Big Bucks

I subscribe to the magazine Information Week. So it caught my eye when I say a link to an online article by them. The article was of some interest. But they had three interesting ads at the top of the article as well. These ads were links to sites on an image view, entrepreneurs, and mashups. I click through the first ad. And I might mention that it was a Google AdSense ad. This brought me to an imaging company’s web site. I initially wondered how much that link cost the imaging company. Information Week is a big and important web site. The click may have cost around a couple bucks or more.

The imaging company web site was very professional. It had nice and consistent navigation. I was able to zoom in on the detail for an interesting image processing tools for developers. As always I quickly jumped to the pricing page. It was then that I realized why the company could advertise on high profile sites like Information Week. Check out the prices that were listed for their development editions of this product:

  • $2500 Express Edition

  • $5000 C++ SDK Version

  • $5000 ActiveX SDK Version

  • $7500 C++ SDK Version with Forms

  • $7500 ActiveX SDK Version with Forms
I walked away with two lessons from this experience. On the one hand, I want my web sites to advertise for this company. Just providing leads may earn me a lot of money. And on a more important note, the pricing structure for development tools is extremely high. I wish I could develop and successfully market a product that retails for $2500 to $7500. That could help me quit the day job. Now I do realize all that money is not profit. But it is still wonderful nevertheless.

There were some funny things on the imaging company’s web site. They offered free trial downloads of the product. And they also stated that there were no refunds if you bought the software. At an average of $5000 a pop, I can understand why they would want to keep all sales final.