What would you pay for these?

Nov 6, 2011

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I subscribe to Chris Spooner’s Blog Spoon Graphics newsletter. His site is a goldmine for people like me and he really piqued my interest with a post titled Top 20 High Quality Free Fonts Every Designer Should Own. Just the words free and font were enough for me to go and find out what I’ve been missing out on. It’s true, his line up are awesome but there’s a little catch and it’s more to do with my conscience that anything else. One of the fonts I simply had to have was Wisdom Script (top left in the picture) which is available at the font shop Lost Type Co-op. Chris was right, it is free but only if you want to name your price at $0. This is what they do – appeal to the user to place a worth of the font. How could I say it was worth $0 in order to get it for free?

This is a trend I have observed in other places in the last few days. Akismet – you know the folks that keep spam comments out of WordPress, well they’ve started asking the same questions – what is it worth? Although they do guilt you into paying more by having a little face that changes expression based on your choice; frown = no payment, neutral = somewhat correct in your amount and smiley = finally you’re paying us what we’re worth! Although in this case I ignored the frown, something I had to do when trying to get my business up and running and not being cashed up.

So I’m curious, what would you do? Are you happy to pay $0? Maybe I should start a barter system – what can you give me in return? Do you think it will take off?

Image showing a selection of fonts available from Lost Type Co-op

Comments

2 responses to “What would you pay for these?”

Monica Lee

November 9, 2011

Hi, I think it is a business model that you only use to generate buzz and you do it for a short amount of time, say maybe a month. I also think if this was your “plan” to market your product this way wouldn’t it be better to phrase it as “Pay what you can afford.” Just the re-phrase might get people to think differently about the product and it assumes you are coming from a place of generosity.

Reply
1. Libby
  
  November 9, 2011
  
  Good point! I like your approach much better. The cyclist read me a story recently of a blogger he follows who wrote a book and gave 3 price options, one of which was ‘I’m a little broke at the moment’. The interesting thing is that, to date, he hasn’t sold a single one at that price.
  
  Reply

What would you pay for these?

Comments

2 responses to “What would you pay for these?”

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