What's a spam filter worth?

I've read many marketing articles that suggest the practice of, "pricing to value" as opposed to "pricing to cost."

The logic behind this is clear; the creator of the product should charge the amount that maximizes their return. Minor, brilliant inventions may have cost nearly nothing to develop, but their value dictates a high price on the market. Even at the higher cost, the item still presents a win-win scenario for both the buyer and the seller.

On the flipside, a product that was expensive to create, but has no value to the consumer won't sell at any price.

Following this logic, SpamButcher could be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to individual users on an annual basis. Let's assume an average user's time is worth $15 / hour, and that each spam email takes 10 seconds to deal with. Many users receive well over 200 spam messages each day. Almost all of these are blocked by SpamButcher.

If SpamButcher's spam email software blocks 98% of that spam, that works out to nearly 200 hours of time saved each year. At $15 each hour, that works out to a savings of over $3000. By this logic, SpamButcher would be a great deal for many users if it were licensed at a cost $1500 annually.

Unfortunately, for SpamButcher, competing spam blocker applications offer similar benefits to users. As a result, SpamButcher, "prices to the market" as opposed to pricing to value. At a one time price of $29.95, this works out to a good deal for consumers.

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