Hot answers tagged costs
6
The creators of World of Goo, a game for the Wii, PC, and other platforms actually ran the experiment you're talking about. They published the results on their website. It's a fascinating read.
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/
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It might work. Radiohead tried a similar experiment in 2007 with decent results (and ample free publicity from the stunt, admittedly), and I know a few bloggers who received single donations in the thousands to tens of thousands from readers who found certain posts particularly valuable.
If your target audience is enterprise or mid-sized businesses, ...
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The costs depend on your traffic and code-base, based on my experience working with large-scale video websites you need quite beefy servers just to process the video and convert it into a more friendly format, then you need the bandwidth to play the video back to the end-user. I would advise against starting an online video site unless you have large amounts ...
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Interesting question. I'd say it will probably work in your special case, but it will not work, in general. Here are the factors I'd consider.
Costs vs. Expenses Effect:
Several sites use a "donate-what-you-like" model which is quite similar to a "pay-what-you-like" model. Wikipedia, for example, does it twice a year. It seems to work but I think there's a ...
3
Sounds like you need to talk to your potential customers!
You should be able to ask some tire shops and auto repair shop owners.
If they won't talk to you, it will be hard to sell them later. Anyway you'll want a handful of initial customers who are willing to entertain new ideas and try them out.
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In between programming jobs (after the company I was working for went out of business) in 2001 I drove a pedicab in downtown Denver and used this exact pricing strategy! Other drivers always quoted 2 dollars per block, but that was too rigid. I just wanted to get people in my cab and give them a fun ride. This was not just transportation! Whenever I was ...
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It is an interesting concept.
If one has deep pockets, a great product and some time to hook customers, it is possible to become invaluable to businesses. When those businesses grow and realize that the "Free" or "nearly free" service that is vital to them may be at risk because of low revenue, they will do at least one of the following:
identify how to ...
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Is this a great way to get publicity and goodwill, and karma points? Absolutely.
Is this a great way to screw up your finances, by having zero fixed revenue? Also yes.
If you're willing to absorb a lot of cost with no guaranteed income, then it's a cool thing to do. I just don't see it as a viable business model.
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I think you're going to have a problem locating exact information on these costs.
Here is an article that talks about defining cac and the ltv (lifetime value - i.e. the ability to monetize those customer).
They have a good cac example showing adwords - perhaps this would be a good framework to consider.
They make a good point on how much the human ...
2
If you've hired anyone worth their salt they would be willing to discuss this in detail with you and the best time to discuss this is before any code has been written.
It may be that your idea doesn't require too much in the way of coding and it may better built from scratch. This all depends on the scope of the project and not something that can be ...
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Our company (Pixability) has built a SaaS for video marketing and also has a video production arm. We deal with tons of raw, encoded, edit-by-proxy video. One thing we have learned early on is there are SO MANY variables, it is hard to find the right data in general. You have to decide on exact format, exact audience, exact type or streaming, etc. etc. and ...
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To reiterate some of what's been said and add another perspective:
If the site is truly being built "from scratch" then no, in almost any case that's not a cost-effective approach.
But there's a chance your developer is using a framework or libraries or at least code he's already written to assemble the "frame" (a good analogy).
If not, I'd definitely be ...
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There's an old adage among programmers: "A lazy coder is an efficient coder."
In other words, don't write anything you don't have to. There is a lot of code out there under open source licenses that will do at least some of what you need. The benefits of building on an open source foundation are many:
You don't have to re-invent the wheel. (Thus the ...
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Find areas hit hard by the recession, contact the local power generation company and discuss negotiating flat rates for fixed durations.
If you go simply by what today's rates are, that won't provide any guarantee that the cheapest power TODAY will still be the cheapest power TOMORROW.
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I used to work for such a startup. It took:
Two experienced sales people who knew the market inside out. They also self-funded the company, and had previous experience with building a company from scratch.
6 experienced engineers from that industry: 3 sw, 2 fpga logic designers, 1 hardware.
part-time accountant
manufacturing technician who joined after the ...
2
There isn't a standard answer. Some folk will compensate. Others won't.
The latter group tend to be cheaper. The former more expensive since they roll wastage costs (which are inevitable to some extent) into the contract price.
"Whatever it says in the contract" is the answer.
1
Your highest cost by far is going to be bandwidth.
Look for an inexepnsive colo.
I can recommend Calpop (los angeles)
Hurriance electric (by far the cheapest, in Bay Area)
Cloud offerings will cost you TOOO MUCH..
If you are looking to have a cloud, build your own using xen or hyper-v or vmware
1
Mor eprecise to Dwayne - you need a lot of CPU and a lot p f processing power.
Unless you fail, amazon is stupid - clouds are extremely cost negative when you run a lot for a long time. FOr exmample, I am odffereed a 1 rack unit hosting for about 100 usad including 10.000 gb traffic in a large chicago data center. Beat that with Amazon ;)
What I would go ...
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These numbers could be all over the place depending on the accountant or law firm you work with to get the drafted. Get recommendations from local companies, your chamber of commerce and interview prospective lawyer/accountants first to find a good fit. We talked to a couple attorneys first before we felt comfortable that someone actually understood our ...
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I'll say up front that I am biased because we have a partner relationship with SurePayroll and offer discount small business payroll pricing through SurePayroll on our web site. But this is only because I think they are easily the best online payroll processing company out there.
We sell and support Virtual TimeClock software that integrates with a number ...
1
Depending on your requirments and temperment, Social Engine may be cheaper for the 'shell' of the application, but very costly or impossible to implement the other features. You may want to consult someone who has built apps on this platform covering a higher percentage of your needs.
If this person is not familiar with Social Engine, you may have to pay ...
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To the best of my knowledge, there are no resources that can spit out a number for you. There are too many variables, not the least of which is the speed of your code.
The canonical answer is:
Model how your user visits will be spread out in time, i.e. "100 k users per month, with 10 pages/session, evenly distributed across US business hours". Then figure ...
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You need to be able to zig and zag. When something gets in your way or your great idea just hit a major road block, you have to be able to get past it.
This sounds easy but a lot of people fall in love with their idea/direction and are reluctant to change. This does not mean you chance everyday but you need to know when road blocks occur, that you can ...
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Your users must be passionate about your product to pay anything at all. I didn't pay anything for Radiohead album because I downloaded it out of interest, and I'm not their fan. However, now I like this album enough to pay something next time they release an album this way.
You are in a better position here – your users will have enough time to become ...
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Pricing at "whatever you think its worth" also worked well for wine.
As for showing your customers what the service costs you, that depends on your costs. If your costs are high, you might guilt them into paying your costs and a bit more. If your costs are low, then you might make more money by having them estimate what the product is worth to them.
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