Pay what you feel pricing?

There are those who feel that PWYW pricing lands greater profits than fixed pricing; I can understand how that can happen with the right funneling on your own product. It's a perceived value kind of thing.

I'm not certain it can be used for affiliate marketing as those prices are fixed.

Have you used the system? If so, how did it work for you?

If you haven't there are some good articles and how-to's out there. I haven't read much about it, only just enough that I'm intrigued by the concept.

Echidna, you might want to click Edit on your OP and go to Advanced to change your thread title to something more catchy like Pay-What-You-Want Pricing: Opinions Needed!

- Annie

I'm currently testing this out with an ebook I published. So far I'm pleased with the results. I'm getting a 7.9% conversion rate currently. 2.4% were paid and the rest were free downloads. I haven't tested more than one sales letter though. I just put it up the first draft and went with it.

Sometimes this can totally work in your favor and other times it can hurt your profit. The only real way to know is to test.

Here's a link from Pat Flynn's site where he interviewed Anthony Vennare

SPI 058: Pay What You Want with Anthony Vennare from Hybrid Athlete

Anthony built his entire fitness business around Pay What You Feel pricing and it's a good listen either way.

Hi
Some people think that pwyw is useful for entering a new market and to introduce a new brand.
* It 'a way to give the possibility to consumers with little money available, to pay small sums for the same product.

Cheers

I think it would be useful in establishing yourself if you are just now entering a field (like Alex mentioned). You may want to ask for reviews/feedback on their experience, so that way you can start to gather reviews, which can be instrumental in driving your sales later on if you decide to switch to fixed rate pricing.

I would do it because it puts the PRESSURE on me to help the client GET RESULTS.

It depends on the service though.

Also, ROE should always be a consideration.

it only makes sense for digital products that can be delivered automatically. not services or physical goods.

I wouldn't do it for Internet Marketing related products, but I'd test it for other, non-IM products, especially for products where you could set a minimum of $5 and that be perceived as really cheap.

For IM products, you basically have an entire herd of people accustomed to paying $0-$17 for a whole range of products. The IM community is spoiled on "dirt cheap", so I wouldn't even bother with a "Pay What You Want" model, because most of them want $0. Lol.

PWYW is something I've used a few times with clients. I think when you go into it you need to be aware of why you are doing this ie are you looking to make money or build a buyers list?

Once you know what your objective is you can start to build up a metric to judge the success. This is especially important with real world products where you might have to look at the product as a loss leader.

There are a few techniques that you can use to get maximum return.

Firstly look into price anchoring. Steve Jobs did a great presentation when launching the ipad that included anchoring.

There is an example in predictably irrational by Dan Ariely which is worth a read.

Secondly you'll want to use social proof to show what others are paying so something like 78% of people chose to pay £1000.

Lastly scarcity. Let people know that after x amount of time/units sold that the price will no longer be pwyw.. If you want to ramp it up use both 'this product is pwyw for the next 12 hour or until 250 copies have been sold' then tell them how longs left and either how many copies have been sold or remain.

It depends on the market.

If you present the offer to a group of people who regularly donate to charities you will get one result. Offer it on WF and you will get a decidedly different outcome.

If I were to test it, I would offer a freebie with the opportunity to pay me for it.

The only time I've heard of this pricing model is for music, where torrents and pirating online still run wild. I guess it just comes down to what exactly you are selling, with the "perceived" value being higher in most peoples minds than the actual value.

'pay what you feel' pricing this is interesting topics.

I was never a big fan of this model. Still not. When selling, you have to present yourself as the one. Would Jay Abraham do this? Dan Kennedy? Yanik Silver? Jeff Paul? Gary Halbert? Allen Says??