Is plugin market going down?

[ghettosynth]

https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... oxengo,Uhe

Low base effect. Organic web search visits in absolute numbers increased tremendously during these 12 years. I do not understand what these trends are actually measuring. It's like 50 websearches 12 years ago in 90% of causes requested Voxengo while now 500 websearches requested Voxengo in 40% of cases. No idea what these trends are measuring, but it's definite that 12 years ago there were no 4 times more organic web search visits, we are now at the all-time maximum number of web search visits.

They are normalized to show relative interest over time and scaled by the number of searches.

https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4365533?hl=en

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I have limited experience with Voxengo, I only have actively tried two of their plugins and I only have a strong opinion about one. OldSchoolVerb-Free version simply isn't competitive today, even as a free reverb.

It's quite popular, at 4000 monthly downloads. If it weren't "good" to some extent it would receive 2000. SPAN receives 8000 and more. We do not advertise free plugin downloads, so that's an organic downloads, unforced.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

They are normalized to show relative interest over time and scaled by the number of searches.

https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4365533?hl=en

OK, but they have no substance like actual organic web search visits. I've seen this trend before, but I honestly do not understand what it is useful for.

[ghettosynth]

I have limited experience with Voxengo, I only have actively tried two of their plugins and I only have a strong opinion about one. OldSchoolVerb-Free version simply isn't competitive today, even as a free reverb.

It's quite popular, at 4000 monthly downloads. If it weren't "good" to some extent it would receive 2000. SPAN receives 8000 and more. We do not advertise free plugin downloads, so that's an organic downloads, unforced.

The problems with numbers in a vacuum is that they don't mean anything and they are kind of self-reinforcing with respect to your beliefs. Free plugins, especially from known vendors, get a lot of attention and it's not always deserved. In any case, I'm not arguing with you, I'm giving you direct feedback about my experience. Free reverbs from other vendors often lead to sales.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

The problems with numbers in a vacuum is that they don't mean anything and they are kind of self-reinforcing with respect to your beliefs. Free plugins, especially from known vendors, get a lot of attention and it's not always deserved. In any case, I'm not arguing with you, I'm giving you direct feedback about my experience. Free reverbs from other vendors often lead to sales.

I disagree with you. Numbers are the best estimators of public opinion. OldSkoolVerb receives additional 2000 downloads/mo due to word of mouth. If only Voxengo web site itself was driving downloads it would not receive this surplus. Check out our free plugins page and see the numbers - they are public and true, we are not playing games with these download numbers.

[planetearth]

Guys, just stop trying to help him and talk some sense. He's clearly has his own stubborn and quite arrogant mind and attitude. No matter what you say to him, he won't listen.. So just stop. :v

Reading through this thread, I have to agree with you. Many have said basically the same three things over and over, but the developer seems to feel that 8,000,000 people, can in fact, be wrong. Therein lies the problem.

I think what's happening is that you're basing all of your "data" on trends that were around 10-15 years ago when you started your company but you haven't kept up with the times. Seriously, take a look at your competitors websites and see where you differ.

Yes, this is the problem with A/B testing. It's like asking, "which would you prefer, death by hanging, or death by lethal injection?" It answers the questions that you're asking, but tells you nothing about the questions that you don't ask.

I recall a similar thread several years ago where, IIRC, Voxengo was asking about color schemes and wanted to know which of the two very similar schemes was preferred. The overwhelming consensus was, "neither."

Voxengo: "Potential customers why aren't you buying / buying less?"

Potential customers: "well seeing as how you asked, these are some of the reasons and things you could improve upon"

Voxengo: "No you're wrong. I've got data that says otherwise. But thanks"

+1 on these...unfortunately.

Come on, folks. This thread's been going on for over a week, and the OP hasn't agreed with what almost everyone has said, and about the consensus on how he could improve the product and/or Website designs. Maybe it's time to let this go, since no one has been able to give him the answer he wants.

Steve

[ghettosynth]

The problems with numbers in a vacuum is that they don't mean anything and they are kind of self-reinforcing with respect to your beliefs. Free plugins, especially from known vendors, get a lot of attention and it's not always deserved. In any case, I'm not arguing with you, I'm giving you direct feedback about my experience. Free reverbs from other vendors often lead to sales.

I disagree with you. Numbers are the best estimators of public opinion.

Some numbers are. I showed you some. Other numbers can be a poor proxy, especially those that are internal and unnormalized and count access to free products.

Check out our free plugins page and see the numbers - they are public and true, we are not playing games with these download numbers.

I never suggested that you were. I'm simply not surprised that you receive a lot of downloads. Free products get a lot of attention, especially cross platform 64 bit plugins, and, your brand has been around for a while. The URL for the reverb page has been the same since 2005. I suspect that your raw unnormalized number is as much a measure of the long tail of that than anything else.

Note that we're not even talking about installs and actual usage beyond the download.

In any case, my point was with respect to A/B testing. I only brought up oldskoolverb because xoxos was trying to appeal to the authority of industry accolades. It's one of two products of yours that I have an opinion about and it didn't sell me on your brand for reverbs. Perhaps other people think that it's great, I think that it isn't as good as the reverbs that are bundled with DAWs, or other free reverbs, but that's a question of taste and your download numbers aren't going to change that.

This reminds me of an old joke. A man is on his hands and knees near a streetlamp and his friend asks him what he's doing? He says, "I'm looking for my keys" and his friend asks, "did you lose them right here", and the man says, "no, I lost them down the street." So the friend asks, "then why are you looking for them here?" To which he replies "because the light is better."

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

basically a guy asked in a forum

"is this card red"

and one would expect answers like

"nope it is black"
"yes it is red"
"yes, it is dark red"
"no man it is yellow"

and so on
But just after a little while the whole discussion shifts to
"dude check a doctor"
"your eyesight is terrible if you started this topic"
"other people need a doctor too"
"eyesight changed during past 400 years in animals and mammals"


do you see the card red? fine. Do you see the card yellow? fine. Do you have proofs about what you are suggesting? ok. Add your experience, numbers to the discussion, like urs said. We are not speaking about who is selling more. We are not speaking about the coolest idea for creating a plugin or a website. We are not discussing about voxengo plugins.
I'm here for accepting your solutions if there is a proof. Like I said, my sales increase 80% each year, and this trend started in 2013 and for what I see it applies to 2017. I'm perfectly fine. But working in this market segment I know a lot of things (other company sales and numbers, because during my day I speak with a lot of other ppl, and sale numbers are my daily job, and what I see in general is a slow decline. Big companies are sqeezing 9.9 from a 200 eur product and this is the first time I see that. If you have proofs I'm wrong I'm perfectly fine. BUT the conclusion "market is fine" just because 5 companies told you "it is fine" doesn't mean anything. There are 188 companies at least. The namm survey is a good discussion topic but again we should try to understand if they see the whole cake, for example nobody ever contacted me or asked about MY sales and I'm part of that picture.

gettos: apart discussion about how bad voxengo is handling the business... do you have proofs of the general market trend? numbers?

[ghettosynth]

basically a guy asked in a forum

"is this card red"

and one would expect answers like

"nope it is black"
"yes it is red"
"yes, it is dark red"
"no man it is yellow"

No, he asked, 'is this card red, because it sure looks red to me"

And we're saying, we don't know, but you might see a different color if you take off your rose coloured glasses.

If $200 digital products are now selling for $10 then they're no longer $200 digital products. That's the nature of digital products.

Your sales data is not evidence of a declining market. It is evidence of some aspects of your firm's performance. If you want to talk about things, talk about them, but you're wasting your breath trying to tell other people how you would like them to discuss something.

gettos: apart discussion about how bad voxengo is handling the business... do you have proofs of the general market trend? numbers?

I don't have any comments about any of the above. I didn't say that Voxengo is handling his business badly, in point of fact, I've said several times that I have no idea. What I have said is that I don't agree that some of his conclusions follow from his observations.

[pekbro]

Squeezing 9.9 from a 200 eur product... You're only viewing that from
your own perspective. How do you know what their goal is with that?
Desperation or sound marketing, sell it cheap (for a limited time usually),
what do you get? You get a ton of new customers who are going to be quite
happy with you and apt to buy more of your other products. You grow
the brand without really doing anything. When the sale is over it goes
back to 200 eur.

TBH in this market it would be prudent to add half again to the price
you want and then have lots of sales.

This is not the same market as it was in 2013.

[ghettosynth]

Squeezing 9.9 from a 200 eur product... You're only viewing that from
your own perspective. How do you know what their goal is with that?
Desperation or sound marketing, sell it cheap (for a limited time usually),
what do you get? You get a ton of new customers who are going to be quite
happy with you and apt to buy more of your other products. You grow
the brand without really doing anything. When the sale is over it goes
back to 200 eur.

TBH in this market it would be prudent to add half again to the price
you want and then have lots of sales.

This is not the same market as it was in 2013.

Exactly.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I agree that some visual redesign of plugins and website would be great. What I do not agree with is that this will have a significant impact on sales. OK, I would not know until I try.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Squeezing 9.9 from a 200 eur product... You're only viewing that from
your own perspective. How do you know what their goal is with that?
Desperation or sound marketing, sell it cheap (for a limited time usually),
what do you get? You get a ton of new customers who are going to be quite
happy with you and apt to buy more of your other products. You grow
the brand without really doing anything. When the sale is over it goes
back to 200 eur.

TBH in this market it would be prudent to add half again to the price
you want and then have lots of sales.

This is not the same market as it was in 2013.

Once the price is lower, the market will expect the same pricing on other products later. The final result is very evident, prices are LOWER. Now I can tell you - and I'm quite sure the number of paying customers didn't increase of the same proportion in ANY company. Numbers of customers range between 10k to around 250k in most of cases and they are quite stable (the only difference is mobile, but we are not speaking exactly about "plugins"
For what I can see, product release rate did not increase in a lot of cases.
What we are speaking about? Most of companies are just "squeezing" the past work. It reminds to me when a company sells the building and they say they increased the cash.

[pekbro]

You're painting so much in a negative light, sure they will expect the same price
again...Surprise, its not. Maybe only 40% rather than 50, next time it will be less.
Sooner or later, it wont work anymore, then you start again. Its cyclic.

Even if you have to sacrifice a singular product, it doesn't mean prices are falling
overall.

You assume too much...

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Subscriptions, bundles... Prices ARE falling. Several years ago I remember an equaliser was on sale for around 1000. Today the market is willing to pay..15? Maybe 29? A developer released a compressor clone at 79 several months ago and he was heavily attacked. When slate released vmr (just 2 years ago) the perceived value of 50 eur for his compressor inside the product was considered a revolution. Let's face it: prices are dropping, but not r&d time, not costs. It is inevitable, there are more goods and ppl are expecting the same things for a lot less. This is fine till you achieve to squeeze your past work, or you achieve to renew your line with a smart strategy about the effort or you join other developers in "alliances", "bundles" and so on, but there is a fence on that.

This is what I see, maybe I wrong.