- Price it low
- “If you’re not worried that you’re pricing it too cheap, you’re not pricing it cheap enough. That’s the best advice I can give you about Pricing in a single sentence. Never ask, ‘How much might someone be willing to pay for this?’ Ask instead, ‘At what price could I sell a huge number of these?’ Read the biographies of Henry Ford and Sam Walton and you’ll learn that this was the one question asked by both men throughout their lives.”
- NPR interview with author of 'Gotcha Capitalism'
- “Bob Sullivan’s latest book is about the hidden fees found in many phone, cable, credit card and other bills. All told, he says, corporations are nickel-and-diming their customers to death — or at least to the tune of $1,000 or more a year.”
- Gapingvoid offers advice to tech businessmen
- “To all you corporate MBAs out there, here’s a little tip. When you planning on how to embrace the brave new world of Web 2.0, the first question you ask yourself should not be ‘What tools do I use?’ Blogs, RSS, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook- it doesn’t matter. The first question you should REALLY ask yourself is: ‘How do I want to change the way I talk to people?’”
- Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”
- “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
- Sinatra and social proof
- “Step 1: Take the problem your product solves and find groups or niches who are particularly known for encountering that problem. Step 2: Show your popularity with most — or, preferably, all — of these niches.”
- Microsoft warns businesses of impending autoupdate to IE7
- “Microsoft has warned corporate administrators that it will push a new version of Internet Explorer 7 their way next month, and it has posted guidelines on how to ward off the automatic update if admins want to keep the older IE6 browser on their companies’ machines.”
- Microsoft Word users abandon ship
- “Like Howard Beale in Network, many longtime Microsoft Word users are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. So they’re abandoning Word in droves, turning instead to Google Docs and other more elegant, intuitive, user-friendly apps such as Scrivener, WriteRoom, and Buzzword for all their word-processing needs.”
- stickK.com lets you put a contract out on yourself
- “The Commitment Contract concept is grounded on two well-known principles of behavioural economics: (1) people don’t always do what they claim they want to do, and (2) incentives get people to do things…Today’s health-conscious and socially-conscious business market was ripe for a free and accessible forum to help people create Commitment Contracts and follow through on them.”
- 15 amazing coincidences
- “This is a list of 15 of the most incredible, unbelievable coincidences.”
- The story of Morganna the Kissing Bandit
- “A Kentucky native, Morganna was 17 when she attended a 1971 Cincinnati Reds game and a friend dared her to run out on the field at Riverfront Stadium and give Pete Rose a kiss. Rose swore at her for the intrusion, then called her and apologized the next day. It was the first of nearly two dozen big-league baseball kisses and one of hundreds involving entertainers and other athletes for Morganna, who realized the value of publicity. A Cincinnati sportswriter dubbed her the Kissing Bandit.”
Stephen
on 25 Jan 08The first article, with its advice to price everything low seems to presume everyone has the same business model, that every product is at the marginal and that selling lots at a lower price is always better.
And guess what, it’s complete bunkem. He mentions Mr Dell, and neclects to mention Mr Jobs. He mentions that Ford sold cars at $850 when everyone else was selling them at $2,500. That’s great, find a market like that now. The automobile companies now realise it’s much better if they all sell cars for $850 to those who want to pay $850, and $2,500 to those who want to pay $2,500 (plus inflation of course ;).
Doug
on 25 Jan 08Agree with Stephen. I was just reading the passage in “The Four-Hour Work Week” that has to do with raising your prices in order to a) create larger, safer margins, b) avoid competitors who will simply engage you in a low price war until you have no profits, and c) attract fewer, higher-quality, lower-maintenance customers rather than more, higher-maintenance customers who require more support. This seems to be the way of Apple and other high-end brands: Rise above the fray as the low-margin companies tear each other apart.
Matthew King
on 25 Jan 08What Pressfield calls “Resistance”, Dante would call Sloth.
Deano
on 25 Jan 08“Microsoft Word users abandon ship” – I know you guys like to bash MS but this article does not offer any evidence that users are behaving in this way.
I find Word being used in every office I visit and undoubtedly remains a healthy cash cow for Redmond.
The problem for online alternatives is that they won’t offer all the features every user would need and in a business environment Word’s bloated feature set is going to rule.
And when your web service suffers an outage I can
I do understand why many don’t like Word and I detest it myself but I bet it’s the most used application in the Office suite. It’s not going anywhere for some time and I don’t see it being replaced by software that requires a working internet connection.
Deano
on 25 Jan 08For completion’s sake;
“And when your web service suffers an outage I can” should have been deleted. :)
Tom W
on 26 Jan 08Price it low ? Starbucks is doing very well by pricing it high. Maybe it’s not about that.
Robin
on 26 Jan 08There are four pricing options – higher, lower, low and free. Its surprising how often “higher” works. Lower also works but low and free usually conjure up the undesirable concept of “cheap and nasty”.
Linux has not been successful against Windows by being free. I suspect that if Vista costs $200 (I don’t know the exact figure) and Linux was $135 it would be far more successful.
And, sadly, I suspect Rails is going to suffer for being free because there is no money to fund an organization that can deal with the needs of non-expert users – they types who (foolishly) like the fact that you can download MS software and install it without knowing about the underlying details.
Don Schenck
on 26 Jan 08There are FOUR P’s.
You can’t focus on only one.
This discussion is closed.