Hi Darcy One question I have that if your primary market is students/education sector -- why have an educational price? as it will be for the vast majority of your sales, the defacto regular price. I would suggest dropping the educational pricing and just sell it for $24.95 or if you keep educational/regular price to go for a 24.95/29.95 level in the very least.
Or even alternatively advertise $24.95 for educational and $39.95 or higher for regular. The psychology here is that students like to think they are getting a great deal (or a bone tossed to them with a steep educational discount) but if your market is education, you are just selling them at a better price for you. A $40 product with at $15 discount looks more attractive than a $30 product with a $5 discount. Especially if the majority of your sales are going to be driven by the "discount". (Of course don't price it at $199 with a $175 educational discount as that looks a little fishy :) Then take advantage of occasional promos (maczot, bundles, onefinger discounts etc) to sell the $39.95 product (which is probably generating very few sales in anycase -- regardless of the price) at a$29.95 or $24.95 price point. I think the idea maybe with discounts is to figure out what the minimum you want to sell your product for and set that as your standard discount price and base you regular price based on that. Also I don't know how much you scrutinize the requirements for the educational discounts -- for me, if anyone says they are a student or work in the sector, they get the discount no questions asked -- taking them at their word. IF you have to ask for id, proof, the hassle may be too much , even for legitimate students, and you lose a $25 sale. And my philosophy is that a guaranteed $25 sale is better then a potential $30 sale. And if a person wasn't to be dishonest, they are not even going to ask for a discount -- they will just look for a pirated license. Scott On 2010-01-13, at 2:23 PM, Andy Brice wrote: > darcy.otto wrote: >> >> >>> Andy Brice wrote: >>> Ps/ Formal logic software for Mac sounds incredibly niche. The market >>> must be tiny? >> >> Hi Andy et al., >> >> You know, I've been thinking about this since you said it. The problem >> is, I don't really know the size of the market. Thousands of students >> take logic in universities each year, and from what I've seen a little >> under half of those have Macs and well over half have access to Mac >> labs. And there is a new class of students every semester, so the >> potential audience constantly renews itself. >> >> However, the following considerations give me pause: >> >> 1. Sales have been poor. About 25 sales over four months, and an >> additional 150 sales through MacZot/MUPromo. >> >> 2. Interestingly, respondents to a survey I sent to MacZot/MUPromo >> buyers found many were just interested in learning logic without >> taking a class (something my program doesn't really do right now). >> >> 3. I haven't done much marketing, beyond posting on download sites and >> cold e-mailing some professors who teach logic courses. Not much >> response there, but getting professors to use the program is a way to >> get access to the students. >> >> So, anybody have any advice about how to continue? I'm not entirely >> sure where to put my efforts. If the market is to small, perhaps the >> answer is to break ground on an unrelated project. But I was caught >> off guard by the number of MacZot/MUPromo sales, and the large number >> of people who just were interested in logic. Perhaps I should try to >> make the program more appealing to that group? >> >> Any advice would be greatly appreciated. >> > > Darcy, > > Students are far from an ideal market IMHO. They would rather spend > their money on essentials (e.g. beer). > > Maybe professors don't even want students to use software for this? > > The cheapness of a licence will make it difficult to make any money on > ads or other paid promotion. You could try writing some content page > about logic and hope that generates organic traffic. It will take time > though. > > Maybe you should charge more and aim it professional mathematicians? > > I suspect the worldwide market for people who are prepared to spend > money on logic software and have Mac is too small to support even 1 > person full time. I could be completely wrong through. I don't know this > market at all. > > best regards > > Andy Brice > http://www.perfecttableplan.com > http://www.successfulsoftware.net > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 > Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: > http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk > Yahoo! Groups Links > > >
