The Wisdom of Lowering Prices?

[Pellucidean]

I'm a new writer, and I'm wondering if any of the the more experienced writers have any input on whether or not it's a good idea to lower prices on articles that aren't selling after a certain point. A few of my articles are now about a month old, and haven't received any sales or offers yet. Is there a point in time where I should I start setting the price lower? Or is it better to hold out?
On a similar note, does a lot of hits without any sale or offer indicate I'm setting the price too high? I recently had an article get 36 hits (which is a lot, at least compared to most of my other articles) without anyone actually biting.

Thanks for any help!

[cmcmahon66]

I often lower mine by $5 or $10 when they haven't sold in a couple of months. Are you seeing articles similar to yours sell? What are they selling for?

When I was starting out I priced my stuff lower to get more sales and get on the board, to counteract my inexperience here. Now I price according to the demand for the particular topic/category, the going prices I see similar topics selling for, and how many articles are out there with my same keywords. Do a search on the topics of the articles in question. If there are others out there, look at their prices and maybe set yours the same or $5-$10 lower.

If an article has languished for over a year, and it isn't something seasonal (because demand spikes each year on the seasonal stuff), I will cut it to the bare bones just to get rid of it from my catalog. I assume it is a topic that there was little to no demand for.

If they are not getting looked at, you can also try changing the category it is listed under, or pulling it down to resubmit with a better title that might grab more attention. If an article is getting hits at a decent rate, I just try to be patient. If it sits longer, then I start lowering, but not drastically. People who are searching to buy can set a price range in their searches though, so I usually try to get below the next common "tier", for example, under $100, or under $75, $50, $30 etc. depending on where my starting price is currently.

[Lysis]

I said this somewhere else. Forget where.

I have 2 articles that got 750 views before a purchase.
1 article got 500 views.

I wouldn't obsess over views.

[remoteriverman]

I started at Constant Content a year ago, and never lowered my prices for anyone - and I've been fortunate enough to sell 80% of those original articles. I think article price reduction is just a recipe for financial disaster. You're better off pulling them off CC after a year or so and submitting them elsewhere if they're not moving. The proliferation of 5-cent-a-word articles on CC of late has meant I haven't been writing much here at all for the past few months (but still selling some old stuff). Finding my own clients in the outside world is proving far more lucrative (in the next 5 weeks I'll net $6500 from just one client, for example - and I'm juggling half a dozen clients at the moment). These days, I don't do much writing for less than 18 cents a word (hard to get those rates on CC) - and next year I'll probably raise my minimum to 24 cents. But whatever you're making as a writer, you'll make a lot more in the long run if you have a specific threshold that you absolutely, positively won't go below - and stick to it. Otherwise you can end up writing for pretty close to nothing...

Cheers,
Kevin Casey