Update on March 09, 2009: WTF! pricing is now in the hands of outspoken customers has ended.

There is no guarantee Shufflesome designs will ever be produced again. My inventory of stickers is depleting. To keep things a bit entertaining, WTF! pricing will set a contrast to the general price hike introduced last week. First let me explain the name. What are you supposed to think when you face a retailer trying hard to woo you with discounts or free shipping? WTF! I buy. Hence the name. Now, here is what I do with the prices:

There are a total of 6 designs (3 for each iPod model: iPod shuffle and iPod nano) that are priced at only 3,33 EUR (3,55 USD). I am not telling you which ones, but you can find out by browsing the collection. The discounted designs are identified with the WTF! label. Each week, on Mondays, 6 new designs will be choosen and marked down.

People who live in Twitterville have an additional option: Send a tweet listing the names of the 6 designs. The first person to retweet your tweet can contact me to claim any design at 3,00 EUR (3,55 USD).

Your tweet should look like this: name1, name2, name3, name4, name5, name6 #shflsm. Don't forget #shflsm at the end.

During the last 240 days (from April 16 to December 12, 2008), I pegged the price to visitor statistics. This had a positive impact on revenues.

Every visit counts toward a day's total number of unique visitors, and the current numbers can be seen at shufflesome.com/mint/. Whenever the 60-day moving average was beat by the day's total number of unique visitors, prices dropped. Conversely, prices moved up again, when traffic was lower than the benchmark 60-day moving average. The details I documented from day-to-day on the /play page.

When the first shops appeared on the Internet, the price charged for products was not affected in principle. It was the same thing as before: a number, based on some calculus, and set to be more or less permanent. A price was still supposed to generate revenues to cover expenses for advertising and public relations. Later on, shops appeared where the price was connected to user action, for example in the form of votes, or visits to the site. An example would be good here. I searched for one in my bookmarks, but couldn't find an example I was thinking of. Anyways, these cases of flexible, interactive pricing are still rare and often framed as an event, and not as a permanent pricing strategy.

What if flexible pricing had been there on day one, when the first shops appeared on the Internet? Look at my flexible pricing scheme. It was not hard to implement and is easy to administer. I believe this should be the norm for shops on the Internet, rather than the exception.

Yesterday, the dollar saw its biggest daily gain vs euro in 7-1/2 years. Hmm, good for you if this eases the downward trend, because it would allow me to adjust my US dollar prices down as well, for both the stickers and shipping postage.

Calendar week 25, 2008

Keep the trend going. Remember that every day on which you beat the magic number of unique visitors, you contribute to keeping prices low.

#shflsmprice - in one word, denotes and represents a pricing model i have recently introduced. I'll have to dwell on this topic for a while, until it eventually catches on. Basically, customers, and people interested in Shufflesome stickers, can participate in setting the price. Although Shufflesome stickers are not that much of a community project to draw in a large amount of people and make emerging patterns statistically viable, the principle of participatory pricing alone is worth the experiment to me.

This time, i'll point out some of the differences between traditional advertising, and Shufflesome participatory pricing:

#shflsmprice is a keyword i use in some of my Twitter messages. You can follow #shflsmprice tweets to learn about price movements. You can use #shflsmprice in your own tweets to move the price yourself. Think of it as a coupon.

The prices for Shufflesome stickers are linked to the amount of daily visitors. I invented this "game" a couple of weeks ago to encourage more visits to shufflesome.com. Setting prices is no longer a bastion of corporate guesswork. Participatory pricing i believe is more in tune with the way of the Web. Read here how #shflsmprice tweets enable you to invoke price discounts:

I have improved the description at /play, where you find daily updates about the price movements. The timer indicates the time left until the next price check. When that time arrives, the page reloads to give you updated information. You can manually refresh the page to make sure you haven't missed anything.

Next to my Alexome tweets, i'll sign up Shufflesome with Twitter. I'll connect my Shufflesome-related tweets to this website. Then you can hook up to whatever happens here (price movements, changes on the website, addition of new designs) and nudge any of your 3000 contacts (perhaps 5000?) to swarm over here and participate in setting prices.

A day after introducing a participatory pricing model, based on unique visitor statistics compiled by Mint, we'll see prices take the cold plunge for the first time on Saturday, April 19, at 18:00 CEST (GMT+1). You'll recognize them by their blue color attire.

I'll drop the price, whenever the number of daily unique visitors exceeds 179 people. Conversely, i'll adjust the price back up to its normal level, whenever less than 179 people show up.

That's right—just by showing up on this site, you can have an impact on the price! Take a fresh look at site traffic on shufflesome.com.

Read on here for more details.

Update at 20:55 CEST (GMT+1): I have noticed that i forgot to configure Mint for public acccess. Some of you have been standing before closed doors. Sorry about that. Access is now open: www.shufflesome.com/mint/

The prolonged USD depreciation against the EURO leads me to periodically adjust prices and postage rates, which means that I raised the US dollar prices slightly. I allow the dollar's conversion value to range within a certain band, but do adjust prices when it falls below a certain threshold. You may wonder why I do not simply state the price in EUR and let PayPal handle any currency conversions. Why do I set the US dollar price myself, next to the price in EUR?

Without going into detail about shopping cart systems and usability, the price expressed in two currencies (EUR, USD) serves to make clear at first sight that i support international orders. So far i have received orders from people in 42 different countries. 40% of all Shufflesome orders do not originate in the European Union, of which 73% originate in the United States.

I assume that people prefer to purchase in the currency they are familiar with. I do, and learning about the USD price upfront is more convenient than receiving a quote in USD somewhere during order processing.

By buying in USD at a price that i determine, you are at no disadvantage compared to using PayPal for the conversion. On the contrary, since the dollar's value in terms of EUR is declining and i am adjusting the USD price only periodically, you buy at a favorable rate. Second, you do not loose a fee to PayPal that is charged for currency conversions.

I certainly would like to integrate an option on the order page that retrieves a PayPal quote in any currency, based on the country you choose. I do not see this option in other online shops and there must be a reason. Anyways, if you know how to do it, contact me. To keep things simple and pragmatic, setting the USD price myself is a fair treat.