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Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want" (cardsagainsthumanity.com)
549 points by thaumaturgy on Dec 17, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 162 comments



It seems like one takeaway is that a significant portion of people will just pay the default as stated, even if given a choice. I think people just have a hard time deciding what something is actually worth, so they'll take whatever advice is given. So, when pricing your products, if you're wondering if you should charge more, the default answer should be "Yes"


So, a couple months back I released a WebGL Enabler for iOS with a pay-what-you-want model: http://demoseen.com/webglenabler/

I keep meaning to write a blog post about the results, but ~99.5% of people paid $0. Of the people who paid, probably around 50% paid the $1.99 I had as default, but what's really interesting to me is the way people priced it if they changed the value. I got a number of payments for amounts like $1.25 and $1.50, and I remember looking at those completely baffled -- who cares enough to pay anything for this (you could just download it for free -- I don't mind) but not enough to pay an extra $0.49? Really wish I had an answer there; maybe people just like 'getting a deal'?


I'm not sure if you considered this and your payment model made that easy or even possible, but I would guess that many people would like to try it first without paying anything and after that, they would pay whatever they think it is worth for them.

I would have done this. And if there wouldn't be an easy way later on to pay/donate, I would have just leave it unpaid.


I've been toying with the idea of making a simple service like that. You can download file X for free, only by leaving your email address. Then, after a few days/weeks/months, depending on what the author wanted, the service emails you and asks you to pay for the thing you downloaded, and gives you a link to easily pay.

I've found that I'll definitely pay for things after I've tried them, but I'm more hesitant to do it before.


There's a concept in the info marketing space called the "invisible funnel"

You collect credit card info upfront, deliver the information they opted in for with their cc, then the option to not process your cc is presented.


Yeah, but that's bordering on "scam". The service I'm envisioning is more "reminds you to pay after you've used something, if you found it useful", and even the e-mail address could be useful to the creator of the thing (for further marketing).

You could even also opt to not share your e-mail address with the developer by paying directly, before accessing the thing at all.


I can imagine more people might have paid if you made the default $3.99. $1.99 is practically zero, so people may consider it less of a difference.


I also feel this way. For some reasons, I think my natural, quick feeling toward that would be that paying 1.99$ 'seems' more of an annoyance than paying 0$, and since it's not enough to be deemed worth the annoyance, I can picture myself putting 0$ instead of 1.99$.

For the same products, I feel I wouldn't change the price if it was listed at {3,4,5}.99$, I don't really know why. 1.99$ feels too close to an transaction fee, or some kind of things like that that feels like the money will be lost in The System. While paying >3.99$ seems to have more consistence, more purpose, since my intuition tells me that more of the value will end up in the proper pockets.

That's a very subjective take on this, but I support your idea that more people might have paid if the default would have been 3.99$.


Agreed. I considered having it show various different values at random to do testing on the payments received when users are presented with them, but honestly there just wasn't enough data to pull that off and make it worthwhile. I think my total sales were <40 (downloads were in the tens of thousands, IIRC).


I would be interested to see data from the Humble Bundles on pay-what-you-want pricing. They seem to have done things over the past few sales that have resulted in higher averages.


The biggest thing is that many of the products are not unlockable unless you pay over the average, so the average is always trending slightly up more than other pay-what-you-want models. High incentive to fork over a few more dollars.


Even if it increased the number of people paying the original listed price ($3.99) in this case to slightly >70% they would still gain less money than $5 and it would not have seemed as clean. In either case, I find it more interesting that so many people would pay money when they are not required.

Apparently even people "against humanity" still have a sense of justice.


I doubt the numbers people chose had any correlation to perceived value. My guess is they were just testing it to see if it would actually let them pay for a different amount. It's such a different idea, most people just aren't used to it.


I think more people would pay something instead of nothing if the default price was higher, eg if it was a $50 default those that paid $0 would be more inclined to even pay $1 because the value is percieved to be more. However, id like to see it tested.


That's what I hate most about having insight into data... the times when my intuition is wrong and there is no rational reason for what is actually happening. Human behavior can be so bizarre...


Unfortunately, it's logical thinking that is bizzarre. Irrationality is the norm.


While I'm not sure I agree, there's a fun meta discussion from Quora http://www.quora.com/Are-humans-fundamentally-rational-or-ir....


Logical thinking is fine: garbage in — garbage out.

Logical thinking won't help if you give it incorrect input data.

Unless you believe in supernatural; everything is math provided a correct model.


That is a complete misunderstanding of the word model. Models are tools to help describe expected behaviour given a plethora of assumptions - they are not there to perfectly predict what can and will happen.

The idea that a model can do so has caused innumerable problems of late and it is frustrating to hear such myths perpetuated.


To describe "what can and will happen" requires its own assumptions and therefore model.

If you can't see a model you are not digging deep enough.

Though I understand your point of view. Some think that the fundamental physics can end i.e., a unified theory of everything is possible.

It is more likely that it is turtles all the way down i.e, we can always observe phenomena that contradict predictions of current theories (reveal assumptions that are not valid for the phenomenon).


aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free?

I'm an Android guy myself so I might be wrong here (and your app is an example of non pirate usage for jail-breaking), but I often hear young relatives talking about jail-breaking their iPhones to save those $1-2 on apps, which to be honest, is pretty shitty behavior IMHO (yeah, I lecture them, they look at me like a crazy old person)


>aren't a lot of people who have jail-broken iOs devices, already by definition people who want paid apps for free?

Careful not to fall into the trap of conflating jailbreaking with piracy. There are many, many good reasons to JB not even counting apps that end in -ous. Google voice and SMS extensions, f.lux, theming support, wifi tethering, and a great deal more low level customization than Apple gives you.


As I said, I'm an Android user primarily because it gives me much more freedom without rooting, and the few iOs devices I have (and hardly use) are not jail-broken. But people I've met who jail-break their iPhones do it mainly to pirate apps.


SBSettings alone is worth the time that it takes to jailbreak!


At least when I was a teenager, I didn't have a credit card number of my own and it would have been a PITA to negotiate my parents to let me use theirs every time I wanted something that cost just a couple of dollars (some shareware at that time I guess). So it was easier for me just to find a keygen/crack for those apps. Might something like this be in play with these jailbreaking kids?


I'm an "Android guy" and the first thing I do with my new Android devices is at least gain root (so "jailbreaking"), and sometimes install a custom ROM. I'm sure some people do it to get apps for free, but for me it is solely because there are a number of things (such as complete backups) that can't be done without rooting the device.


I'd say a lot of people see jailbreaking as a term for piracy, which is rather unfortunate. Steffen Esser mentioned releasing a jailbreak that actively defended against piracy, and the number of twitter responses to that was impressive.


I don't mind people getting it for free -- if I actually cared about making money from it, I wouldn't have gone about it the way I did -- but it's just interesting to me how people who are willing to spend money actually value it.


What I meant is, aren't you limiting yourself to an audience who already chose to go out of their way to save a couple of bucks? they may not represent "ordinary" people and how they value apps.


Sure, but it's odd that the people trying to save money on apps would pay anything at all. I don't think I have enough data or a large enough sample size to say with confidence either way.


Not that odd. Isn't the whole point of the pay-whay-you-want model that some people don't want to pay the default price?

I quite often decide against offers because I feel they are marked up 20%-200% over what I perceive them to be worth, but have occasionally bought an extra copy later on (occasionally as a gift) if I've come to feel that I got a great deal originally. Other people pay grossly over the perceived worth if they want to support the seller for one reason or another.


I wonder what would happen if you designed the page a little bit differently, and gave them an option to pay, and a separate option to download it for free.

At first glance I want to put in $0.00 just to see if it works, not necessarily because that's what I'd be willing to pay.


There is actually a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as "anchoring," which is to say, people will be subconsciously influenced by the number they first see.

Car dealerships do this all the time with the MSRP numbers they put on their vehicles (which are, typically speaking, wildly inflated from their cost basis). Seasoned negotiators do this, as well -- anchoring either high or low, depending on their objectives.

I would be willing to bet that an A/B test of a higher suggested price and a lower suggested price would yield better returns from the higher suggested price.

Anchoring is especially effective in cases where people have no real sense of the intrinsic value of something. For instance, if I offered someone a bar of palladium, they'd generally have no freaking clue what they should pay. I could tell them $2000, or I could tell them $200,000. The $200,000 offer might not actually get any takers at $200,000. But it would generate a much higher negotiated price than the $2000 offer would, because people would mentally start at $200,000, and then try to work down from it.


As a customer, I support this thinking. Most people (at least in USA) are encouraging the race to the bottom by caring only about price, consequences be damned. But I can honestly say, after thinking about it, I can't really see a large number of cases where slightly higher price would be bad. As a merchant, you can take that money, use it to make your next generation of products better, pay a better wage, heck even paying your shareholders and management more would seem like a good use of that money to me (I personally don't object to CEO's getting paid more if they earn it; I object to unconditional golden parachutes, short term thinking, and the wealthiest paying less taxes than the poorest).

Of course, I'm talking here about direct sales, where the margin is pretty thin; I think middle-men are unnecessary, and obscene markup for name brand or just because you can is egregious.


> Most people (at least in USA) are encouraging the race to the bottom by caring only about price, consequences be damned.

Are you serious? People have cared mainly about price since the dawn of history. Obviously people have particular quality level they want, but once that's met if it's a tradeoff between quality and price, price virtually always wins.


Firstly, I limited it to USA because that's what I am familiar with. Secondly, please note the "consequences be damned" proviso, which flatly contradicts people having a quality level they want. What I've seen indicates to me that the quality of mass produced goods has steadily declined (at least in my lifetime), and the only benefit gained seems to have been a slightly lowered price. Market pressures, combined with the fact that most people don't really think long term, can easily explain this phenomenon. People will gladly pay $10 for a pair of shoes that will last a year, rather than $50 for a pair that will last 10 years.


This is a well-known cognitive bias called Anchoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

Just by giving a starting value predisposes people towards that value. And in this case, it was low enough people would impulse buy with the default value left in. Contrast to the Humble Bundles where their true value is much larger, so people tend to weigh the value against other purchases from their peers or prior purchases (which is why the median prices seem invariant between bundles).


For lack of a better way to decide what to pay I assumed that they did the analysis and thought $5 would be an appropriate amount after factoring in the people who'd pay more, less, or nothing.

I think it's a good anchor price and if I was feeling generous it's a low enough value where I'd pay double. At a minimum I'd pay their asking price because after getting many hours of fun out of the game with friends it's definitely worth at least that.


I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.


No, because there is no single ideal price for anything. The ideal price varies between customers.

Real world: Customer A thinks the $14 pizza is overpriced. No sale. Customer B thinks the $14 pizza is delicious and worth it. Would pay up to $20 if forced. Pays $14 and enjoys $6 in surplus value.

Ideal world: Customer A thinks the $14 pizza is worth about $6. Buys it for $6 (Arriving at the deal is the tricky part). Customer B thinks the $20 pizza is worth about $20. Buys it for $20 (Arriving at the deal is the tricky part).

Now both customers are happy with their pizzas, and the pizza maker made $26 in revenue instead of $14.

There is no "true" price for anything. It's not morally wrong for the cheap customer to pay $1 in a PWYW deal, and it's not morally wrong for the seller to enjoy it when someone pays $100 in the same deal.


The pizza maker made $26 minus whatever it costs to produce the pizza in time and materials. If the pizza cost $7 to make then the pizza maker makes $14 in profit versus $7. Also they lost a buck on that $6 pizza.

Further complexities: maybe it's a slow day and those employees were idle, and the raw materials were going to go bad without being used anyway - so if the $6 customer is buying it as cost the pizza maker may still be winning. Especially if they sold some fountain drinks to that customer, which are almost pure profit.

If you want a sustainable business, you need to cover your materials cost. Arguably paying less than the materials/shipping cost for something is morally wrong, especially if you know damn well this thing costs more than that to make and ship.


How do you know what anything is worth? If something will make me $100, but you think it is only worth $10, then what is it worth? $10 or $100?

Finding the price that the market will bare is precisely how you determine a product's monetary value.

Side note: if you want to see a entrepreneurial community without morals, I could point you to some places that would make you reconsider your opinion of HN.


It's not a moral question because it's the buyer who determines what something is worth, not the seller. The seller just sets the price. If the buyer thinks something is worth more than the price, then they'll buy it. Otherwise they'll walk away. The seller isn't taking their money, the buyer is either giving it or not.


Does this happen with the Humble Indie Bundles? The default price is $25. I wonder if they could release some payment statistics if that was an abnormally highly paid rate.


I ordered this pack and paid the default $5 by mistake (with a bit of laziness), and would bet quite a few others had the same experience.

When ordering, you had to enter your amount before adding it to the cart, with $5 as the default. There wasn't an option to change it later that I could find. By the time I realized it couldn't be changed, I was through most of the ordering process and didn't feel like starting over.

It would be interesting to see how much better they would have done with either a more intuitive checkout (assuming I missed an option) or had more options in the process.


Developer for the site here. We definitely talked about this in the post mortem. Do you have any specific changes that you would have made to make the process more clear?


I don't remember having any trouble with actually ordering the pack.

I do remember trying to bump the payment to $10 and not being able to. Adding an option to change the amount paid during checkout or making it much more obvious if there was one may have helped your "haul".


Note that the humble bundle actually lets you increase your contribution "after" you've paid as well. They might be worth emulating there.


Separate shipping and billing addresses. My fiancee ordered a pack for $5, put in her credit card number, and put the address of the person she was buying it for in the shipping address slot. Then she realized there had been no place to put the billing address.

Long story short, the credit card charge went through, the package did not get shipped, and she's in the middle of resolving the situation via email with somebody at CaH, hoping her giftee gets their gift.


I think it's absolutely great that they've donated all the proceeds to Wikipedia :) Congratulations. It's heartwarming to know that although there are some free loaders, you were still made a pretty penny.

On the other hand, how come all the design work, copy writing, etc are considered free? That's just masking the actual cost of the product.


We made those things with our own hands.


But surely your time was worth something. Isn't that the first lesson of running a business -- pay yourself first?


If you're doing something you really love, money is just a side effect.


Loving what you do never bought groceries. So the actual answer has to be 'I have enough money from other sources to live on'.


Perhaps they draw fixed salaries from the business as a whole, and since they'd intended to donate the proceeds of this particular project to charity anyway, they didn't see any point in allocating any portion of their sunk fixed costs to it. Note that they didn't include rent, electricity, etc. either.


The money spent on essentials may also be essential, but things can both be essential and the side effects of processes which have some other primary intent.


Doing something for free doesn't get you any cash as a side effect.


I'm not sure why you don't get this, but there's a huge gap between not having money be the primary intended result of your actions and having money not at all be a result of your actions.


The design/dev/video costs were minuscule compared to the production costs.


"I think it's absolutely great that they've donated all the proceeds to Wikipedia"

Looking at their quirky web page of comparisons, I think it would be hilarious if the wikipedia deletionist camp responded by deleting all the articles quoted on their page. I'll never donate a penny to wikipedia until that social problem is eradicated. "Here's $70K of value... whoops deleted"


Think of it as increasing the signal-to-noise ratio by $70K?


Hey guys,

I developed this site. I'll be around for a little while if you have any tech questions.

Edit: Please note that this pay what you can was just for the holiday-related expansion set, not the full game.


One comment: Myself and others were initially confused by the layout of the page into thinking that CAH had turned a massive loss. It's only when you get to the bottom that there was any indication of sales.


That was my thinking as well. I saw the giant, red negative numbers and my initial reaction was "Oh, no."


Me as well, the red text made me think they had just lost massive amounts of money and I felt really bad. Then I realized after reading some comments I just needed to scroll down. It probably makes more sense to include those costs with the revenue.


It was pretty clear they made a profit from reading the top paragraph saying $3 per unit was the total cost, and the first block of numbers said they averaged $3.89 in payments. So, that's $0.89 x 85,000 profit. I figured the rest was a story leading up to a good punchline.


For the infographic?


I am not the parent poster, but for me, yes, the infographic!


Was there any way to enter different shipping and billing addresses? Right now I can't have anything shipped to my billing address, and on that form, I didn't see an option to set different addresses, so I couldn't pay for it. If you do this again, I'd recommend having that option (or making it more apparent if it was there).

(I was actually planning on paying $10, until I couldn't see how to enter different shipping addresses, at which point I changed my plan to pay $0 and enter just my shipping address. And then I proceeded to fail at both plans, not submitting the form at all due to my own forgetfulness.)


Edit: Please note that this pay what you can was just for the holiday-related expansion set, not the full game

That's good to know. Did you offer any suggested pricing for the expansion pack? i.e $10, like the other packs? Or did you only list the cost price?


That's interesting. I assumed that the purpose of the sale was to increase the game's publicity/popularity, an attempt to get it into more peoples hands and make it into a household name. But if it's just an expansion pack, then you're really only selling to existing customers, not expanding the customer base.


The production + shipping costs were about $3 with a suggested price of $5. We also had an additional nag screen for people who put in $0.


So the free-loaders basically took $3 a pop from Wikimedia?

Not sure what your nag screen said, but an A/B against putting it in those terms might have been interesting.


Nice of you to donate to Wikipedia.


I am surprised there were jerks that paid 0. Really? You can't afford give them five bucks? You spend more on beer OR lunch OR coffee in Starbucks if you feel kinky. At least humble bundle not allow you to pay 0 :)


You are a jerk for calling them jerks. If it is "pay what you want" then you are invited to do exactly that. If you want to pay nothing, you may do so. It is perfectly inside the rules of the event.


I think you're missing the point of the game. Being given freedom doesn't exclude someone from the consequences. For example: life is "punch whom you want" and you're still a jerk for punching someone.


Life is most definitely not "punch who you want"; that's illegal and will get you thrown in jail. There's a specific rule against that in most places.

In certain designated areas of life, such as during a boxing match, the rules are different: if you're in a boxing match, you can indeed punch someone, and you won't get thrown in jail or suffer any other sanction (other than being punched back). A boxer who punches his opponent in a boxing match is not a jerk, because that is permitted by mutually agreed upon rules in that context.

In the case of the cards, the rules do explicitly allow paying $0, so it's in no sense a perversion of the rules, and people who paid $0 are not jerks.


If I made a whole bunch of awesome potato skins for a party and said "It is suggested you only take up to two potato skins", and you take 10, you are a jerk. Or at an open bar, if you don't tip the bartenders you are a jerk. Or if there's a potluck and it's suggested everyone brings something, and you bring nothing. Jerk.

"The rules" don't define whether you are a jerk or not. How you behave in the situation, does. They said up front that it cost them $3 to give you the cards. If you paid $0, you knowingly gave them the shaft. That's jerky.


The wording makes all the difference. In this case it was "pay what you want", so "take as many potato skins as you want". Would someone who takes that invitation still be a jerk? Or just selfish? Or a hacker?

This reminds me of http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2011/03/05/holding-t...


Being a jerk to win a game is still being a jerk.

The wording also said there was a suggested price of $5. "Pay what you want" is the equivalent of saying "tip what you want". You could "game" an open bar by never tipping, but that would make you a huge jerk.

Society is not based on rules. It is based on social interaction. You can break the rules and not be a jerk, and you can follow the rules and be a jerk. Rules have nothing to do with jerkitude.

Oh, and if I told someone "take as many potato skins as you want" with a bunch of other people there who might also like potato skins, and you take them all, you are again a huge jerk. Being nice to other people is important. Just like you shouldn't take all the potato skins, you should try to reimburse the makers of the game for at least their cost.


You are not a hacker and you are not gaming anything. You are just an asshole. People thinking like you are the reason we will soon need a lawyer just to cross the road.

I invite you to score yourself in the psychopathy checklist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist) and let us know how it went.


Two things that make the world a worse place are excessive anger and self-righteousness.

Why are you so angry over this? Perhaps you should seek help.

Rules were established. Transactions were carried out according to those rules. Shock, horror, your supposed victim even made a profit (according to their own accounting). Why are you angry?


By paying nothing for it, you are telling CAH that that is exactly how much you think their product is worth to you. Nothing. If I were them, I would be a little bit hurt to see that.


Key point: "to you". I imagine that if the $0 option wasn't included, many of those who chose it would simply not "buy" it at all. So at least they get some marketing benefit out of it. Of course this works better for those "pay what you want" digital goods, where there isn't much marginal cost to giving away a copy.


Yes, it is within the rules of the event. There are lots of ways to play within the rules and still be a jerk.

Everyone who bought the cards for under $3 was faced with a decision: do I want these badly enough to literally cost the people who make them money?

Did you answer yes? Cool, you probably acted selfishly. Own it.


Yet they did not cost these guys money. The game's creators advertised a pay-what-you-want event because they had a reasonable expectation of making a profit (for charity) even though many people would pay $0.


Selfishness is a perfectly fine motivation. I would even consider it important to a degree.


Bought it myself off Amazon for $25 for a Secret Santa gift, and it's well worth it.

I did see this on reddit, I believe from someone who paid $0. I really hope it's real.

http://i.imgur.com/8v2vc.jpg


It isn't. That person put his name in as "Huge Asshole."


And in doing so almost certainly netted CAH more profit via the free advertising than if they had paid $5 (which, they still may have done). TBH, i wouldn't be shocked if it was an inside job.


Maybe not. I'm sure quite a few other people tried $0just to see if they got called "Huge Asshole".


Makes me feel better about just paying the normal full price of $25 to get a copy for my brother. The game is just so great, and definitely worth supporting.


I wonder if this has anything to do with the selected audience for this card game...

i.e. Are the type of people who find these cards hilarious more prone to acting with "jerk" behavior?

Only a hypothesis, but worth a look, since my primary assumption is that this is a selective (and interested) audience given that it's an expansion pack.


I knew there'd be some, but 20% is a miserably high proportion. Does anyone know if that percentage is similar to how other well-known examples of pay-what-you-want turned out? Are there any studies into the propensity to freeload among anonymous groups?


It's probably just people who wanted to see if they would really send it.

And it's teens without credit cards.

So I doubt you could really compare it to other things.


First two points make sense as reasons why people wouldn't pay, but I'm not sure how you get from those to your conclusion. Why do those two things not apply to other examples?


Compare to leaving a platter of bagels with a card asking people to pay if they can.

People are not curious if they can take a bagel for free - it's obvious that they can. So people are not tempted to do it just for the experiment.

And people wanting to pay can use cash, so the second situation doesn't apply either.

Most real world situations are more like this case than the cards case.


That answered my question, thanks. I was thinking of larger-scale, internet efforts (In Rainbows, Louis CK) but of course those don't involve physical delivery. Had not even considered honesty boxes.

Thinking more, I do remember reading about someone who started a business in DC delivering muffin baskets to beltway-area office buildings. Their business was purely honesty based, and I think losses due to cheapskatery were around 5%. In the end, they'd cut off buildings with rates worse than that. All that is more support for your points.


The site even made you feel guilty (in a "please reconsider" way) if you put anything less than $3, explaining that the cost for them to create, produce, and mail a single pack will cost them $3, meaning they're taking a loss. That really speaks to how selfish people are (especially considering it's the "most wonderful time of the year").


Yes. In any event, it's interesting data: at least 20% of people will never pay for something, no matter what the price is or the cost to create it.


You can't take any kind of reliable conclusion about general behavior from this event, there are tons of variables that may be biasing it.


It's quite possible that profit (both margins and gross profit) could have been lower if they required a 1 cent minimum donation.


I'm surprised at those people too. Almost 20%. I would not have thought it to be such a high number.


Starbucks is kinky? I think I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter ;)


It's a reference to the movie Idiocracy, which is set in a future where (among other changes) Starbucks is an erotic massage parlor: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fmUAFjqIPc4/T8aZMNekMfI/AAAAAAAAFB...


No kidding, I understand being frugal, but in that case, print them yourself and take the time to cut them out. Shockingly, the game is still just as fun.


Argh, I saw this two weeks ago, did a "remember to buy this when you get home" thing, and then forgot. I hope the expansion cards are made available somewhere. I enjoy CAH and am glad to send money as new bits are made available.

It'd be interesting to see if the "pay what you want" strategy works for you guys a second time now that you released such detailed data. You'd think it might make people more likely to pay exactly your equilibrium point just to see if they can get away with it.


I made a similar mistake. I saw it, but saw no clear way to post different addresses for shipping and billing. I asked if there was a way on their facebook page, figuring that if I got an answer explaining how, I would pay (was planning on a $10 payment actually), and than if I didn't get an answer, I would just opt for $0 payment and put in my shipping address.

I then went about my business, completely forgot about the question I asked on facebook (because they never answered), and never ended up submitting the form.

Oh well.


Little Monkey Caye (Caribbean island for $55K):

http://www.caribbeanislandbrokers.com/islands-for-sale/Littl...


here's what it looks like at high tide: http://bit.ly/R2WTFc


Its not a real island unless you can go galt on it!


I wonder what the effect would be if you'd simply state the production cost per unit on the ordering page, while still allowing people to pay zero $.


They did, several times (breaking it down in to the $1 for production and $2 for processing/shipping like on that page). They also suggested $5 as a fair price, and pointed out that it cost them $3 to make the set one last time on a nag screen if you tried to pay $0 (fun fact: the site wouldn't let you donate anything greater than 0 but under fifty cents, since they would lose money on credit card fees).


Correct -- we used Stripe, which has a minimum charge of $0.50.


Beats me why someone would not pay anything except for those people who really really really have no money at all. Like... none. Everybody else... shame on you!


The landing page did state the production costs (about $3).


Interesting. Even though around 20% of people didn't pay anything, they were still able to turn a profit.

I'd love to compare the results of this with other 'pay-what-you-want' schemes.

Edit: "We did all of the web design, video production, motion design, and copy writing ourselves, so these were free." I wonder if the cost of this would technically have put them at a loss (I suspect not).


It would almost have to. $70k is not even one man year's worth of effort from someone skilled at any one of those things individually.


Why are you considering a year's salary for a holiday pack/site? It's hard to imagine 2,080 hours (40x52) went into the entire thing.


"We did all of the web design, video production, motion design, and copy writing ourselves". Doesn't seem that hard to me. And we're talking less than a year's salary for someone skilled at any of those things, let alone all.


CAH is one of the funniest and most enjoyable games I've ever played. I was shocked to discover it was pay what you want, and the cards were completely open to print for myself.


Only the Holiday pack was pay what you want. The base game is $25 or free to print.


My bad, I was referring to the base game. Since it was out of stock at the time I wish I could have sent it to a print-on-demand place for delivery, even if it cost more in the time being.


It’s a sad day: I am starting to realize I am old.

I went to the website, saw it was a card game and thought I would learn more about it as I like card games. I play card games.

I clicked on "How do I play Cards Against Humanity" under the "Your dumb questions" but quickly lost interest when I would have had to click on "Read the fucking rules" to learn more about the game.

I get it... it is probably an edgy game... it probably is not for me. I guess I will never know as I just don’t want to "read the fucking rules".

EDIT: Fixed typo.


What these stats don't show is how many people will go out and buy a full $25 set or have already done so. The expansion isn't particularly useful without the main set, so even if everyone paid $0, it would still probably be a good promotional tool.

Plus the cards are awesome, I don't see how anyone could not want go out and buy the full set and the expansions after seeing this pack.


They should have randomized the default value within a range that automatically narrowed / increased proportionally against the trending of people accepting the default. They could have optimized their return pretty quickly. 'Pay what you want' can be used for both publicity AND pricing optimization.


You know I never thought too much about Cards Against Humanity before this, it always popped up as a best seller on Amazon but I didn't feel like giving it a whirl. This story alone, is making me very intrigued on what the game is like to play.


You can get a pretty good idea from the home page, where the header shows sample card pairs. It looks very similar to "Apples to Apples", if you've played that.


Is there a way to buy it without using Amazon?


It's an adult version of Apples to Apples. Think MadLibs, except one player readers the "madlib" and the other players draw from their hand to answer.

Example:

"Alternative medicine is now embracing the curative powers of ______ " was read aloud in my group.

I played the card that reads "Literally eating shit" and won the round, because the question reader liked my answer the most.


Played this for the first time on Saturday.

I had the "Haiku, pick 3" black card

which resulted in http://imgur.com/pcfgJ

I was laughing so hard that I was crying, just trying to read them out loud.


How the heck did I miss this


I wonder if they could have made more by using Humble Bundle's model of unlocking an extra if the buyer pays more than average. Keeps the attractive flexibility of pay-what-you-want, but actually incentivizes people to pay up.


I really enjoy the flow and layout of this site. Is is a bootstrap derivative?


Nope, I made it by hand!


Looks great. You know how to tread the fine line between 'minimal' and 'too minimal'


I really enjoyed the comical way you displayed the data. Very well done.


I would have tossed in a few extra bucks if I knew it was going to charity!


So just donate a few bucks to charity...


It'd be awesome to post the names of all of the freeloaders or just choose some random ones and put them on cards in an expansion pack to server as a warning to other "freeloaders".


If you want to go that route, just don't offer your product for $0.


Cards Against Humanity did something pretty amazing for Humanity.


They need to change their name with all this awesome contributingness to Humanity... well Wikipedia anyway.. I'm sure its helped us all at one point or another.


It seems that most people do not mind paying a bit more to great products, which is great news for individual businesses.


> We did all of the web design, etc. so these were free.

That's not entirely true. Opportunity cost is still a huge cost.


Yeah but you don't quantify it after the decision is made (or the opportunity is chosen).


Burst out laughing at the cricket section! Read the comment, then scroll through all the crickets.


Please at least open source the web design part next time so we can all contribute!


$36,550 to the credit card companies against $70,066 profit?


Why did they not donate to Wayback Machine instead? Wikimedia is doing just fine and their fund raising is mostly for advertising and marketing. The site is at zero risk of running out of operating funds. Personally, I'd rather see money go to historic records than revisionist, popular encyclopedia.

Source: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P...

Last financial report: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_Reports/Financ...


Because they already donated to Wikimedia.

Two good times to recommend alternative charities: (i) on threads where people ask, "where should I donate my money", and (ii) on threads about disasters, when you have an opportunity to spur donations to targeted charities.

You almost certainly didn't mean anything by this comment, but you generally want to avoid the appearance of litigating someone's good deed as a missed opportunity to do a better deed. Donations to Wikimedia are a good thing, worthy of congratulations.


Yeah, telling people what they mean is also pointless, but ok.

I was also a little disappointed to see Wikimedia called a 'charity'. Because people ask you for money does not make them a worthy cause. Now, I'm sure Wikimedia is doing what they do out of the goodness of their hearts. But its not the same as feeding the hungry. In fact, its kind of a first-world problem being solved, isn't it?


Certainly, if I was in politics, I'd take your advice. I think it's fair to question where donations go and the decision process, even after the fact. There's always next year.


It's not a fair question. It's a terrible question because every charity has their own merits, and any ensuing discussion is not fruitful and only causes conflict. What's makes it even worse is your self-righteous tone.

Your unfair question basically boils down to "My worthy cause is more worthy than your worthy cause!"


I believe he's actually arguing "Regardless of which cause is more worthy, my cause needs the money and Wikimedia doesn't."


I think you're reading way to much into this. You probably shouldn't be making any technical decisions if you're going to take every bit of advice personally.


Max here from Cards Against Humanity. We talked about donating to the Wayback Machine, but ultimately decided that a contribution Wikipedia would help more people with a more fundamental need.


Pray tell, how is Wikipedia revisionist?


"Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that _anyone can edit_."


Lol best graph ever, "% of the chart that looks like Pacman"


Reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/688/




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