Pricing on paysites...

[abostonboy]

BlakeMason uses whole dollar amounts. For example, our lowest membership is $20 for a five day trial. We convert aff traffic at about 1:200ish. Do you feel that 19.95 would be better? Or how about something like 19.87. I know why sites use the odd cents at the end. It's so when someone gets a CC they don;t think it's a porn site and then may not go look to cancel. Now, I don't want to play that game. But, are whole numbers worse for conversions? Or better? I mean, I think the surfer knows that 19.95 is really $20.

One reason I am asking this is that I was at a bar in NYC with my boyfriend and when he said I worked for a porn site, his friend said, "OH! You work for the site that's $28 a month!". Now, he REMEMBERED that price. That was part how we were branded. So, I got thinking maybe that whole dollar price is actually helping us in some ways.

[Mickey]

i dont think the last 5 cents matters much in ways of conversion, what is 5 cents in the big picture .... its not like the customer will go: At 19.95 would be a good price for what i am getting but no way i am paying 20 for it .... or i could affort 19.95 but not 20 ....

doesnt make a lick of difference i dont think..

[Johnny]

Here's an interesting article related to this:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-things-cost-1995

Here's another great article that approaches it from a "who's your client" perspective

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/strauss/2003-07-07-pricing_x.htm

[xstr8guy]

Lloyd and I had this conversation a while back. And I can understand the logic of charging an honest $28 instead of $27.95. It's nice to think that you are being honest with the surfer. But in reality, EVERY retailer does the odd number cents thing... with the exception of "Dollar Stores". My logic tells me that there must be a very good reason for every retailer (online or brick-and-mortar) to be using that pricing model. Hell even gas stations charge 9/10 of a cent!

[abostonboy]

An interesting point. When I was doing my Ebay thing, I use to use .95 or .99, then I looked at Walmart's prcing on video games. I started using .82 and .97 for the pricing. The result was that a game that I normally sold for 29.95 and maybe get an 80% sell through. I could sell for 32.97 and still get the same sell through. Meaning 80% of the listings would sell at that price. But when I used 32.95 it didn't work as well. Like 65% sell through.