Pricing Products
May 16, 2008 – 12:40 pm
I know, it's been a fortnight, I've been busy! 
We've been working on getting our new WordPress plugins site up and running. I originally had just a couple of commercial plugins to sell however I've been working on more and so we'll have a few more products to launch with. Luckily the plugins have all been written from requests so every plugin has been sold once at least which means that time isn't 100% wasted if it doesn't sell again!
We've worked out our pricing structure for this as we want to try and offer something for everyone. As the plugins are not anything major we're not looking at charging a lot for them, but charging enough to make it worth while. Obviously each plugin is charged according to the complexity and time taken to create it, however with a few other sites selling plugins too, we also need to keep it competitive.
Our pricing options for these plugins are going to be
- Single site license
- Multi site license
- Yearly upgrade license
The 3rd option can only be purchased if one of the first two options have been purchased in the past. This way someone who just wants a cheapy plugin can grab the single site license, but as WordPress upgrades or if we happen to add more features in, then the yearly upgrade license will have to be paid for to get an upgraded version. Of course if a major amount of new features are added then I'll probably release it as a new product as a Pro version.
To deal with the pricing we're going for simple maths ie. a Single site license costs X, the multi will cost 2.5*X and the yearly upgrade will cost 0.5*X. I think this works out reasonable. Of course the single vs multi site usage goes on trust, but hopefully most of the businesses that buy from us will be honest, as the plugins are not going to be exceptionally expensive in the first place.
We'll also be offering a couple of freebie plugins, mainly because one has been available on my own site for quite a while (and is pretty basic) and the other uses partly modified code from another plugin, and naturally I wouldn't want to be selling someone else's GPL code! Plus I think offering a couple of products for free will attract the buyers in and we'll be offering all the plugins for free to registered charity sites too.
So hopefully the site will be virtually ready to go live soon. I've just got the hard part to do now, write the content!
8 Responses to “Pricing Products”
Hi Sarah, best of luck with the WP plugin site.
Out of interest, in the past I've been looking for a decent WP plugin that deals with affiliate feed manipulation. If your site includes one, I reckon you could clean up with it!
Cheers.
By Mike on May 19, 2008
With all the free stuff circling around, i am very interested if your commercial plugins will find their market. Hoping to find a post in the future about your success-rates.
By Musashi on May 22, 2008
@ Mike, Cheers. As for your plugin suggestion, if I get a chance I'll take a look and see what I can do
@Musashi, Free doesn't always mean good. Unfortunately a lot of plugins are badly marked up, or don't quite do what you want. These plugins have already been written for at least one if not more commercial sites. Some are quite simple, the simplest ones will be available for free, but the more complex ones are unlikely to be matched, or be matched as well as what is already available, if there is any competition.
Plus buying a plugin and yearly license will also mean support and continued upgrades. I think a lot of commercial sites would prefer to pay a small amount to get a better service. But we'll see, there's no harm in trying.
By Sarah on May 22, 2008
Ace. That would be great Sarah, thanks!
By Mike on May 23, 2008
A business has to charge for their time, you must charge for your time, there will always be those that want everything for nothing. Good luck with your plugins.
By Goran Giertz on Jun 22, 2008
Yeah, I deal with far too many people wanting something for nothing. If it's a personal, non profit thing I'm not too fussed, but when someone wants a freebie or cheap stuff to run a site which will make them money then I just don't have the time for them. You get back what you put in!
By Sarah on Jun 22, 2008
Hi Sarah
Well said, personal vs business gain. Thanks for the speedy response.
By Goran Giertz on Jun 23, 2008