Estimated Sale Numbers?

[Sadik B]

I was reading a post by Brian Cummiskey of VBSeo here. Interestingly he talks about what kind of business XF can generate and if it would make business sense for Crawlability to consider a XF seo solution.

Anyways, so reading his post got me thinking, what do you think the first day sale estimates of XF will be. ? 2000 licenses? 3000?

 

[_| () R | Z]

You kind of answered yourself there, the forum engine is vBulletin.

In my opinion, how it stands at the moment vBulletin is not SEO friendly, even version 4's friendly options are unfriendly.

So at the moment at least, I don't think vbseo has to worry too much about it's future.

They do need to worry if allot of people switch from vb3 to Xen rather then vb4.

 

[Lycaon]

They do need to worry if allot of people switch from vb3 to Xen rather then vb4.

Well yeah I can kind of agree on that but converting to xenForo from vBulletin isn't what was being said.

 

[Jethro]

I think Brian makes a good point...right now. It's obvious the numbers don't lie. If and when xenForo holds up to it's expectations and the numbers change, I'm sure he'll be singing a different tune.

I follow the box office, yes boring analogy coming up, and one of the principle ideas in that is to use whatever kung fu you have to try to predict opening weekend numbers for a movie and final gross for a movie. It's a game and way of measuring if a movie matches expected income, never ever trust a Studio and what their opinion is of how well a movie does. The point here is you make your prediction and stick to it, everyone has perfect 20/20 vision post release date so if numbers changed you either end up looking like an expert or have egg all over your face.

I'm expecting around 700 sales on day one, that's licences as opposed to sales to individuals. Like all new products, early adapters are going to run with the ball while the vast majority of sales will occur when the product is let loose into the market place. Of course we probably will never know the actual figures as Software Business type people tend to keep that very close to their chests.

Interesting speculation, fingers crossed for a large uptake on day one, though I have a feeling quite a few people may wait on final release and to see what third party skins and mods become available.

 

[erich37]

I do not think that the sales-number from October 5th will be any indicator on their future number of sales.
In fact it is better for XF to sell licences after the special date.....

 

[Jethro]

Probably tightly bound to the long term future of vB. The vBSEO fans are an enthusiastic bunch, sometimes bordering on the fanatical.

Have been noting that on other sites, they would appear to be threatened (the fans that is) by Xen and the impact of the software. Having helped convert a lot of sites from vB to IPS, and am sure the reverse is true with people moving from IPS to vB, I can already tell em vB wasn't considered by all to be the best solution even before Xen hit the scene.

 

[vijayninel]

If 500 licences are sold in the first few weeks then it will be a very good number.

 

[dutchbb]

You have to look at the registered members for an indication of the beta sales. 10% of that would be quite good and reach about 250 sales. Let's say there is an average of one and a half licenses per customer of that 10% then the optimistic prediction would be about 375-400 licenses during beta period. A pessimistic prediction would be 5% of those members each buying only one license each and thus a total of 125-150 licenses in beta period. Of course that would still be good, considering it's only a beta release and it's just to get the snowball rolling. As long as there's a steady growth following the beta period, the initial sales do not matter that much. They matter only for the sake of publicity, because people are going to look at how the product is received and how those first users feel about it.

 

[The Sandman]

If 500 licences are sold in the first few weeks then it will be a very good number.

You have to look at the registered members for an indication of the beta sales. 10% of that would be quite good and reach about 250 sales. Let's say there is an average of one and a half licenses per customer of that 10% then the optimistic prediction would be about 375-400 licenses during beta period. A pessimistic prediction would be 5% of those members each buying only one license each and thus a total of 125-150 licenses in beta period. Of course that would still be good, considering it's only a beta release and it's just to get the snowball rolling. As long as there's a steady growth following the beta period, the initial sales do not matter that much. They matter only for the sake of publicity, because people are going to look at how the product is received and how those first users feel about it.

I think you guys are way low.

 

[ArnyVee]

With 2,349 members now, I would say that 1/4 of the members will purchase which means that it will be 587 exactly

 

[dutchbb]

I think you guys are way low.

Well this is only about the beta period, which I assume is only lasting a few weeks or a month at most? Then 500 licenses isn't that bad for a new company. That's $50,000 in one month if you count $100 per license or $70,000 if $140 per license. A lot of small/new software companies would be more than happy with that

 

[Shamil]

Well this is only about the beta period, which I assume is only lasting a few weeks or a month at most? Then 500 licenses isn't that bad for a new company. That's $50,000 in one month if you count $100 per license or $70,000 if $140 per license. A lot of software companies would be more than happy with that

We could go the vB root, where we even had Gamma releases.

 

[Peter]

If there is wordpress support, I'm sure that number (I'm guessing about 456 sold) will just go up for those looking for an alternative to bbpress (yuck!).

 

[JamesM]

300 I don't think it will go into thousands in the first day.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

4.x doesn't need VBSEO already... and I just don't see how XF would need it either, considering the design quality is far exceeding in XF than other products.

The only real SEO product XF will need is to capture long tail traffic, similar to what seoforums.org put out now for 4.x. (http://seoforums.org/seo-plugins/vbulletin/fuzzy-seo-booster-for-vbulletin-4-x/).

If they need 1000 license sales to warrant the project, then why haven't they done it for IPB? Oh... because IPB is similar to XF in regards to not requiring any external SEO solution.

 

[Floris]

Shrug, I don't think it's important to customers what the sales numbers are, besides that if they are not successful and go bankrupt in 2 years, that we won't have a continues update to our site. It's not a problem for October 5th, and it will help my site now, I will see how things are in a few years.

 

[ManagerJosh]

October 5 - Kier, Mike and Ashley gets rich enough to buy the old vBulletin island and corporate jet back (or even a brand new island and corporate jet)

 

[0ptima]

With 2,349 members now, I would say that 1/4 of the members will purchase which means that it will be 587 exactly

Some people will buy more than 1

 

[Saeed]

I am guessing something between 800 and 900 perhaps.

 

[Lycaon]

I reckon they'll sell roughly 1 license less than if they sold another license.... I swear that sounded good in my head.

 

[CFodder]

For gawd's sake Doc, I had to think about that one ... must ... lie ... down.