This is the challenge. Finding a reasonable way to support the developer's effort in producing and supporting a product while also getting the site owner to spend some level of money. I'm wondering if there is a balance point where both could happen. Obviously you would want to minimize the cost to support the needs of your sites and the developer wants to maximize what he can generate revenue-wise.

Let's take the example of the Google Map/users product. Realistically what would you be willing to spend for it for just one site versus deploying it to all your sites? Would it be a maximum of $75, $50, $35, $20, $15, etc. As I mentioned if you could give me a list of what you are using and associate a value with each (in the event they could be fully supported, documented, and actively supported) I think we might see a pattern emerge. Perhaps everything would be $5.00 for each "class" of product versus $35.00 for another class of product.

On the purchasing side I'm wondering if products could be offered in a different way depending on how you want to use a product.

- if you just wanted to buy a single copy then there is a one price option
- if you wanted to then buy the same product for other sites the pricing gets discounted
- if you wanted to have access to all products for all your sites it would be an annual subscription and you could use as many as you want for 1-4 sites. There would be additional price points for additional 5-10, 11-20, etc. numbers of sites

As an aside we do offer discounting on our products the more you buy. Typically if you by two licenses of a given product at full price additional licenses of that same product are discounted 20%.

I'd love to get some other site owners into this discussion and see if perhaps we can collect enough data points to determine if there is an opportunity to better support the vBulletin site owner.

Thanks

Mark

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Mark Ferguson
President - Drive Thru Online, Inc.
Drive Thru Online – Helping Turn Your Passion into Profit