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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 471520" data-attributes="member: 7737">This is a fascinating thread and I hope you guys don't mind me jumping in. I'm not a PDF d20 publisher. However, I am a marketing analyst for a subscription-based website with a ton of members, so perhaps I have some insights.One of the big problems of selling stuff on the web, especially electronic stuff, is that it is difficult to create the perception of value for the customer. "Why should I pay for this PDF / membership when similar things are (or were) available for free?" is a commonly heard refrain. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized and more and more big sites go pay, there will be some alleviation of this problem. The "everything is free!" mentality that afflicted the Internet when it first achieved critical mass has created a hurdle that is only beginning to be overcome. Consumers need to be retrained in the basic economic realities of life. Unfortunately, this takes time, and it may take too much time for a small d20 PDF publisher.A converse to the "why isn't it free?" complaint is this: The low price of some Internet-based products also hampers sales, because it damages the value perception. ("Only five bucks for a D&D sourcebook? It must be crappy.") The membership my company sells costs in the $10 - $15 range per year. That is incredibly cheap when compared to magazine subscriptions (often $30+ per year) or Internet access ($23 per month for AOL). I believe we have hurt our revenues by not charging more. In fact, a price test we recently conducted shows that raising prices can eek out more revenue without hurting volume as much as we feared. In other words, our demand curve is relatively flat along certain price points. Of course, we have to balance this against the fact that in the future we would like to cross-sell to existing customers, so more members is good. (1000 members at $5 is better than 500 members at $10.)For a PDF publisher, though, I don't think cross-selling is that much of a concern. The major concern is: what can I do right now to sell my product? Others have discussed some marketing aspects such as referring sites, banner ads, and so forth. I submit that PDF publishes should also examine their pricing. At five dollars you may not be charging enough. I will leave the hows of price-testing as an exercise for the reader. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  But if you are serious about making money off your PDFs, you need to gather this information, analyze it, and apply the findings.One more thing. It can be tricky and expensive to sell to those who do not have credit cards. You can accept checks or money orders, PayPal, or even send someone a bill, but you incur costs for those alternative methods. Again, as consumers become more accustomed to shopping on the web, more of them will have credit cards and they will be more comfortable giving out that information. But, again, this takes time.I hope my rambling is useful in some respects.</blockquote>

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