(Early) Adopter Sale?

[Cupara]

What exactly is an adopter sale? I saw it in the Announcements forum under the XenForo thread. Kinda interested in hearing what this is.

Thanks

 

[Cupara]

Just think of the overhead involved with this. First you have to verify that the license is transferable. Then you have to complete the transaction. Once this is done, there is not real way of preventing the transferred license to be sold again, used again, etc. IMHO, the effort and hassle involved would not be worth it. The time, money and effort would be better spent working/supporting XF.

If you have a license, you sell it and apply the money earned from that sale to offset the cost of XF.

Exactly what I say. I prefer to sell my own stuff then just have the money sitting around waiting on xF.

 

[ManagerJosh]

The pre-sale was a huge disaster. Some of us were able to see that before we fell into the trap. Others weren't.

The same thing can be said now: Some people still love vBulletin, and a lot of new users tend to gravitate towards it. They don't always believe all of the warnings, and prefer to find out for themselves what a disaster they get themselves into.

I think many of us bought into it mainly because we needed to. It was pretty much damned if you didn't, and damned if you did.

 

[Deepmartini]

Well instead of a "trade-in" of the license and xenforo takes the license, why not just give an extra credit to people who can prove that they already own another forum license (show a receipt or something) and do this as a promotion?

 

[Hatsu]

This won't happen. Xf Ltd. is a new company and has nothing to do with any other company selling forum licences. If there is an early adopter offer everyone will get the same.

 

[0ptima]

Well instead of a "trade-in" of the license and xenforo takes the license, why not just give an extra credit to people who can prove that they already own another forum license (show a receipt or something) and do this as a promotion?

Just make it simple. Offer the early adopter discount to everyone.

 

[Deepmartini]

I would imagine it would work something like this...

"Yes everyone gets the early adopter discount AND if you own another forum solution already (and can prove it by showing a receipt, customer invoice, etc.) we'll take an additional X amount off the price and sweeten the deal to encourage you to give Xenforo a try."

 

[0ptima]

I would imagine it would work something like this...

"Yes everyone gets the early adopter discount AND if you own another forum solution already (and can prove it by showing a receipt, customer invoice, etc.) we'll take an additional X amount off the price and sweeten the deal to encourage you to give Xenforo a try."

Again, why complicate things?

Receipts, customer invoices can easily be faked. People who forgot to show their receipt when buying XF will whine for the extra discount, etc.
Based on the amount of interest XF has been generating, I dont think they need to sweeten the deal.

 

[darkon]

When the Presale of vB4 started there were limited special offers from Invision and WBB for vB-licence holders.

That´t nothing unusual, it´s called crossupgrading.

 

[Nick]

I would imagine it would work something like this...

"Yes everyone gets the early adopter discount AND if you own another forum solution already (and can prove it by showing a receipt, customer invoice, etc.) we'll take an additional X amount off the price and sweeten the deal to encourage you to give Xenforo a try."

Sounds nice and all, but I don't think XenForo is going to be that desperate for customers. I mean, the astounding activity that the forum has seen in the past couple of weeks, essentially speaks for itself.

 

[Been Told]

I think many of us bought into it mainly because we needed to. It was pretty much damned if you didn't, and damned if you did.

Yup.
It was: either pay $140 (or whatever it was back then) now or pay $280 later. The $280 would NEVER have been an option for any of my licenses, so I went with the $140 option on two of them. Waste of money, as neither of the two has been upgraded to vB4 yet (and probably never will be).

 

[Tigratrus]

Yup.
It was: either pay $140 (or whatever it was back then) now or pay $280 later. The $280 would NEVER have been an option for any of my licenses, so I went with the $140 option on two of them. Waste of money, as neither of the two has been upgraded to vB4 yet (and probably never will be).

Same exact situation here.
Waste of hard earned money for something we're never going to use.

 

[Andy Huang]

Just think of the overhead involved with this. First you have to verify that the license is transferable. Then you have to complete the transaction. Once this is done, there is not real way of preventing the transferred license to be sold again, used again, etc. IMHO, the effort and hassle involved would not be worth it. The time, money and effort would be better spent working/supporting XF.

If you have a license, you sell it and apply the money earned from that sale to offset the cost of XF.

From a start-up point of view, given XF's current position in the market, I'd actually say it may be a good idea to have some kind of trade-in promotion, where they offer AGGRESSIVE discounts to people who can actually transfer licenses to XF Ltd holding (tentative name for reference). Of course, this would be limited exclusively to established forum softwares... else people just re-bundle something with licensing similar to Ubuntu's license which allows charging for re-bundling and added services.

That is, within compliance of original software licensor, if prospecting client can provide a transfer to XF Ltd holding's account, then a massive aggressive discount (IE: discount equivalent to retail value of said software) is offered. Reason for this is that not only does XF gain one licensed user, but the competitor also lost one, guaranteed, no turning back. As result of this, XF gets increased exposure at the expense of the said competitor.

Some might say, well, what if they change their mind and go buy the competitor software again after that? The counter argument for that would be that if they are not welling to pony up and purchase XF, then they are unlikely to have the cash sitting around to re-purchase their old software.

There are added overhead of doing this, yes. But I think it shouldn't be something that gets rejected without some serious consideration.

 

[erich37]

yeah, but that offer should be limited to a certain timeframe.
So like this "trade-in-offer" is only available for one week (when they go with their first release).

 

[Tigratrus]

yeah, but that offer should be limited to a certain timeframe.
So like this "trade-in-offer" is only available for one week (when they go with their first release).

There's a problem with that. Most existing license holders are going to require time (likely a significant amount of it) in order to plan and implement their migration, they can't "turn in" their old forum license until that process is complete. Trying to rush them through that process in a short timeframe is not planning for success.

 

[0ptima]

From a start-up point of view, given XF's current position in the market, I'd actually say it may be a good idea to have some kind of trade-in promotion, where they offer AGGRESSIVE discounts to people who can actually transfer licenses to XF Ltd holding (tentative name for reference). Of course, this would be limited exclusively to established forum softwares... else people just re-bundle something with licensing similar to Ubuntu's license which allows charging for re-bundling and added services.

If the discount is huge, people will potentially turn around and sell their newly acquired license at close to what a new one will cost. Then the market will be flooded with second hand XF licenses, which would not look good for XF. On top of that, Kier, Mike et al dont make a cent off of this.

Remember Hive Mail? They had a one day 80% off sale on April Fools day 2003. They must have sold a ton of licenses as the market was flooded with second hand licenses for months on WHT. That one day sale probably cannibalized future sales and hurt the developers in the long run.

 

[Brandon_R]

If the discount is huge, people will potentially turn around and sell their newly acquired license at close to what a new one will cost. Then the market will be flooded with second hand XF licenses, which would not look good for XF. On top of that, Kier, Mike et al dont make a cent off of this.

Remember Hive Mail? They had a one day 80% off sale on April Fools day 2003. They must have sold a ton of licenses as the market was flooded with second hand licenses for months on WHT. That one day sale probably cannibalized future sales and hurt the developers in the long run.

I agree, on a certain forum, when vB4 was released i saw vB4 licenses selling for 100-120 dollars. They need to release it at a right enough price. That shouldn't be too hard since they did they for everything else

I don't want to tell them how to run their company but the biz guys should really consider how something affects them in the long run instead of just the quick bottom line. IB only had that presale to compensate for the money they spent buying vBulletin from Jelsoft and thinking everything else will fall into place via magic.

 

[bookmark]

The business stuff of Xen will consider this.It's no doubt that marking strategy is very important for Xenforo even though Xen would be the best forum platform.

 

[0ptima]

I agree, on a certain forum, when vB4 was released i saw vB4 licenses selling for 100-120 dollars. They need to release it at a right enough price.

If I remember correctly, the VB 2 and 3 licenses, which sold for $160 brand new would sell for $110 -$120 on the second hand market.

 

[Fufu]

yeah, but that offer should be limited to a certain timeframe.
So like this "trade-in-offer" is only available for one week (when they go with their first release).

This is a fail idea. At least they should notify us well in advance so we can gather the proper resources. Not all of us have money at our disposal.

 

[0ptima]

This is a fail idea. At least they should notify us well in advance so we can gather the proper resources. Not all of us have money at our disposal.

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