Plannin' On It

steelopus:

For example, let’s look at The Incident. It sells for a mere 99 cents. It was conceived, designed, and engineered by only two guys - and I won’t believe anyone that tries to tell me that more time was spent programming iA Writer than The Incident. Each of the falling objects in The Incident was drawn, pixel-by-pixel, by hand. Hours upon hours of painstaking work, and that’s just the stuff we see. How can a two-man operation afford to sell their product for 99 cents? Have the devalued themselves by pricing their game so low? I don’t think so. I think they understand that selling 100,000 copies at $1 is better than selling ~5000 copies at $20, because that’s an additional 95,000 happy customers that will sing the praises of their product and maybe even support them in the future.

Yeah, but that’s 95,000 more people you have to provide support for, and support can be a huge resource drain. Also, higher priced apps get better ratings. And it’s much easier to release a product at a higher price & reduce it later than vice versa.

I don’t know if IA Writer is worth $18 (it’s not to me), but selling your software at the highest price the market will bear can be a good strategy.