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Code by Kevin: Programming, code, business, and other pursuits

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Kevin Walzer, software developer.

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Pricing

Readers of this blog will notice that I've lowered prices on two of my products recently. You should not, however, assume that I'm going to lower prices across the board as I release new products.

In the past I've tended to charge the same prices for all of my programs; once I set a price point for one product, the rest went to that price point as well. But I've found this actually isn't the smartest way to set prices, since it's more rooted in a desire to be consistent than in finding the right pricing balance between my product and the market. This year I've decided to be a bit smarter about pricing; I'm trying to better align my prices with the market, and back this decision up with actual sales data. My previous sales data told me that Manpower sold better at a lower price point, so the decision to lower the price of that program was easy. QuickWho sold very poorly at a higher price point, and the jury is still out on whether the new lower price point is the optimal one.

Some products, of course, are selling quite well at their current price point, and I see no reason to lower those particular prices.

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Manpower 3.1

I've released version 3.1 of Manpower, the GUI for viewing man pages on OS X. Version 3.1 is a pretty big update, building on 3.0's transition to 64-bit capabilities and Cocoa. 3.1 includes support for AppleScript and Services; it also includes a long-requested feature, the ability to bookmark specific man pages. I've also added the ability to input and display a single man page, which is something that probably should have been part of the application from the beginning. With these new features, I strongly believe that Manpower is the most complete GUI tool for browsing and viewing man pages on OS X.

As part of the new release, I've also lowered Manpower's price a bit, from $24.95 to $19.95. This is motivated by a couple of factors. First, most of Manpower's competitors are free. While I believe Manpower's feature set surpasses any of its competitors and is well worth paying for, I can't completely ignore the market, and $24.95 may be a bit high for this particular niche. I also have actual data to support this change: Manpower was originally priced at $19.95 when it was first released two years ago, and it sold better at that price point than at a higher price point. So, I'm hopeful that the lower price will prompt you to take a closer look.

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