Saying Bye to a pM Veteran
Lynda, one of the earliest and more prolific 
Machine: users has written about why she is not using pMachine anymore. While Lynda published numerous hacks and tricks for pM and even ran a very useful “hacks forum” for quite a while, I’m really not surprised at this announcement from her since she’s been virtually absent from the pM scene for quite some time (and was slowly less active even before then). In fact, she posted the entry several days ago but I only learned about it via a post in the pM forums today.
Lynda was a great part of the pM community back when she was active and contributed quite a bit. While she goes into much more depth about her reasons for switching away from pM in her entry, they can largely be summed up as simply a divergence of directions between herself and pM (which now, of course, includes not only pMachine Free and Pro, but also :EE:). I can’t say I agree with everything she says in her entry—and some of it really makes me frustrated reading it—but I can see where she’s coming from on much of it.
Regardless, Lynda does deserve some thanks and commendation for all the effort she’s given to the pM community and I certainly wish her the best on her future endeavors.
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Comments
Wow! Check out Rick’s offer to Lynda in the pM forums thread. Pretty cool, if you ask me.
What I got from Lynda’s entry, though, was that her main objection with EE was simply the price. (We’ll ignore Rick’s offer here since her’s is a special case that others won’t get.) She has a legitimate point there, too: EE is expensive for the casual, hobbyist blogger.
But, then, if you’re a “casual, hobbyist” blogger, you really shouldn’t need all the power of EE and thus pMachine Free or Pro should be sufficient for your needs. It’s hard to be able to compare EE with other “weblogging” tools since it’s capable of so much more than simply standard weblogging. It’s an apples-to-oranges type comparison pretty much any way you cut it. [shrug]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again....
Rick’s the man!
Ironically, however, every one of those causal bloggers uses Photoshop, which runs $650.00, and a bunch of other expensive apps. Not to mention their $300.00 iPod and all the money every month to stock it with music Oh, and dinner and movies every weekend, and $4.00 a day at Starbucks, and $129.00 for the latest version of OS X every time it comes out, etc…
I really think that the reason it’s perceived as being expensive is because other apps are free. It’s what whole “internet” thing, where the normal rules of supply and demand don’t apply. It’s really not the price, considering how much money people spend in general in our society. It’s the perceived priced.
I spent a year pondering the price issue. I agonized over it. But given the capability of the app, it seemed appropriate to price it a little higher than other blog apps. I realize that people on the lower end are going to balk, but I want to establish EE as the BMW of blogging. You want the best? Would BMW sell more cars if it was less expensive? You betcha. But they would cease to be BMW. They’d loose their mystique and become VW. In terms of our overall perception, I want to be on the higher end. And in the grand scheme of our user-base, which only a percentage of are blogger, a couple hundred bucks is not that expensive.
And at some point, if you’re gong to run a company as a real business, not a hobby or quasi-hobby - one that provides a high level of customer service and professionalism - you have to be compensated fairly for your products our your business won’t be sustainable.
By the way, I considered creating a “lite” version (and it’s still not out of the question). The problem is that to maintain two apps is a lot more work. A system like EE is very complex so you can’t just rip parts out. You have to develop the lite version in many ways as its own program. That takes work - and I’m already drowning in work. So I made an executive decision to focus on the full app for now. Once we grow a little more and have more manpower we can look at that possibility.
I completely agree, Rick. In determining what my pricing would be for my videography packages, I of course did a lot of research on competition. I don’t have any *local* competition, though, and people here tend to think that “city prices” are too high.
However, I know how much work I put into my projects, and how much better they are than other options available to people. Being fairly compensated is something that people in my industry are struggling with right now.
The perceived value of video to many is still that it is a cheap gimmick, and that photographs are what are really important. Some videographers charge way too little as a result, or for weddings, don’t even follow the basic tenants that even the florist does--you get paid in full by the date of the event. Some of these poor videographers let the bride take them a couple of hundred bucks down, thinking that’s the only way they’ll get the business, and then don’t get paid until 6 months after the wedding.
I took the stand that my fellow WEVA members are doing, and that’s to charge what you’re worth, and respect the work that you are doing. Clients will eventually gain the same respect and will stop treating video as a “lesser” medium. That won’t ever happen if videographers don’t respect themselves, their own work, and continue to try to underprice themselves. It’s hard when you hear people say “you’re too expensive!” when you’re running your own business. The gut reaction is to “make a deal” with them so you don’t lose any business. A worse decision one could not make.
(Side note--I finally caught your name on the credits of the Family Guy last night--woot!)
Good luck with your new venture, Derek. It sounds cool.
If they hadn’t cancelled Family Guy I’d probably still be there. It was a fun gig with lots of perks. I don’t know why a lot of the execs at Fox hated it. The decision to kill the show was really personal for a lot of them. Shame.
Well I agree with her synopsis; not necessarily the path she takes to get there. I’ve always considered pMachine a “baby-CMS” instead of a blogging tool. :EE: expands that to a level that makes it enterprise-worthy. As long as the blogging fad stays in, there will always be tons of choices, many free, and many that are easier to use than pMachine. But since I’ve never been interested in the whole “online diary” in the first place…
By Derek Jones on February 23, 2004 at 03:06pm link