They (the buyers) will read this. You earn well as we see it. Do it quietly. you saw that the Elite author promoted his sales at $ 49? You are an excellent author for the buyer! why are you proving to everyone that you are the best on the forum?For all!
A successful author never says anything to anyone (he usually dresses like a badly, eats in a cheap dining room (which is tastier, but still cheap) And never climbs to show off his income to the public! Why do you do this?
1 Like
CMA, I think I have been around a lot longer than you have. Meaning I am probably twice your age. What I have seen young people do to the music business these past 20 years has been pretty disturbing on many levels. There is nothing wrong with encouraging everyone to put a fair price on their time, work, and effort so you and perhaps the up and comers can have a sustainable career in the music licensing business - long term…not “short term”… I am not bragging about my income here on AJ. It really is not that impressive in all honesty! I am just letting all know that raising prices has resulted in more revenue. I am sharing my experience to hopefully, help all music producers out. I also no longer want to engage with you in this forum Clean Magic Audio as you are kind of missing the point. Have a nice weekend and I wish you best of luck with your music career! I really do wish you future success and growth!
Well, just like I thought, you are promoting high prices! Reason: you want to eradicate dumping! You tried very well, the tracks for $ 5 have decreased by 100 tracks(when you held slogans "all for $ 49 - for sale super!).
Last Post CMA - Not paranoid about dumping. I am promoting “Long Term Sustainability” for this craft. Writing music for corporate visual media (aka production music) is a craft and a skill. It needs to be respected work.
7 Likes
Exactly! I think we will stop here! 
1 Like
Good luck with sales! No offense! 
2 Likes
I think there is huge responsibility on the side of big sellers here on AudioJungle. Their pricing and acting can make the marketplace more healthy with better income for everyone and some reasonable variety of prices or just create huge mess unfortunately. The responsibility is not only about their families, maybe a mortgage and life expences. When you sell 50-150(or more!) licences a week (a lot of money, you can easly say that it can be main income for probably everyone here) it can be extremely stressful and confusing what to do. Very strong emotions and I understand that(!), however they also create some pricing trends and a lot of authors will follow them. Hope they will make some wise and not so rapid pricing changes! So… good luck to you guys!
I rised prices for most of my items and it works very well for me so far. I’m not going to change these prices for a while and hope to stay with them for longer time.
4 Likes
Fun fact: My last 2 sales brought me as much as 5 sales before ADP. (Yes, all standard licenses)
6 Likes
Wish we could bulk edit the prices. Hope the “default price” setting is coming to AJ as well (it’s there for PhotoDune, as far as I understand). 
1 Like
The other day I went through my entire 286 item portfolio and adjusted the price for every single track. A few notes;
-
My account got rate limited, so I could only edit like 10 items before it would stop me and I’d have to wait a while before I could continue. Take note, Envato, this is extremely annoying for authors who need to edit large portfolios! The whole process took much longer than it needed to.
-
My mental arrhythmic noticeably improved within a few hours as I had to constantly work out the prices of each licence type. An automated system for this would be nice too so you only have to adjust the standard licence price.
-
My hands hurt at the end of it. Batch editing would be a life saver.
5 Likes
1 Like
I’m not sure about $49, but I think that for the most of a clients of AJ there is no difference between $20 and $30 (and even $35) per track. And yes, the most important is the quality of a works and a good match with a client’s goals.
3 Likes
So far, ADP has turned out pretty good for me too. I’ve been, though, quite more cautious and I’ve been gradually raising most of my items by around %25 with pretty good results. I still think that a minimum price is a must.
5 Likes
@SteelSound thank you for your inspiration in raising the prices. Your words really encouraged me to throw away all the paranoid and wuss stuff that was going in my head. I realized that price don’t really matter. But the only matter is quality. From now on I’ll be rtying to provise as much hi-quality as I can.
btw, first sale with raised price was made a few hours ago.
I’m sure that your words are real deal and I thankful for them being said here and read by me.
Wish you all the best in your sales and personal life)) you are a man)
3 Likes
Bump up time and update time. I am selling less units but yes indeed, my August revenue doubled as compared to July’s at $49 a track. On August 2 everything was 49, 99, 299, 599, 999
July stats: 29 licenses sold at $19 - $350 earnings (I am seriously thinking about retirement!)
August: SO FAR - 17 licenses sold at $49 or $99 - August Revenue (SO FAR) $710
That is a 100% increase in revenue. These are facts, not fiction.
I still have this week to go. With some luck and supporting buyers willing to pay more, I may have my best revenue month in 2018.
I know it’s tacky and inappropriate to discuss actual revenue, but I have been outspoken about this and I need to verify my “business thesis” about higher prices and revenue and tell you all exactly what happened to my revenue.
So while selling less units does not boost one’s ego, earning more sure feels better. Increasing revenue is the ONLY statistic that we need to be concerned with. I do not panic when I have no sales days. I am getting used to it in fact.
Here is one other tidbit - a variety of folks have paid “higher” prices - People from Turkey, Panama, Mexico, Spain, Korea are reaching in for 49 and 99 bucks for tier 1 and 2 licenses.
We need some leadership from the kings of the jungle. You will set the tone on prices. Are you really only worth $20?
Of course you are not! Don’t you want to make even more money? Kudos to Olexandr! Great job Olexandr with pricing strategy…I hope your revenue is climbing higher!
You have to be patient and be willing to deal (mentally) with less units sold and not panic. I will sit on these prices once again for all of September. I will only consider changing the prices if things really implode. I don’t think they will. I hope I am right.
14 Likes
Wish you to have even higher earnings as soon as possible) You deserve it. Thank you for inspiration
1 Like
Thank you, @SteelSound for continuing to advocate for valuing this work. Congrats. Glad to hear you’re getting the results you’re looking for.
1 Like
I’ve had an increase in revenue with a slight decrease in overall sales. I think there’ll be a sweet spot in terms of item price vs sales volume depending on the type of music and quality of the composition and production. If somebody makes tracks very quickly that are similar to thousands of others it’s unlikely they’ll sell as well at an inflated price. If they make tracks that are unique and very high quality which clearly sound like they took some serious craft they probably will. It’s just like any other marketplace. I think the pricing overall was too low to start and the quality of music here is catching up with major libraries so it’s great we can set our prices to compete with those. I’ve been sensible in raising my prices but may increase them incrementally to find where the optimal pricing is for my tracks. Good luck to everyone and I sincerely hope the pricing of music is taken a lot more seriously in future.
2 Likes
Hey @SteelSound -
First, thanks for sharing your pricing story with us. I think many here are apprehensive about what ADP will mean for them. I for one, think it’s a fabulous opportunity and like you, I’m seeing the benefits almost immediately.
Second, I ran across this blog post from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, and I think it echoes somewhat on your pricing strategy. I hope it will give our fellow authors some food for thought.
Here’s an excerpt:
"…there’s a simple bit of arithmetic you can do to understand sensitivity in pricing.
Should you charge $7 or $9?
Well, if you charge $7, you make $2 a unit.
If you charge $9, you make $4 a unit, or twice as much.
Which means, all other things being equal, you’ll need to sell twice as many at $7 as you’ll need to sell at $9.
It doesn’t feel that way, but it’s true. 100 sold at $9 is more profitable than 180 sold at $7. And to take it a step further, you’ll need to sell 800 at $5.50 to make as much as you would have made at $9. Eight times as many.
No one knows what your demand curve is going to be like, no one is sure what impact your pricing will have on all the other items you sell.
But be honest with yourself about contribution.
Price is a story, it’s a story we tell ourselves and others about what we have to offer. But price is also the path to being able to stay in business."
Interesting, no? Best of luck to all, and wishing you all continued success!
7 Likes
It’s kind of simple;
20 sold at 20 is $400
10 Sold at 49 is $490
15 Sold at $49 is $735
Even with units sold dropping 50%, one still makes more revenue.
This site manipulates everyone into thinking about “units sold” The site Screams 5000 sales!!!
Who cares about the past? It is biased information that plays with the minds of both buyers and sellers. Frankly this market would be far more interesting if that statistic would disappear. It clearly impacts behavior of both buyers and sellers. It encourages lame tactics of copying, self buying (either literally or asking others to buy for you on the condition of “pssst , shhhhh…just go buy 15 copies and I’ll pay ya back”)
Now we have authors who dump prices down below $20 in order to chart on “popular files”.
Everyone knows that those popular files drive so much business here. We all also know it starts with the featured track. That is your only ticket to popular files.
Envato has made great strides with PRO, 5 license tiers, now ADP.
The next step is finding a way to eliminate “popular files” and self buying. It still is happening Envato. Only then will this market be pure and unbiased.
Sad to say, but popular files will possibly ensure that the $20 price sticks. Those on there are too paranoid to risk losing all that extra guaranteed advertising, promotion, and brand awareness. So when they slip off, they now seem to dump prices down to sell those 20 units. What a shame. Another concern is that it’s misleading to the customer. What if the customer sees the track advertised at $11, then downloads a preview for client approval, then comes back 3 days later only to find it at $23? Does that not amount to “false advertising”? Envato needs to have restrictions on how often one can change the price imho.
I think the popular file crowd can and clearly will protect their advertising/ promotion perks, but they should also try to capitalize by raising the prices of their other well crafted and unique tracks that have less than 30 or 40 sales…or even tracks that sold 50 to 100 times.
It’s just sad how polarized everyone is. It’s sad that we as a production music community, seemingly, just accept $20 as “the price”…not just this market, but on many markets.
I personally have shunned that low ball price mentality and frankly I am very pleased for what it has done for my total revenue from music licensing.
No union is there to protect us…so we all need to start thinking about protecting ourselves. If EVERYONE can say to themselves “this is my profession and craft, I worked very hard at mastering this skill set, my content has value.”…we’d all benefit.
Sorry about the essay! I am trying to persuade all of you. I do want ALL OF US to succeed.
5 Likes