You can see the power of being on the front page as a new product in August! Before using DriveThru, I used to get about 100 downloads a month; which has now doubled. In short, moving to DriveThru was a great result! Assuming that Icar was only worth downloading in 2002 and that downloads have been constant, that's 14,400 downloads for $5, or 0.034 cents per download.
NB: The graph will update as I add new data, so if you're reading this long after January 2015, the data might look a little different!
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
My problem comes with "Suggested Price". Suggested Price gives the author an opportunity to say what they think the downloader might like to offer for it. I've set Icar to $0. I am not sure how I feel about the Suggested Price functionality. On one hand, it allows the author to say "Don't give me more than $1 for this!" or "Buy me a coffee for $3"*. I quite like that. It's an admission that the production values are not the same as a $40 game and that the author isn't trying to feed their family with it. As a downloader, I like the idea of buying someone a coffee - over here we would buy someone a beer to say thank you, a coffee is more universal.
Where Suggested Price is larger than $3, I start feeling guilty. If I download a game for free and the author has suggested $3, I don't feel like I am insulting them. If they put a suggested price of $20 and I don't want to - or can't pay that - then I immediately feel guilty. The author feels that their hard work deserves $20 and I am not willing to give a cent. That's a slap around the face to the author. When looking at the "downloads to donations" ratio, an author who suggests $20 and averages out at 5 cents a download might be somewhat insulted.
Am I being over sensitive about this? I am not sure I am comfortable with "Pay what you want but I think you should pay $20". Is it just me? Am I being a bit too British about this?