Quite so John. If something take me 2 hours of work to make, but it's
rare and efficient, and someone offers me $5000 to use it, and I really
expected to say "Oh no that's far too much. I couldn't POSSIBLY accept
that. It only took me 2 hours to make it, so I could only accept $150."
Of course not. Because amongst other things, those 2 hours also
incorporate 28 years of a whole variety of experience and training in IT
and business.
And as we all ought to know, the value of something is NOT what it cost.
But what someone is willing to pay for it.
Microsoft cost its founders a couple of thousand to set up all those years
ago. But no one would say its value is a few thousand. Or even a few
million.
If Robert gets someone to pay $5000 for his Hotel system, good for him. I
wish I had thought of it. I hope he sells it a hundred times over.
Cheers,
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, John Cummings wrote:
> Just my two cents, but we do live and breathe in America. If there is a
> market for it, charge whatever you can get. The truth of the matter is, we
> all invest a lot of time and energy in to learning our respective crafts,
> and unlike a lot of professions that came before the "Internet" revolution,
> there is a finite shelf life on all the technologies we invest our time in.
>
> Capitalism will shake out anything that isn't worth the cost.
>
> J.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Scott, Andrew" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 10:46 PM
> Subject: RE: Hotel Booking Engine up
>
>
> > Well funny you should make a reference to "Hello World" example, there is
> a
> > site out there don't know it off the top of my head, but there are
> thousands
> > of ways to write this little bit of code:-)
> >
> > Yes Volume dictates the price of any application, and in MS for example
> they
> > receive a lot of the cost back in support. But they know that they can
> > charge whatever it costs in the US, because if they charge 5 times the
> price
> > people would not buy it, so do get the volume as you say it needs to be
> > competative and appealing to purchase.
> >
> > Ok lets take the cost of something a little further, say I rewrote one of
> my
> > applications to be sold on the net. I would need to make sure I make
> > something out of it, for sure. However it will not sell if I was to charge
> > more for it than someone else could write it for, I mean what would be the
> > point. I am in the business of saving my clients money, and I always look
> on
> > the net for something that does what I am looking for or close enough that
> > can be modified and I am sure all you people do the same.
> >
> > However if I look at the time it would cost me to develop (already done in
> > the design, planning stages) then why would I spend $00's of dollars more
> to
> > buy something that might end up costing me thousands in support, downtime
> > and code rewritting to develop it the way it should be. And this is the
> key
> > issue for my clients, and I will always adopt this method regardless:-)
> >
> > And I agree with your calculations etc., but look at it from the above
> > statement. To create volume you need to capture the market, and you WILL
> not
> > capture the market if someone else can always do it cheaper.
> >
> >
> > regards
> >
> > Andrew Scott
> > ANZ eCommerce Centre
> > * Ph 9273 0693
> > * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gregory Gooden (Annex) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: 12 September 2000 13:27
> > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > Subject: RE: Hotel Booking Engine up
> >
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Scott, Andrew [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 7:09 PM
> > > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > > Subject: RE: Hotel Booking Engine up
> >
> > You brought up too many juicy points, so I couldn't resist to add another
> to
> > this thread <grin>.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > That is a fair comment to make, and I can say that the
> > > experince is the same
> > > here. I do contract work for companies who require my
> > > services, and the code
> > > I use always is written from scratch, for legal reasons. But
> > > because I have
> > > done it once before or even twice before I find that I can complete it
> > > faster the next time I need to do it, not to mention its
> > > always better the
> > > next time around as well.
> >
> > Indeed!
> >
> > > However without getting into any legal issues, I can look at
> > > something and
> > > see how its written without looking at the code. This makes
> > > me unique in a
> > > way I guess, because I find that it saves me a lot of trouble
> > > buying things
> > > when I can write the code from what I see on the screen in terms of
> > > functionality.
> >
> > So you agree that when it comes to development, there's the writing of
> code,
> > and then there's the METHOD and USER INTERFACE that suddenly comes into
> the
> > picture.. (This can distinguish one developer from another actually).
> >
> > We could both write a "Hello World" application, and I'm willing to bet
> that
> > they'd look VERY different in terms of method and look (because we're two
> > different people with different "angles" on it).
> >
> >
> > > So that it why I made the origianl comment, I have been
> > > programming now for
> > > 20 years, and in this time I have seen MANY shareware or
> > > modules like this
> > > one where I belive the price to be too high, only because I
> > > know the that
> > > the cost it would take me to do it would be far less, it
> > > would also work the
> > > way I want it to work and I would also have the source code
> > > to play with as
> > > well and could make the changes etc without the support of a
> > > 3rd person.
> >
> > But what you're really saying (imho) is that you look at price (we're not
> > talking about value at this point) as a direct function of raw cost... I
> > have more points to make about that below..
> >
> >
> > > We now live a world that is connected by wires, geographic
> > > location and
> > > expereince don't really come into the picture. If I had the
> > > time, I could
> > > clean up my code to be released just as this person did and
> > > have it sell for
> > > $1000 (Aus) which is about $500 (us) we will always be
> > > competing on a world
> > > scale, so just because it took someone 1 hour or 20 hours is
> > > not an issue,
> > > demand is not an issue but being competative is.
> >
> > Correct! You see lots of "overseas" development houses out there.. Some
> are
> > good, some are not (just like dev houses or developers IN the US)...
> >
> > Supply and Demand certainly change as you widen the scale to a global
> > economy.
> >
> >
> > > All I am saying is that when marketing something, look at
> > > Microsoft for
> > > instance. If MS was to sell the Windows products nobody could
> > > afford them,
> > > because the R&D into developing these would be too high and
> > > nobody would buy
> > > the product. Good marketing is knowing how to sell your
> > > product, and not get
> > > a quick buck out of it.
> >
> > Here's where the meat of MY comments are.
> >
> > If Microsoft was going to make you a custom application, they'd charge a
> > MUCH higher price than we are talking about here.. but what MS counts on
> is
> > VOLUME. Volume creates a "long term" financial scenario that permits them
> to
> > sell you windows98 for a lowly 89 bux.
> >
> > So back to this app that started the thread... The trick isn't "how much
> > could I make it for", the REAL trick is, "How do I maximize my income from
> > this work?".
> >
> > That's where you make the jump from a developer to a businessperson.
> >
> > Let's say I make a WIDGET, and it cost me 100,000 dollars to spec,
> develop,
> > market and support for the first year.
> >
> > If the widget is CUSTOM (1 customer), clearly I'm going to charge OVER
> that
> > amount so that I can make profit. Let's say in that scenario I charge
> > 200,000.00 so I can make a profit of 100,000.00.
> >
> > But if I can sell that widget to multiple customers, why not sell it at
> > 49.95? (this is presuming that I believe I can sell at least 5000 copies
> of
> > the software)... If you saw that the math is different (4004 copies
> required
> > to equal the first deal), you'll note that selling multiple copies
> involves
> > more costs, so that's where this hypothetical curve exists.
> >
> >
> > > I mean would you buy an application written in Coldfusion
> > > that cost more
> > > than CF itself, I know I wouldn't and would prefer to program
> > > it myself. I
> > > just wanted to point out that it may have taken 20-100 hours
> > > to develop but
> > > there are applications out there that took maybe 50 times
> > > longer with 1000
> > > times more functionality for less than the price of this
> > > application. People
> > > tend to foget this when setting a price for their products:-)
> >
> >
> > Amazingly enough, we sell a packaged application that is cheaper than
> > ColdFusion (operating under the "volume model" mentioned above), and found
> > that if we were TOO cheap, we sold less. Companies didn't like that the
> > application was less than the required OS software. Wierd eh?
> >
> >
> > > Anyway thats all I need to say on this subject.
> >
> > Sorry I continued it.. It struck home on stuff that I've been operating
> out
> > of for years now. :)
> >
> > Gregory
> > Your Mileage May Vary...
> >
> >
> > -------------------------------------------
> > annex.com, Inc. - http://www.annex.com/
> > -------------------------------------------
> > - If you EcoBuild it, they will come. -
> > - http://www.ecobuilder.com/ -
> > -------------------------------------------
> >
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