Pricing / entry cost for this tool

[Dan Shafer]

Frank.........

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I don't *entirely* agree but I  
don't think you're off the deep end, either.

You said, "I'm going to finish evaluating this, and I'm going to  
start my project, but I won't be done in 30 days, and my journey will  
probably end there.  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I can't afford to  
lay out for tools anymore until I Know I'm going to get across the  
finish line with something of value to sell."

I noticed the other day that one or Revolution's very few  
competitors, RealBasic, has an interesting policy that I hadn't been  
aware of before. When your evaluation license expires, they have an  
option on the notification dialog to request an extension of time to  
continue the evaluation. For kicks, I hit that option and within a  
short time I got a new eval license in email. That seems sensible to  
me. Rev *is* a big product and although I know that once you know how  
productive you can be its price seems if anything too low, the fact  
is that if you don't know that for sure, forking over a few hundred  
bucks to confirm your suspicions may be asking too much of some folks.

Obviously the company can track such requests and decide at some  
point that you've had long enough to evaluate the product and not  
grant any extensions. That would keep tire-kickers from using the  
product and never buying it.

OTOH, Frank, if you get to 30 days and you've actually spent serious  
time with Revolution you will have built at least a few things,  
perhaps even part of your planned first application, and then to  
decide that you can't afford to pay for a tool you're not sure you  
can use to produce something of value to sell may be a very short- 
sighted decision indeed. I hope you don't make that one.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
 From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html