I recently read an article about pricing which showed some interesting data from various gumroad products. The stats seemed to show that classical “trick prices” ending in 9, like 19, 29, or 39 have nearly double the conversion rates of the corresponding round prices like 20, 30, and 40. This got me thinking: maybe it would be a better idea to change back the price of the No bullshit guide to math and physics to \$29 as it was before.

But let’s not just guess. Let’s look at some data. I implemented the new price (\$33) on August 3rd. Let’s compare the sales/visits stats for the book between two-months-long periods before and after the price change.

At \$29     Jun 3rd — Aug 2nd

During this period there were 1402 visitors to the website, of which 45 clicked through to the gumroad page and 9 clicked through to the lulu store page.  Meanwhile,  gumroad reports 161 visits and 14 sales for that period. On lulu, there are only 2 sales.

At \$33     Aug 4th — Oct 4th

During 2 months period with the new price, there were 1734 visitors to the website, of whom 79 clicked through to gumroad, and 77 clicked through to lulu. Just looking at these numbers makes me think the comparison is not fair: after all this period includes September which is the peak demand time for calculus and mechanics. During this period, there were 208 views on gumroad and 12 sales.  On lulu, there were 13 sales.

Okay, what can we conclude from all of this? I’d say not much, given the small numbers. Still I find the conversion rate gumroad@29: 14/161=8.6%  and gumroad@33:  12/208=5.7% was affected. Indeed \$33 sounds like quite a bit for an eBook no? But \$29 sounds OK. Maybe I should make the eBook \$19?

Okay. So I think for the launch of 4.0, I will switch back to \$29. As for the eBook price, I will have to think about it some more.