How should I price an asset?

Hello guys,

I have recently opened a BETA for my first Editor Extension - Tutorial Master in hope to receive some feedback before pushing it to the Asset Store.

However, what bugs me is how much should I charge for my asset? I've heard that you base it on the amount of time it has taken you to make it and your hourly rate, but I can't give an exact number of the latter since I haven't done any freelancing before.

I was thinking about charging $50 for my asset. I reckon such sum is justified for constant customer support and updates, but I am not sure if that's too much.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

The main issue is getting visibility and votes. A great asset can sell zero copies because no one sees it, and those that do are unlikely to take the risk on a product that has no ratings/reviews. You will probably need around 20-50 sales to get to the 3 ratings required for the rating to even show. And anything less than 20 ratings is still in that grey area (unless there are some rave reviews).

Getting lets say 30 customers at $50 will not be easy unless you already have a following or you get in on an asset store sale. So before you even worry about pricing, make sure you have 100+ people on your mailing list.

As to pricing $50 sounds fine if you do what you say on the box (particularly the bit about 'Can be quickly integrated into existing projects''). It might however be worthwhile making it cheaper at the start, and letting everyone know that its cheap for the first month only or something.

 

I don't think the time you spent or your hourly rate should affect the price at all. Presumably your goal is to make money, and so you should charge whatever amount will make you the most money. If you can sell 1000 copies at $10, that is better than selling 100 copies at $50, even if you think it is worth $50 or that amount corresponds to how much time you spent on it. There are a ton of factors that affect what price will make you the most money.

Are there other assets on the store similar to yours? If so, how does the quality of your asset compare? If it is significantly better, and that can be seen by customers through your asset's page, then you can charge the same, or more, for your asset. If your asset is of similar or lesser quality, you should charge less than the other available assets.

How large is your target audience? If your asset appeals to virtually every developer (at least to some extent), you may want to not charge very much since you can have extremely high volume. If you are making something that is only useful to 0.1% of developers, but is hugely useful to them (for example, a framework for a specific type of game), then you should charge more since you won't have high volume, but the people who do want your asset REALLY want it.

Your asset seems to be a time save that a big chunk of developers would find useful. I think $20-$30 would make you the most money.

 

The selling your assets submission guidelines has a chart with suggestions for pricing different types of assets. As others have already stated, the time you spent isn't really a factor when you are pricing an asset to sell. Pricing assets is different from pricing contract work since you have the ability to resell lots of copies of the asset. There are also other factors to consider as well. Selling an asset cheap may lead to tons of sales, but it will also most likely require more of your time to handle support whereas selling it slightly higher could have a lower amount of sales but free up more time to develop other assets.

I think the range that @ZakCollins suggested kind of hits in a sweet spot for scripted assets. That is priced high enough to keep a lot of the impulse buys out which will end up being a support nightmare but still affordable enough for people who are unsure and unwilling to take a chance with it to go ahead and bite to take the chance.

 

Interesting perspective - I really don't think an asset won't sell because of low visibility, unless the consumer can't use the search function properly and its in a very deep category. However most people with very little effort can search for a specific 'thing' and find it pretty easy - even without a high rating, or even a rating at all.

Personally I would never purchase an asset based on user feedback - because we all use tools differently, with the exception of there being a high number of legitimate bad reviews about the asset.

I do agree it is a very good idea - consumer/provider - to give a discounted introductory offer. Especially if the asset might be improved upon in future updates - which might necessitate a price increase.
For this tutorial master between 25-45 seems like a reasonable price point.

 

I think $50 is a good price for your asset... but I agree that it's really difficult to get visibility.

In my case, I'm selling one asset (Multi Screenshots Suite) at $50 since April 15th and I have sold only 9 copies... 5 at $50 and 4 at $10 (as part of AssetStoreDeals.com promotion). Not a big deal... but happy to have some good ratings and reviews with so few sales

My recommendations:
- Sell between 30$-$50.
- Start with a promotion (50% OFF).
- Make promotions sometimes.
- If someone contact you, answer fast providing a great support... and ask for a review!

Good luck!

 

Keep in mind that this will make Tutorial Master ineligible for the curated "New On the Asset Store" or "Staff Picks" lists. Overall, good tips. I think that's a good price range, too.

This is a really great point. When primary development is done, most of your time will be spent on support. Inexperienced publishers sometimes set their prices too low. Then they can't justify the amount of time spent providing support, so they end up skimping on support or only do it grudgingly, which is not the way to treat customers.

A growing trend is to provide a free trial or lite version that lets potential customers make sure the product is a good fit before buying. But this is a little complicated to set up because it's typically distributed as a DLL, not raw source files. If you ever expect to do this, you have to build it in from the beginning. This is because the DLL versions of MonoBehaviour and ScriptableObject classes will have different GUIDs than the source files. If you try to add a lite version later, it won't be compatible with the full version. I won't belabor this post with more details, but if you want them let me know.