Jay
Visitor
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Re:Wondering about Pricing / Availabilit - 2009/02/07 04:40
keith wrote:
Hi Jay,
Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated.
What kind of features, services in a 'Pro' hosting model would attract you, and others to pay?
For example, how would you compare them to existing services like Flickr?
Many thanks
Keith
For hosting, I would think $25/year would be a fair price for unlimited image hosting. Preferably less though, as Flickr is $25/year for unlimited storage.
If someone were to come and evaluate the program and your hosting service, seeing that is has Flickr support built in, they might question what the point of paying you $25/year is, versus paying Flickr $25/year, and getting the added community and social networking features that come along with it. Most especially if your service is not unlimited storage.
The people who are going to sign up for your hosting are the people who do not already have a Flickr account. I think you'll have a very hard time convincing Flickr users to also pay for your hosting service, no matter the cost. And if you remove the Flickr support from your application, that may turn people off of you entirely.
I wouldn't worry about comparing your hosting service to Flickr. That's an uphill battle. What you should focus on is how to be better than the free image hosting services, like Photobucket, in order to convince people to pay for your service.
I think there should be some way to tag the images so they are easily searchable once uploaded, and there should be a direct link to the image so that it can be shared with a simple BB IMG code.
The application itself, however, I think is great how it is, and I don't think there's really room for a 'pro' tier to it. More photo hosting integration would be nice for those that might need it (I personally already have a Flickr account), and video capture support would be nice down the road.
If you must charge for Skitch (the application, not the hosting), it should be less than trivial. $5 at most. I know software development costs money, but as I pointed out before, there are already free and comparable (or more fully featured) alternatives. Not to mention what is already built into OS X.
When software duplicates built-in functionality of the OS, no matter how much more convenient it makes the task, I personally have a very hard time justifying paying for it. And I dare say, I don't think I'm alone in thinking this.
keith wrote:
Thanks gemsling for the clarification. We're working on solving that that specific need already, so hopefully we can solve that for you.
One idea that comes to mind for a precision selection is to add a key modifier to the area selection tool, which would expand say a 50x50 box around the mouse pointer, and provide a magnified image around 400% making it easier to pinpoint to the pixel what you're selecting.
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