Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=641358

by e4m • 17 years ago

28 71 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

mahmud9• 17 years ago

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

torr2• 17 years ago

And if there is other software that does what yours does, what is being charged for it?

e4m4• 17 years 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.

e4m4• 17 years ago

It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain, powder, etc. It's command line only. It's windows only. No GUI, but it's very simple to use and accurate. Very useful for folks who reload their own ammunition. Covers all calibers from smallest to largest.

davidw5• 17 years ago

It can't be that hard to slap a GUI on it with something like Tk, and that would probably make it a lot more attractive to people.

cosmo7• 17 years ago

You might get more money from making the application into a web application and getting commission from click-through sales of actual hardware.

stuff4ben2• 17 years ago

As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities. Put a shiny GUI on it and I'd probably reconsider. Plus command line applications are not user friendly (especially Windows based ones) and take more effort to run than a nice clickable icon and GUI. My suggestion, either give it away for free or develop it to a point where you can add a GUI to it (shouldn't be hard with a couple hours of C#) and then charge for it. I wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars for something so basic though. $25 is way too much.

torr2• 17 years ago

Wrap a GUI around it and package the program as a single executable. I'd suggest $15. Asking for $20 seems like too much (to me), but I've been told that I have bad judgement in such matters. :)

Also, I agree with others that trying to sell a CLI version will probably go nowhere. In fact, it may stifle adoption after you switch to the GUI version (since prospective users might think "Oh, that's that terminal program, right? Yuck!").

mahmud9• 17 years ago

You can get a 50k GUI with FLTK in less than half an hour, and it compiles to a static binary. The API is at about the same "complexity" as Tk and the bloody thing is in C++.

Get Dev-Cpp; click Tools -> Check for Updates -> [scroll around to find a recent FLTK devpak -> Select -> Download.

Restart FLTK and New -> Project -> GUI -> FLTK.

Get it done!

patio114• 17 years ago

Command line programs are not simple to use to anyone who is not a programmer. Wrap a GUI around it.

Shooting enthusiasts are willing to pay money for software. Brian Plexico once sold several thousand dollars worth of a program written in a week, which just recorded scores for skeet shooting. One of the keys was ease of use -- again, NOT a command line.

http://www.microisv.com/archives/2006/03/06/conception-to-sa...

pasbesoin3• 17 years ago

What about making it an iPhone/Android/similar application? I envision people using it not just when reloading, but at the range, when buying ammo at the store, etc. I may be completely off in my opinion, but it seems the kind of thing that aficionados would drop a few bucks on. Some for making actual decisions; others to use as an adjunct/reference in conversation. And those phones are becoming a vast marketplace. For those using it for real work, other than reloaders, it would also place it at their disposal where they most need it: In the field.

Downside: Less of a percentage as your take. Upside: You're not hosting the store.

mahmud9• 17 years ago

It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain, powder

Talk with the old lady and put together a grand to take out an ad in Soldier of Fortune, then slap a big fat "Please see our ad in Soldier of Fortune" on your website.

SoF is such a highly coveted niche publication, the mention of its name is more profitable than the revenue generated from ads on it. "As Seen In Soldier of Fortune" has a nice ring to it, rhymes with "cha ching".

Again, Get it DONE!

fluffster• 17 years ago

Can I buy one?

Zak2• 17 years ago

Stick a dead-simple UI on it. Assume domain knowledge, not computer knowledge; this should be dead simple to an experienced handloader who barely knows how to use a computer. My dad would buy it, and probably shell out $50 if there's a reasonable demo so he can see what he's missing.

CyberFonic3• 17 years ago

A friend of mine once wrote a shooting match scoring / ranking program for Palm PDAs. He had a hard time getting people to actually pay for it. But then again, he wasn't selling on the web.

Amen on the GUI comments. Other than that, how would the program go as a value-add to manufacturers of specific supplies and/or equipment? If it helps increase sales and/or help people achieve increased accuracy and/or grouping then maybe some such suppliers might be prepared to have you brand the program for them to sell at gun shops.

bdfh42• 17 years 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• 17 years ago

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

nailer• 17 years ago

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

stuff4ben2• 17 years 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• 17 years 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.

patio114• 17 years 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• 17 years 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• 17 years 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

huhtenberg4• 17 years 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• 17 years 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.

patio114• 17 years ago

I think you will find in the typically B2C sales cycle -- which is a term that makes me laugh, since it typically fits inside a browser session -- customers do not have access to the contents of your lunchbox from last Tuesday or your pricing strategy from yesterday. The only thing they see is your price, today. This is one reason that nearly everyone who starts at $200 and goes to $20 fails -- not because they "lose credibility" (no one saw the $200 price -- really, no one, the no sales problem in software is almost always caused by the marketing strategy "Put up a website and pray someone discovers it") but because charging $20 for applications communicates that the value provided by them is negligible.

(Relatedly: your competitors' pricing does not matter because your customers will probably never see it.)

mediaman• 17 years 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?

huhtenberg4• 17 years 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.

patio114• 17 years 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.)

khangtoh• 17 years ago

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

jsonscripter• 17 years ago

It always has? 99% of all software sold is for the desktop.

paulgb• 17 years ago

Mostly sold through brick-and-mortar retailers, though.

CyberFonic3• 17 years 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• 17 years 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

ssharp2• 17 years 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• 17 years ago

Oldie but goodie: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

In my startup one of the mistakes we made early was pricing things too low.

CyberFonic3• 17 years ago

$19.95 ? or $24.95 ??

Pricing a Simple, Useful Desktop App

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