy your market either way. You're not making anything right now, so experiment!
sireat 17y ago
Oldie but goodie: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... In my startup one of the mistakes we made early was pricing things too low.
CyberFonic 17y ago
$19.95 ? or $24.95 ??

28 points by e4m 17y ago

patio11 17y ago

The single best advice I've ever heard for pricing: charge more. Seriously. Whatever number you're thinking of, it is too low. Think of a number that makes you wince. That number is too low, too. Many people here will suggest you charge like $5 or $10. These people are unwilling to buy your application at any price. They are not your customers. Their opinion on your price is irrelevant. (I mean this in the nicest possible way, guys.) Charge for value. It isn't a "little" app or a "simple" app. Your customers are not programmers and do not know how many LOC it was (or, on the other extreme, how much loving care you put into it). They only see the value delivered to them. Price appropriate to the value. People pay more money than you will ask, far more, for things which matter far less to them. Always remember that! Charge more.

tom_rath 17y ago
Exactly what I hopped on here to say. To add to it: If someone is going to open their wallet and bother to enter a credit card number on your site, $10 is the same as $25. If your product saves someone a few hours of effort, $25 is a trivial amount of money to buy that time -- you will have a sale. Don't compete on price -- compete on provided value. Make your app the best way to resolve 'Task X' and people will buy it. Ignore those people who say you're too expensive. If they're wincing about $25 you really do not want them as a customer. Back when I priced software to be competitive 'on price', I attracted people who were looking for the cheapest solution and those people are, by far, the biggest pain in the tail for support that you will ever run into.
- binarycheese 17y ago
  My story exactly. I get more issues, how to-s etc. in support email and site forum from people using the "Free Version" of my software
huhtenberg 17y ago
> Charge more. I understand that you meant that it's easy to underprice the app, but as a generic pricing guideline this advice is wrong. Not considering running operational costs, the price should maximize (price x sales) figure, i.e. the revenue. It's true that in some cases doubling the price cuts the number of customers in less than a half, in which case the the "charge more" advice stands. But in other cases charging half of the current price may easily quadruple your paying userbase. Finding the right price can be done only through trying different prices. At some point Amazon was giving random discounts to their users and trying to pinpoint the ideal price for the item. It didn't last long, of course, as people started gaming them, but it just goes on to show that the price validation is a big deal. Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. In the end it all very much depends on the application and the target customer base.
- imp 17y ago
  >Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent. Are you suggesting that the other direction is preferable? I would think that it would be worse to keep jacking up the price.
  - huhtenberg 17y ago
    Well, no, not really. Overpricing by much is really bad. Underpricing is not good either, but can be remedied by releasing new versions under new pricing. Overpricing by little is the best though, because it allows fine tuning the price with sale or coupon discounts. So again it comes down to knowing the target userbase and making a reasonable initial guess.
  - derefr 17y ago
    I would say that you sell the program at several different price ranges: call one Standard and one Enterprise, and another Home, and so on. They don't have to be any more different than the various versions of Windows are—that is, about 1% alteration, basically features flipped on or off in the shipped client using flags built into the reg. key. Put them at drastically different price points. See which one(s) sell. Eliminate the price points/versions that don't, and roll their "benefits" upward (or downward, if you want to be nice.)
mediaman 17y ago
Best advice. It has to hurt people when they type in their credit card details. If it doesn't, it's too cheap. You'll make far more money turning a few cheap customers away while capturing the surplus of people who actually have a serious problem to fix. What others haven't mentioned yet is that this also gives you an excellent user base for any future products you decide to create and release. Would you want to market your next product to an existing customer base of a bunch of cheapos, or people who have prequalified themselves as individuals whose time is worth serious money and are willing to pay up for good quality fixes to their problems?

mahmud 17y ago

What does it do? What other software does the same thing and why is yours better?

torr 17y ago
And if there is other software that does what yours does, what is being charged for it?
- e4m 17y ago
  The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. So to clarify. I have to pay for web hosting, bandwidth, storage... as those things cost me money.
  - davidw 17y ago
    > The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. That's not what he asked, though.
  - cl3m 17y ago
    if it is just the webhosting bill, you can certainly break even with adsense
    - weaksauce 17y ago
      I doubt that. It is not a webapp that the OP was asking about so the common pattern of usage would be download the software, use it, maybe come back and download an update. I don't think that adsense would be enough in this situation. I could be wrong though.
  - joel_feather 17y ago
    Yikes, you can sell nothing and break even. No, I actually sold an app for while, then took it down. People would still buy it occassionally, even though it was clearly stated that the app was discontinued.

bdfh42 17y ago

I would tend towards the higher price as long as your app is good value. You always have to compete the the "I could write that myself" viewpoint - but make it clear that the $25 will save the customer several hours work and meet their needs and you probably have a sale. Try before you buy is the time honoured way of proving utility and value but that adds the cost of adding security to the app. Perhaps an unconditional money back guarantee?

andrewf 17y ago
If the software's any good, cracked warez versions will end up floating about anyway.

nailer 17y ago

I expect these kinds of apps - single purpose, but useful tools - TuneUp, or that Mac SSH filesystem thingy, etc, - to cost $15.

stuff4ben 17y ago
I would say $9.99 but $15 is good too. If I find something that genuinely helps me out, spending under $10 allows me to buy it without feeling guilty about spending money without asking the wife. Not that I need her permission, but in our relationship we clear most non-household purchases with each other if they cost more than $20. If I'm spending $10, that's like spending my lunch money. :)
space_cowboy 17y ago
I would also trial 19.99 to see if I could get more revenue. Experiment! Start high, run a sale a few weeks in and see if it makes a difference.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

dchest 17y ago
I though it works by charging one customer for three items in one transaction (like iTunes Store). Is it really a single transaction when you charge three different customers?

huhtenberg 17y ago

I was going to say $19.95 (which is a de facto standard for moderately priced installable software), but then I read your description below and I think it just won't sell. Expecting people to pay anything over $5 for a command line tool is unrealistic. And if it is priced at $5, then it won't sell because $5 is just not worth a hassle of paying for the users. Unless, of course, there is a streamlined purchasing mechanism. One click checkout that pre-fills the credit card info and such, but again that's not an option. I would strongly suggest creating a GUI version of the tool and then it may have a chance of selling at $10 to $20 range .. though again .. know thy customers - people who make the ammunition at home typically do so because it cuts their costs. This means that you will need to somehow convince these cheap bastards that your app is worth paying for, and it's not an easy thing to do.

patio11 17y ago

A domain name is $10 a year, and hosting at GoDaddy was about $4 a month back when I used it for selling downloadable software. "Recouping the costs" is setting your ambitions way, waaaaaay too low. (Indeed, if you're a professional programmer, the biggest cost by far is the imputed value of your time.)

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

khangtoh 17y ago

This is a great indication of the potential of a desktop "appstore". If it works for the iPhone, why not desktop?

jsonscripter 17y ago
It always has? 99% of all software sold is for the desktop.
- paulgb 17y ago
  Mostly sold through brick-and-mortar retailers, though.
CyberFonic 17y ago
If you could make it run on iPhone / iPod Touch then you have the GUI handled as well as an outlet for sales.

phreanix 17y ago

Have you tried putting it online with a paypal donate button? That's worked wonders for our site and we make more than enough to break even. You'll find that firearms enthusiasts are generally a generous and thankful bunch and if you phrase a request for donation the right way they'll be more than happy to contribute towards your expenses. I know of one who made a similar app for airgun users that is free but has nag screens but most everyone I know on the airgun forums have shot over (excuse the pun) the small fee to get rid of them out of gratitude for the app, which we all have found quite useful. http://www.chairgun.com/offset/chairgun2.htm http://www.chairgun.com/offset/chairgun2.htm

ssharp 17y ago

I'd suggest $9.99 with a "trial". Give them a few calculations for free and then shut it down until they register. I'd also suggest setting up a free web version but under a completely different name and domain. Slap on some relevant ads (Adsense, ebay, etc). You're note going to destroy your market either way. You're not making anything right now, so experiment!

sireat 17y ago

Oldie but goodie: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... In my startup one of the mistakes we made early was pricing things too low.

CyberFonic 17y ago

$19.95 ? or $24.95 ??