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I'm the owner of this site and the product offered there. As you can see, the current price is $29.95. It is very cheap compared to most web scrapers like this.

There are two reasons why I want to raise the price to $49.95. One is because I have not yet invested almost anything in SEO and I'm afraid if people start buying it a lot I might be overwhelmed with support requests (as it's just me so far). Also, because I think the small price is giving the wrong impression. One of the download sites (such as download.com or softpedia.com) describe it as a "small and simple" web scraper. I really don't think they've got time to test it and try to scrape something with it, so the price was probably a big factor when they decided to describe it that way.

I've been reading a few sites talking about raising or not raising the price, and the general consensus is that you never really know. But I know even less than that. I'm a total noob at marketing strategies. So any advice from the experts might be very helpful to me.

One of the things I read is that is a good idea to start with a lower price and then listen to your customers feedback, and if it's good then raise the price. Well my customers feedback is actually pretty good even though I don't have many.

Also I'm not sure if raising a price by $20 is too much or is OK. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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I don't agree with what you read that it's good to start low then listen - it is FAR easier to reduce a price than increase it. – Matt Apr 6 '11 at 17:19

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I agree with the suggestions about split testing prices, not displaying the mark down from $79), and trialling as a service.

To add to the other answers, bear in mind the psychology...

$79 -> $29 is one heck of a discount, so rather than "great deal" you may be getting one of "Guess it doesn't do much then", "Internet marketing rubbish", "what's wrong with it then", "is there a new version due?" reactions.

Also consider the branding implications of being too cheap. People assume a $99 product is better than a $30 product. Now lots of times that's true, but if you price too low you risk associating with negative connotations.

Two comments on your marketing:

It's a technical list - people don't buy technical lists, they look to solve problems! Give some real world examples of how it can solve my (as a potential user) problems. Now what is the value of that, rather than getting a price from the hours you spent coding? Subconsciously: If I have a $1000 problem a $30 solution isn't going to do it, I probably need a $200 solution.

The home page doesn't instantly make it obvious it's a commercial product "FREE DOWNLOAD" should perhaps be "BUY NOW" and "FREE TRIAL". (Strikes me as too subtle currently)

Have you tried the review badges at very foot of page above the fold or in the header?

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up vote 2 down vote

If I had to guess you're probably on a "one man show" kind of budget, and believe me, I know exactly how that is when I make my suggestion.

Put together an adwords campaign (a small one even) for the keywords that you would target.

HOWEVER the key is to offer your product at different prices to different visitors. Set up different campaigns with the same ad text/images (your control for the experiment) but point them to different landing pages that are the same barring the price. Amazon is in/famous for doing this.

Then see which price converts best. You might find a pay-per-use strategy, SaaS (what I'm experimenting with for an SEO service) or different subscription options better than a one time fee if you're interested in different pricing models altogether.

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Is that even legal? I kinda though about that but they will be so pissed if they figure out they could have buy it cheaper. – jsoldi Apr 6 '11 at 3:44
Offer them a discount then - if they complain. I think the purpose here is to determine which price work the best. – Anders Hansson Apr 6 '11 at 13:46
Why wouldn't it be legal? Cars and real estate both work this way. =) Most places keep the discount option as backup, and then just offer people varying levels of "discount". Discounts are also something that you can use as a test variable. – Kort Pleco Apr 6 '11 at 15:15
Amazon used split test pricing all the time when they were first starting out. In fact they split tested pretty much everything. – Matt Apr 6 '11 at 16:54
up vote 2 down vote

Some thoughts:

  1. I see from your website that you are pitching the product at $79.95 with an introductory offer of $29.95. This was an excellent decision which has kept your future pricing options open.

  2. Consider creating a simple and basic version of your product. This will give you two price points. Do split the two on feature set but consider other aspects important to users. E.g., 30-day customer support v 1-year CS v lifetime CS.

2a. Offering different levels of customer service might guide you in deciding which features the entry-level versions has (e.g., perhaps not the SQL query support).

2b. Don't make the entry-level product a "pseudo" product. i.e. not a practical proposition to any user base. It needs to appeal to a section of your audience. Playing games with your market won't do your brand any favours in the long term.

  1. add some customer recommendations to your site to express specific problems your product has solved (and so supporting the price you are asking).

  2. consider a voice over to your video (perhaps a customer) explaining how they used your product to solve a specific problem. The current video contains a lot of data but I didn't find it very informative after the first example.

  3. I would try not to worry that your product will be too successful for you. This is often called "fear of success". Get the success and then work out how you deal with it. Solving success issues before they arrive generally leads to many good ideas being turned down.

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up vote 0 down vote

I haven't tried this myself, but there was a great podcast on the Conversations Network about using google multi variant testing.

Similar to the tracker for site traffic you can put extra tags in which google will then create several versions of your website ... in your case the cheap, medium and expensive version of the offer.

Then when someone visits the site they get given one of the offers and google tracks over many visits which version performs the best and you have your answer in a month or two.

It will remember the visitor so the offer doesn't randomly change every time they visit your site ... but you should frame it as a monthly or random special or something to make sure.

... I have tried looking back through the archives but can't find it ... I will update the answer if I can.

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