“RE: Help with Macrobyte's Future”

Ok, so you're up against that usual software pricing problem. I suggest the following: Always, always have free evaluations for x days. (generally 15-30 days). This means that you need some kind of licensing scheme with encryption, something that may or may not be possible. Free evaluations make people try out the software and get hooked on it.

Second, sell the base software at a very decent and affordable price. This will build the proper community.

Third, license the advanced stuff on a yearly basis, or propose a sale + 20% maintenance/year. For example, you could license at $1000/year, but sell at $2000 + $400/year. This will allow those who want to own the software to pay for it and choose whether or not they want upgrades later on, and will let those who are on a cash-flow bind to license it yearly and defer some of the costs. Of course the dollar amounts I threw in are just to illustrate my point, they have nothing to do with a potential price point for any of the Macrobyte software.

Finally, one last point to remember is that once the software is created, the profit margin on any additional sale is close to 100%. So it's very important to gage the potential total market (number of Userland clients for example) and try to calculate penetration percentage at different price points, then see what total max revenue can be made. And following on what I said earlier about getting hooked on the software, if it has very high swiching costs (due to unique features for example), then the bait-and-hook strategy of first-year at 50% discount or whatnots works very well.

Henri.