What's a token worth?
Mar 04 2008, 03:45 PM
Thank you to everyone who has signed up!
Enough users have expressed frustration with the new pricing structure that we would like to address these concerns in this blog post.
What is a token worth?
Multiple surveys indicate that tracing an image by hand or with other tools takes on average about an hour, including clean-up.
The same surveys say that Vector Magic drops that time to about 15 minutes, also including clean-up.
This means that on average you save about 45 minutes of labor on each image.
Given the prevailing wage and overhead costs in the graphic design and print industries, these 45 minutes are worth about $20, of which we are asking for about $2.50 on average.
This price is aligned with our costs, and given projected volumes will allow us to continue operating and improving the service.
We understand the frustration of seeing a free service starting to charge, but these prices are simply essential to having the service continue to operate.
Can't you just have ads instead?
Experiments show that ads are not even close to sufficient to cover the costs, so some kind of fee is essential to the service being offered at all.
Subscriptions?
We are considering adding volume limited subscriptions (like cell phone plans), but there is no date set for that at the time of this writing.
We hope this helps clarify the issues. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.
Very Best,
James and Jacob