Omega Bundle thought

General
#1

So I’ve ordered the Omega Bundle and overall quite happy with whats included. I expect to use most of it but not everything; considering the individual prices of the components it does indeed represent good value.

It did get me to thinking though; would it be possible in a future bundle to have the option to customise the content ?

Lets say for example that I wanted 6 of the add-ins but not all of them.

How about the option to pick said 6 add-ins, and then get a reduction, say 25 or 30 percent on the total price ?

Or has been done in the past, a mini bundle option or two ?

Im just thinking aloud really, any thoughts ?

#2

From a marketing standpoint that’s not a good idea for the same reason that I will never be able just to choose the cable channels I want and pay for only those channels (a la carte pricing). Some items in the bundle would receive much less interest than others and it would not benefit those developers to “play”. The benefit of the bundle is that everyone gets at least a small pay for every bundle purchased.

#3

Fair enough. I guess Im just thinking of a little more flexibility rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

The value is there either way for me.

If the bundle next year is similar to this one, it makes the decision more difficult.

I think the mini bundle that has happened before might still be a good idea though.

#4

I think that’s been a issue for several years now.

#5

Is there a reason why it doesnt run all year round ?

#6

There’s a great reason. The developers that are selling these products are selling them at a significant discount during the Omega Bundle. It’s hard enough to make a living as a Xojo tools developer as it is. I wrote about this last week: http://www.bkeeneybriefs.com/2015/01/the-state-of-the-xojo-3rd-party-developer-market/

#7

The deal with the bundle is simple. I give my stuff for the bundle, get a percent of the money and hopeful a lot of new clients who buy updates the next years.
And the price of the bundle must be high enough that we still sell individual parts while the bundle runs.
I don’t want people to just buy the bundle instead of an update.

#8

Interesting points in the blog there Bob. It is good we have consulting available as well I admit.

I dont consider myself an expert, although I think I have a fairly good grasp of how to do most things.

But going commercial with an app for example, I would definitely want to get a knowledgable consultant to take it apart first.

Add-ins produced and supported by the same consultants give me personally a good reassurance in a way, that the add-ins will be written and perform to a good standard overall.

Its for that reason that I pay particular attention to the developer/consultant products in particular, and how active those people are in the forums.

#9

One of the good properties of producing digital products, is that when the product is ready, you can make infinite copies of it without any increase in production costs.
So a developer can lower the price, to get more customers.
I guess that’s what allows Omega Bundle to give us such a huge discount.

#10

True to a certain extent. However, a good product has thousands of man hours of investment. Most of these products, even with the Omega Bundle, do not above a thousand unit sales, in total. So lowering the price might mean a few more customers but the developer still doesn’t make a living doing it.

You also have to keep in mind that there is a cost to just having a product in terms of support. I don’t care how good the documentation and examples are, there are still support emails to answer and fixing bugs and adding new features. Lower the price to get more unit sales actually increases this cost.

The Xojo market is small and it’s not a market that’s overly aggressive in their spending. Many are solo developers or hobbyists where even the license for Xojo is prohibitive.

#11

Ummm, no.

That would only be true if

(1) no user support
(2) infinite user base

#12

Ah, Bob, beat me to it.

And I would like to point out that Bob and Christian have excellent user support.

#13

So please everyone who likes to support Third Party should buy the bundle and recommend it to others. :slight_smile:

#14

And, better yet, keep buying the updates… :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

of course, please first buy the updates and than the bundle :slight_smile:

only sales keep things running.

#16

And guess how Bob’s next blog entry may look like it 100 forum members go and buy all his stuff to support the development :slight_smile:

#17

My opinion is that the bundle is a good value if you need a majority of the products. I have in the past purchased similar bundles (I bought a similar one for Runrev) before I retired. I had more disposable income then. Now I have to pay more attention to the things I buy and not be wasteful. For me it would be better if developers participating in the bundle would do internal bundling. For instance I need both app wrapper and retina kit and would appreciate a bundle discount of just those two.

#18

for such a deal you can always ask the developer of the product.

On our website we have a couple of combinations of MBS products bundled, e.g. Complete Set + ChartDirector.

#19

Theres some good points here.

As an end-user, I simply don’t have the cash available to go and get all the individual packages available and then repeat that figure, (or a large percentage of it) each year for ongoing maintenance. I really wish I could though. In most cases it is easy to recognise the talent and that a large amount of time has gone into the product.

Im fortunate this year since I know I will use quite a few of the plugins in the bundle, but next year becomes the dilemna.

Do I opt for next years bundle, or renew several of the plugins from this years bundle where I use them a lot, or something else ?

I’ve mulled over the changes for Xojo itself, and I’m one of those for which the cost has increased. The desktop edition looks great for smaller projects of course, but the database access means I need the next one up, so $299 for that. I dont have an issue with that btw, I think it still represents value for what you get access to.

Now considering that I could only ever spend a set amount per year on all my Xojo licences, plugins and the like, thats where things change. If I said upto $100/month, the Xojo license takes away the first 3 months, and leaves me approx $900 for the rest of the year. The bundle cost is $399, which again is good value, that now drops me to $500 for the rest of the year. This is where I have to think long and hard about which plugins are the most important and which ones I will use the most, and see if there is enough left in the kitty to cover them on an individual basis for the next 12 months. Or, do I forego the bundle, and leave myself $900 to cover the cost of plugin renewals.

If I was doing all of this on a professional level, then the above considerations simply wouldn’t be an issue. As an end user though, its different. I want to use the plugins, I want to support the developers for their hard work by subscribing/renewing, I dont want to get to the stage of asking for price reductions or some special package because I couldn’t afford it otherwise; I’d consider that quite an insult, and its not the developers issue that I only have a limited amount of cash to spend on my plugins and purchases to begin with.

Hmm. Its not so straight forward when you dig down into things.

At least for now I have the next 12 months or so to see which ones I use the most.

#20

The fundamental problem with Xojo 3rd party development is the lack of a modern web store system. It has been proven in countless different sales environments such as the App stores. If you build a slick enough system people will feel confident with 3rd party purchases and product discovery.

Step one to fixing the problem is integrating a Xojo 3rd party store directly into the Xojo ide that will keep the purchases made up to date and can be easily accessed for use in your project through the ide. A system that allows you to never have to leave the ide.

The best part is Xojo does not have to reinvent the wheel. These systems are well known.