Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A few years ago, a British shareware author called Colin Messitt conducted an experiment to see how many people would voluntarily pay for something, rather than being coerced into doing so.
Colin released a shareware program called "SmartDoc". With a 50/50 probability (depending on whether your hard disk's serial number was odd or even - something like that, so it always behaved the same way on a given PC) the program was either fully functional, but with a "nag screen" which requested payment when it started up, or else it was restricted in its functionality, and required payment to become fully functional. A code number, which the user had to supply when registering, told Colin which of the two "behaviours" of the program any given user had encountered.
The results were quite emphatic. Colin received 5x as many registrations from the version which required payment for full functionality than he did from the version which was fully functional, and merely requested payment.
You can read the whole story here.
Obviously this is talking about shareware software, and not e-Books, but I think the same principle still applies, and that it demonstrates that providing people with a positive incentive to pay works a lot better than merely requesting a payment. |
There was a cafe somewhere here in Australia that started a "pay what you think the meal was worth after you've eaten it" system. Everything went along fantastically at first. In fact they were making more money than before.
It only took about 3 months before the novelty wore off and people started paying less and less even though the food and service had not changed.
It took another 6 months before they had to close up shop because they couldn't afford to stay open.
Like in your example, the people were merely asked to pay whatever they thought fair after they had been given the same quality food and service as everyone else. Most chose to pay very little indeed.
Cheers,
PKFFW