Pricing

It's a hassle these days finding the right price range for you product.

On the one hand, Photoshop is selling for around $1000, and Painter at under $300.  On the other hand, Artrage has a free version and I think, a $35 dollar version.

When we were selling for $89, a price I was comfortable with for a number of years, they all called us bargain-basement.  That gets old after a while.  And, you don't have a lot of headroom to do sales.  What can you do?  30% off was about it.

Our free version hasn't been updated in a long time, since 2004.  We thought about a new free version, but I haven't had the where-withal to actually write it.  A free version can help you, but it can also hurt you terribly.  If users have what they need, they have no reason to buy.

We bantered back and forth on what the new price of Howler would be and neither one of us really got what we wanted.  Later, we lowered the price to $135, which we figured was "just out of the bargain basement."

Lately, other free products have been putting pressure on us as well.  We've run some specials, like half price, but the same people who won't buy at $135, won't buy at $69.

Windows 8 is about to be released in a week or so.  We've been quietly optimizing the code for the last 2 years to run well on the type of hardware we expect to see running Windows 8, which could be everything from low power tablets to desktops that flip down into a tabletop experience.