Re: The "user-developer gap" myth

[Eric Shepherd <sheppy@sheppyware.net>]

in article 39583A0A.CF620102@swbell.net, Rubywand at rubywand@swbell.net
wrote on 6/26/00 10:22 PM:

> If better ads get you just another 40 sales, a price cut-- e.g. a
> 'Summer Spectacular' sale-- could make a big difference. Perhaps at $9.95 you
> could sell a few hundred (or more) copies. Unless you are offering a big
> maunual, fancy Reference Card, etc., you've already socked in most of the
> product cost during development. You might as well sell the darn thing at a
> price that will get you some payback.

(As Sheppy, programmer -- still trying to keep this separate from
A2Central.com editor :)

The problem with this theory, in my experience, is that lowering the price
of an Apple II product doesn't improve sales significantly.  In addition, a
$5 shareware doesn't necessarily do any better than a $20 shareware of
comparable quality.

The fact of the matter is that shareware constitutes an obligation on the
part of the person using the product.  They're obligated to pay for it or
delete it after the trial period ends.  How many people do you think
honestly delete software once the trial period ends if they don't pay for
it?  Just because the user thinks it costs too much isn't actually relevant.
The shareware license obligates them to pay for it if they intend to keep
using it.  If they don't want to pay the fee, they should stop using it.

And it's pretty clear that lots of people don't stop using shareware just
because they don't feel like paying for it.  I get questions in email all
the time from people that haven't registered the software.  Often along with
"Wow, what a great program, I use it all the time.  Could you add
such-and-such feature to it?"  That's pretty obviously someone that's been
using it for a while but doesn't plan to pay for it.

I continue to point out that as a programmer, the only place I haven't
promoted my products in the past is comp.sys.apple2, and there are a few
reasons for that.  First, I've never been able to attribute a significant
number of sales to csa2 users in the past.  Second, I started using
comp.sys.apple2 back when advertising product on Usenet was considered poor
form, and I'm still uncomfortable doing so.  And third, too often on csa2 I
feel entirely unwelcome, and who wants that?

Jeff, I'm not aware of any products you personally sell (please feel free to
correct me if I'm wrong!), so I'm not sure where you're getting your
information; I'd like to know.

(Putting on A2Central.com editor hat)
I'm more than willing to print a follow-up article to "State of the II" (in
fact, it's likely to become a series) with additional information, if
someone can give me some real evidence that I'm wrong.


-- 
Eric "Sheppy" Shepherd
Creating software for everyone!
http://www.sheppyware.net