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Serge · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:55 pm Post subject: Setting a price on software

I read some of the comments in the post following the suggestion of banning CNET and some comments were made about the pricing of software to draw customers.

I have written a program that I am trying to sell and finding that:
- when it was free, I had about 10 people a day wanting to register it,
- when I changed the version system so that they had to pay what I thought was a very reasonable fee, I had about 1 person per day wanting to register the limited free version with effectively no one wanting to buy it.

I even tried giving stuff away eg. some very valuable links to web sites, customer only access to a marketing web site I designed, ... but still no good.

In the registration form I sent to those who registered the free version, I mentioned that I would be happy to offer my programs for a special price for the month of September if they would tell me what they thought would be a price they would be happy to pay for the program. This message went to some 100 people - not one reply back!

I have around 100 people go to my download page but no one seems to want to fork out money for the full version.

So, I was wondering:
- are there some basic rules one should follow in setting a price. For example, is $19.95 better than $20,
- how do you go about setting a price for a product? I know that mine is way cheaper than competitive products!
- and so on...

I have been told by some users that my product works better than some more expensive ones. I just don't get it! Do people really want everything for free on the Internet or is it a question of pricing it just right? If pricing is crucial then how do you decide?

Thanks for any suggestion you might have,

Serge

PGWARE · **Web Host** Joined: 29 Dec 2001 Posts: 1565

Pricing is important but choosing $19.95 rather then $20 doesn't really make a difference. Just don't overcharge your users, try to price around the same that other similar software charges. Also make sure to submit your software to as many shareware websites as possible. You need the downloads, typically the purchase rate is 2% of all downloaders will purchase. So if 100 people download you may get 2 purchases. This isn't guaranteed but this is what typically happens.

As you can see to get that 2% to turn into serious cash you will need thousands of downloads and the only way for this to happen is to get your program out to many people. Post, post post your shareware on as many possible shareware sites as possible. Use PAD files to help make submitting shareware faster and manually post your shareware to sites too. I don't recommend using automated submission programs as they tend to be quite buggy and often the shareware sites don't accept those type of submissions.

Mac · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2002 9:51 pm Post subject:

You might also do a google.com (or whatever) search
for freeware programs that are comparable to yours.
If there's several available (or even one that's really
popular), you may not get much response on selling
yours...

Cheers, Mac Smile

Garrett · Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:17 am Post subject:

Here's my theory on pricing...

Search for competing or similar products to yours. Get the average price of all them and set your price somewhere right around the average. Also take into consideration the quality of the programs. If a shitty program is the most expensive, and your's is far better, then I'd raise the price a little above the average.

Once you have the average, then take into consideration the other factors and adjust your price either plus or minus from the average.

-Garrett

Serge · Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2002 9:35 am Post subject:

thanks for your thoughts Very Happy

Serge