On May 14, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Brendan Murphy wrote: > One fundamental problem in the 3rd party market is that developers > are selling their plugin at commodity level pricing. In essence > they are trying to compete on price when they basically have no > pressure to do so. The RB market is maturing as time goes on and I > think there needs to be an adjustment in the management of > expectations. This commodity level pricing is ingraining it into > the RB community to expect cheap prices from all 3rd party > developers. I see this expectation manifest as the developer of > the FTC. People have written to me asking why I charge so much for > the FTC and have given me much lower price points at which they > would buy it. I have chosen the price point for the FTC because it > represents a fair price for the value you get. If the FTC is what > you need, then buy it because the FTC is not a commodity, but a > unique value that can't be easily replicated.
The market decides what the fair price is. The market for RB plugins is much smaller than the market for VB plugins; plugin prices are cheaper. If you (the plugin developer) are happy setting your prices very high and selling only one a week, then by all means do so. The problem is that products that are priced too high attract lower-priced competition. Eventually, you will find yourself not selling anything. As much as I would like it to be the same, the RB Universe and the VB Universes are drastically different, and their respective economies are wildly different. Plugin developers are not entitled to uniform prices universally. If you've elected to confine yourself to a much smaller market, you can't expect the same benefits that you would get from competing successfully in a much larger market. > > The MBS and Einhugur plugins are way under valued for what you get > and are part of the problem of mismanaging the expectations of the > RB community. I am not saying they should go out and gouge their > customers, but charge a fair price that will make them more stable > as a developer which is what some people in this thread want > before they use plugins. > You can only raise your prices a certain amount before demand drops to the point where you are making less revenue due to lower volume. Selling 11 items at $50 is better than selling 1 at $500 (all other things being equal). Finding this magical price point is really the hard part of running such businesses. > For those of you that stubbornly refuse to use 3rd party plugins > no matter what, you need to make a balanced judgement based on > true risk assessment. When we look at the 3rd party developers, we > have to look at their history since that is the best predictor of > their future behavior. No. Usually, developers only go out of business once. And eventually they will all go out of business. > Also consider that choosing to not use a > 3rd party solution is the most expensive route to go. Not necessarily. You could find yourself writing your own plugin anyway, and to do so might be more expensive in the future. ----------------- Russ Tyndall Wake Forest, NC _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
