Adamant Entertainment kicked off the year entering into an ‘app pricing’ experiment, setting all their products – no matter what – to a price level of $1.99. They’ve recently abandoned this model after apparent initial success, as detailed in this blog by Gareth Skarka (pictured above).
For my part I also entered into this experiment, albeit somewhat half-heartedly and with some reservations. I suspected Adamant would see an initial rush of sales – like a sale – and that this would tail off and this seems to have been what happened after all. For myself I released some products at ‘app price’ levels and others (due to contractual obligations and considerations) at normal levels (which for me are pretty reasonable anyway).
My results have, apparently, been a bit more successful than those of Adamant. While I am making less money per sale on the cheaper products they have tended to be shorter works and the low pricing has allowed them to sell much more quickly than normal and recover their development cost much faster.
For short, unusual, or disposable projects I think $1.99 is a good price level. People also seem more willing to take a risk on a product for that price, especially if it’s a one-shot or one-trick pony like an adventure or an unusual game. Certainly it seems to be the right pricing for my 6-Pack adventures and it’s done very well for the Invaderz pocket edition.
At the same time larger projects selling at their more normal price ($8-10 for the most part) have still done just fine. It’s even possible that the cheaper projects have drawn people in to the point where they’ve seen my other projects and have been happy enough to part with their money for them.
So… what – if any – conclusions can I draw from this experiment?
- The $10.00 barrier still exists and people should pay more attention to it.
- Cheaper sells more, quicker, faster, but it tails off rapidly. Paradoxically it may be better to start low and shift prices HIGHER as time goes on.
- People will still pay more for good product that they want.
- Cheap products bring traffic site/shop traffic.
- Ending a price in .99 genuinely does seem to sucker people. Something I’ve been very resistant to in the past.
What am I going to do with the information I’ve gathered?
- Split my new products into two-tiers.
- Secondary products (Experiments, adventures, support) will be $1.99
- Main products will be between that and $9.99, I will think VERY hard about putting any products over that limit.
- .99 will appear far more often in product pricing.
Postmortem Studios 