Hi Robert,
I just contibuted again for our company (useitgroup). I apparently ended
up overlooking the deadline date (giving you work to restore our
settings from the backup, sorry about that), due to my workschedule.
I had marked it as a to do, but since there was some sort of overload
problem on my todo list at work (too much work, go figure), it somehow
ended up too low on the priorities list and I overlooked it.
Anyways, my point is that I like the way you set it up, Free to use, but
extra tools for contributing people. What you offer for free is already
good, but the extra tools are a real timesaver for us.
We've been contributing for several years now, and have been happy to do so.
I tend to side with the people that say that if customers have a need,
and the tools provided give good value for money, preferably with some
way to test at least part of the tools before parting with money, so one
is able to see if the tool will do what you need it for, then people
will be willing to pay for the tool.
At work I'm responsable for the software tools we buy. I always download
a trial, test it out, and if it does what we need in an efficient way,
we register it.
If the trial does not live up to expectations, the search for a tool
continues.
The things I like for in tools is price vs time saved, ease of use and
how good the documentation is.
In software development, one can choose to reinvent the wheel time and
time again, or you can pay others (who already made the tools that do
what you need) for a tool to save development time and limit the amount
of debugging you need to do (since if the tools is mature, then you
won't have to debug at least that part). In my experience it is almost
always cheaper to pay for a tool than to spend the development team's
time to program functionality that allready exists in a tool that's
available on the market. It also is extremely easy to purchase tools
nowadays, goto website, download tool, pay for it online, check your
mailbox, register program, done.
So in conclusion, paying for software, saves us time and therefore money.
PS : This is from the point of view of a software development company,
the point of view of homeusers might be different, since they don't make
money from using the tools most of the time.
Speaking for myself, even when it is for homeuse, I pay for the software
I want to use. Of course this means that instead of using for instance
Dreamweaver, I have to do with the cheaper alternatives (in the case of
Dreamweaver I use Namo Webeditor 2006 (I bought version 6 (if i remember
correctly), which I then upgraded to 2005 and then upgraded again to
Webeditor 2006). Of course this does not have all the functionality of
Dreamweaver, but I would assume that most homeusers don't need the
power/complexity of those professional programs anyways. In general I
think homeusers are better of with easy to use value for money tools
than with their professional oriented towards businesses counterparts.
Just my 2 cents,
Dirk Cleenwerck
Chief Programmer
Useitgroup NV
Robert Woodhead schreef:
My site http://selfpromotion.com/ works on the "you decide how much to
pay" principle and at one point a few years back (during the boom) was
generating low 6-figures per year. A bit lower now, but high-5
figures for 1 hour a day of my time.
I actually did the analysis once of how I would have done if I'd set a
price for my site's services vs. letting the user decide. At the
optimium price point that captured the most revenue (assuming everyone
who contributed less didn't pay, and everyone who contributed more
paid the set price), letting people decide what was fair doubled my
income. Very surprising.
A lot depends, I think, on making the personal connection between the
author and the user. If they see you as a person, they won't cheat
you. In fact, they'll go out of their way to be fair.
R
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