As a founder, how do you set a price tag for your product?
Venkat
12 replies
too low -> you are losing out on profit
too high -> you might lose customers
how to decide what the market would be ready to pay for?
Replies
Alex Sass@alex_sass
PostDiva
'Tis certainly not easy. I worked with a major online greetings card company for many years and everyone but us was always discounting. The product has little/negligible cost (a piece of paper). But the value is high and the marketing pricey + tech/team/time. We had a hard time keeping away from that storm of freebies and discount codes across all other brand name websites in our sector. I believe it worked out in the long-run. Quality over price. However, it meant much harder first few months. Which is totally the opposite of my thoughts on other products which don't have such an established understanding/recognition for the consumer. Feedback being worth everything. A sliding upscale of pricing. Even on my PH release today. To know where the sweet-spot is, I private demo to potential clients. Literal show of hands. Takes time to build those honest relationships that lead to such feedback. But it's not just about what my sector / competitors charge, it's about available wallet. And approval difficulty. Not only can they afford it or is it good value but who will eventually pay? Rarely the user in my case, maybe their boss. Worth considering. And of course, when something looks complex from the outside, a trial. I've gone for 12 hours. Odd and unusual. But.... let's see. I think it's better than getting an email 7 or 30 days down the line from when you tried it. You're interested now, so be interested. Nothing fits one box with pricing. And always the founders say "oh there isn't a competitor". There is. It's just oblique. How else are they doing what your tool does? What time investment are they making? How much will they save by having your version, even if no other version exists? That to me drives sensible pricing. Sorry for the waffle but pricing was most of what my team have talked about for the last 30 hours!
Share
My way of finding this is
Market trend - I will take this as a baseline to play with.
My value addition - Do I have any features that stands out from the crowd?
My Ideal Customer Profile - Do I need to target the bargainers or the other ones? Everyone expect same level of support
Multiplication factor - How many customer it may require to reach a milestone ARR (Say 1 million or 10 million or 100 million). The more number of customers 1 need will also increase my support overheads.
if you can figure out the answers for yourself, you can arrive at a price point.
Find your competitor to set a baseline. Or random number and then just re-iterate from that starting point.
There are many ways to set price of product , it can be based on competitors , feature base pricing , launch price , seasonal price, charming prices , value based prices and a lot more. It also depends on the product, industry , effort cost , etc.
Amtraker NEXT
Make it free and open source it is my strat ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Imgsrc.Space
@pierom_qwerty And then all my bills would be instantly paid off!! ᕦ(ツ)ᕤ
Amtraker NEXT
@hippielemur Even while being free and open source I got about 2,500 from that site, so I'd say it works pretty well.
Imgsrc.Space
@pierom_qwerty In a month? Through donations? , how much did you spend on it? I have friends who have to pay more than that in expenses per month for their startup. So not everyone has that option.
Cheers
Amtraker NEXT
@hippielemur Well since I used Replit the hosting was essentially free. Only about 30 in domains for the year, and I was set. Also yes it was through donations (in a sense). I get that not everybody has the choice, but I sure did haha.
Suite Books
Write down 20 numbers and pull one out of a hat...haha.
Joking of course, but you should test different options and see what resonates. The cost of doing business and getting your product to production is very important, and so is the expected lifetime value of the customer. If you expect that the customer will pay only once, then you should price well above the costs of doing business. But if you see the LTV increasing a lot over time, you'll be able to deal with slimmer margins.
Dans un premier temps il est primordiale de faire une étude de marché, afin de définir l'achat et la demande. Après rien t'empêche d'observer ton conçurent le plus important est de ne pas le copier. Suite à ça tu peux avoir une petite idée sur le prix que tu va fixé à ton produit.