Beware the ideas of March - Brummie Shakespeare
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Pay as you like software is popular
ACCORDING TO FIGURES released to The Inquirer by Binarynow, the firm offering business software on a pay what you want basis, the model works well.
Using a sales model used by pop legends including Cliff Richard, and a small UK indie group called Radiohead, the firm is letting shoppers pay what they want for a range of software applications, so long as they pay at least $1. Only recently launched, the firm has made some of its early sales figures available to us before the experiment finishes on Monday.
When Radiohead released In Rainbows back in 2007 it initially made it available as a digital download where buyers were encouraged to pay what they wanted. According to an Internet survey conducted by Record of the Day of 3,000 people, about one-third of people who downloaded the album paid nothing, with the average price paid being £4. We can't find Cliff's figures.
The idea kicked off something of a trend. Restaurants have launched with the same pricing concept, some music download and streaming sites have used it too, and Cinergix did the same thing when it launched the latest version of its Creately design tool.
Upon launching it last month, Binarynow said, "This social experiment was originated by Radiohead, followed by many other forward-thinking artists, and perfected this year by 2D BOY and their World of Goo game. Now it is being tested on Windows productivity and Internet security software.There is no catch, no biddings, extra charges or hidden fees. You pick your price and pay what you want, only $1 or more."
This week Premysl Pech, president at Binarynow, said that the majority of purchasers had opted for the cheapest alternative, with 87 per cent of shoppers handing over the minimum payment of $2 required, $1 per application. Just over five per cent paid $10, making the $5 per application option the second most popular option.
The average price paid for Kingsoft Office and Kingsoft Internet Security was $3.32. Just over one per cent paid the full $39.95 price for Kingsoft Office, and he explained that this was the maximum amount received for any order.
One thing is sure, the experiment has driven sales. Premysl said that sales at the firm had increased by 61.76 per cent in comparison with the same period last month, though he admitted that this came with sacrifices.
"We expected that majority of the buyers would pay a minimum" said Premsyl. "I guess it is normal human behavior. Of course we hope that [the percentage] of these buyers who paid minimum would be little bit smaller. From the majority of the orders we did not receive a dime due to processing fees. We see this as our investment in long term relationship with this users."
So there you have it, letting people pay what they want depending on their means works well. Someone should tell Rupert Murdoch. µ
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I don't know *when* you're supposed to decide how much to pay for the software at Binaryrow.
I think the best option is to have it work pretty much like shareware. You run it for a while before you decide how much you're willing (and able) to pay. (Possibly with the minimum amount charged initially at the download, and then you can "top it up" later.)
I like it! Makes you really get what you pay for instead of paying for the unknown.
Sure you can get any GPL, Open Source software without any charges, but it's not free. People who develop it has human needs, you know.
While you don't have to pay for downloading these softwares, it's expected that you'd make a donation to the people who took their time to develop it, at least. Or else they'll go work somewhere else to pay their bills.
I guess $1 is too low, a minimum $5 would be more than fair, just to cover the costs.
Kingsoft Corp. is the largest software manufacturer of business software in China. Kingsoft Office has more then 45 million users....really!!!.. Majority are of course in China, then Malaysia, Japan and Australia. Although this is 10+ years old project, I believe first English version was released in 2007. It does not mean that this software is only three years old, this is very mature software. I would easilly compare it to Microsoft Office 2007 without ribbon but with docx and xlsx support. Yes I use it and I like.
This is not OpenOffice based. Street price for this goes from $40-$80. It is really nice guesture that now before Christmas some people can get cheaper.. Much cheaper.. Thank you.
I like free and open source, too, but this is as close as it gets and I understand why some people may like Kingsoft Office better then OpenOffice, which is simple too large and too slow.
I never even heard of Kingston until I read this story, If I were a small company competing against Norton etc. I would probably be be giving the software away free to get people to use it. Of course the story doesn't mention that you probably have to keep paying yearly/monthly fees to maintain their services like most other security software vendors, so why not give it away for next to nothing. That said I really do like this business model especially in regards to the music industry. I don't know why more bands don't want to give this a try and bypass the greedy dinosaurs in lala land (hollywood). I think it would be a step in the right direction to reduce some of the piracy as well. I also have to agree with Grunchy that there is a lot of great open source software available for everyones favorite price: $0.00.
I like open office, firefox, thunderbird, irfanview, gmail, picasa, etc. If I have to pay 1¢ then I feel wripped off. $1??! Who do you think you are!! Gwan beat it I can get a better deal somewhere else.
...and think it should apply to more than just software. I would pay a fair price which is based on how much the product means to me and how useful it is.
The $1 minimum is not right though. The minimum should be the amount it costs the company to produce that product and deliver it - processing and all. Let the buyer decide how much profit the company should make and the good companies with an honest product will prevail.
.... it's not like they're offering MS Office or Adobe distiller!
Cannot say anything about the security suite, but I just downloaded it.... we'll see!
David, thank you for a good story. Here is a direct link to "Pay What You Want" for Kingsoft Office and Kingsoft Internet Security. This "experiment" will be live until Monday December 14, 2009.
http://www.binarynow.com/store/pwuw/