Fwiw--I posted the following on RB, in answer to our friend
Tex's repeated questioning about the Wave business model...
Tex--I am writing this in frustration, as you seem to be willfully ignorant what Wave is all about, despite spending many hours here and on the SI WAVX thread.
Here is what you wrote earlier:
"So your question is very legitimate in that if e-commerce is going to grow by these incremental amounts and obviously these projections are being made without the necessity of WAVX being apart of this growth, WHY would it be necessary or wanted for that matter to share a part of this revenue with WAVX. One of the major benefits of e-commerce is the lowering of cost to the consumer, therefore, marketers and consumers IMO are looking for ways to LOWER cost and not add new layers of expense to the mix.So your question is very legitimate in that if e-commerce is going to grow by these incremental amounts and obviously these projections are being made without the necessity of WAVX being apart of this growth, WHY would it be necessary or wanted for that matter to share a part of this revenue with WAVX. One of the major benefits of e-commerce is the lowering of cost to the consumer, therefore, marketers and consumers IMO are looking for ways to LOWER cost and not add new layers of expense to the mix."
It's obviously true that marketers are looking for ways to lower cost and not add layers of expense to the mix, a point that you have repeatedly made here and on SI . What frankly astonishes me is why you don't seem to understand our response to your point, which is simply this: by the time that a software company is ready to market its product, it costs virtually nothing more to sell one million copies than it does to sell 100. This is not the case, obviously, with hard goods like cars, appliances, etc. Are you with me so far? Okay, for the purposes of illustration, let's say that the software company can sell 10,000 copies of their product using the usual sales channels, and receive for those sales their usual payment, whatever that amount is. Or, they can supplement those sales by signing up with Wave and selling, say, 100,000 copies of their product (which remember, is virtually cost-free to them since they've already spent the money to develop their product), even though Wave is going to take a reasonably high percentage of the sales price. It seems clear to me that it is obviously in the software company's interest to sign up with Wave, don't you agree? But, you protest, what makes me believe that the example that I give is realistic--why would 100,000 more consumers purchase their product using Embassy than would otherwise purchase it? Microtransactions. They'll be able to try it out and see if they like it before purchasing it, and once they've made the decision to purchase it, it will cost them no more than if they bought it through a traditional sales channel. I for one am not going to spend $50 on a piece of software unless I'm very sure that I have some use for it; however, I'd be happy to try out all sorts of software if I could do so for a buck an hour, and I have no doubt that I'd end up buying more software with that option than I do now. This is the same idea why outfits like CDNow allow you to hear snippets of music on their website--they know that they're going to sell more cds that way.
And that, Tex, is why I expect Wave to ultimately prevail, and why your argument about the "increased cost" to the software company is not valid, imho.- |
