Cost reduction of addon with each purchase
As we know addon developement take time.Sometimes a day and sometime a year, also constant fixes and support. People sometimes pay and sometimes just download and use it, sometimes addons are expensive for the user that even he need it but cant afford due to money issue as he maybe hobbyist. For production people, it can be very cheap as they can instantly purchase and make profit out of it.
So the idea is that when an addon is released, it should have certain fixed price that depend upon the effort of making and fixing issues of the addon but on the purchase window it should show fraction of that price (for example, lets say fixed price is 1000$ and fraction decided is 20$ to make 500 purchase to complete the goal), Now you will see that the fraction price will reduce with each purchase. The benefit of this approach is
- as i already said with each purchase the fraction price will be reduced so it will relief addon developer that his money is recovering and also when someone purchase the addon he will have this thing in mind that i am reducing the price for next purchaser, even he can donate more to help the devs to quickly achieve the goal and he can work on another development.
- Addon developer can charge 25$ for production people for first months.
- After 6 months, the price will be very less that all the community can afford that price.
- for each new addon release, he can set another milestone and the previous cost of addon will not be affected.
This approach will be beneficial for both artist and addon developer and it will encourage more developer. Another similar thing can be done also where people will propose and fund for the idea and decide fix cost of that development, now anyone can make a solution and after testing that fixed price will be rewarded for the solution provider. this way the addon will be available for all in a single time.
i hope you will understand it to have more development in the areas of diverse field as per the demand of different industries, big studios will appreciate this effort because they already make custom addons and scripts as per their need and if someone as freelancer will do it they will be happy to pay for it. this ecosystem sound more sustainable for me, please comment your views on it.
2 Comments
How does this concern Blender, though? Addon developers do what they want with their addon. If someone needs a significant amount of money upfront for developing an addon or rapidly after, getting hired or crowdfunded for it sounds a better and safer solution.
Besides that, I think there are e few flaws there:
Just because of currencies values across the world, A 1 USD addon worth a month of salary to some people, while for others it's worth a candy bar. That's the reality of world-wide marketing, and there's no way around that besides either adjusting your price around everyone's market or let everyone do it for you.
People have no troubles using a vpn to fake their location and get for lower prices and VAT. Many people never pay a cent when they shop on
pay-what-you-wantmarkets, or just find a third-party download given by someone else. All famous paid addons can be found redistributed for free. The license allows it, so you can't take legal actions against it, and People would do it regardless of legality.If the first impression is "that's massively overpriced for what it is", you will have people never coming back no matter how many times you tell them it gets cheaper over time. That's why people from both sides of the transaction prefer using pay-what-you-want (with or without a minimum value) or seasonal sales, because it is constant in its function and widely known/understood.
Unless you are something like a solo freelance artist strictly accepting very short term contracts, I wouldn't call it "instantly purchase and make profit out of it". A lot of people are paid on salary or per project with only a partial upfront payment, not to mention production groups/companies whose immediate activity literary makes zero profit for months/years.
The developer of addon not be intrested in this idea, because, the campany might wait for the price to lower, so developer have lose.
There is actually better idea, instead of this, for people those purchasing the first has to pay the full amount, but for the once who updating to new, don't have to full amount, the will have a disount.
Another way is lucky win giveaway of addon where 3 to 6 people get selected, and they get for free. So that hobbyist could get registered with emails to take part in the giveaway.