First off, our thoughts on What is Free are over here   - so let's forge ahead assuming you're over that. Good work deserves good reward.

How are prices determined in the Marketplace?

Generally, it's up to the Developer. We take a 25% cut, and we can't sell something for less than $15. We also let you do Special Offers for things like volume discounts or 'unlimited' licenses. 

Beyond that it's up to you. Our job is to make sure everything works and doesn't create security holes, performance issues, or generally make promises it's not keeping. It's not our job to understand what the market will bear for all these different solutions. While I'm no marketing genius, I have picked up a few observations that you might find valuable:

• In life, pricing reflects the value it creates for the Customer. It is a common misconception, particularly by Developers, that pricing should be based on the level of effort or cost that went into creating the product. This is simply false. It's not evil, it's just false. Sometimes companies sell things at a loss, sometimes they sell things on a small margin, sometimes there's a huge markup. It all comes down to what a Customer is willing to pay.
  
   
• If something seems outrageously expensive or cheap to you, it's quite possibly not meant for you. If you feel something could be priced better, I encourage you to contact the developer, through private messages, and politely let them know what you'd pay for their add-on and why. This isn't an auction site and we're not going to encourage you to haggle, but I do expect and hope pricing will move around as our audience grows, and changes. Feedback is good.
  
   
• People generally pay more for solutions that are geared specifically for their problem. Building a solution for building solutions is always an attractive idea to developers. It's hard to sell that. Much easier to sell a specific widget than it is a widget making machine.
  
   
• You can always drop a price. It's hard to raise a price. You've got special offers, deal of the day, gift licenses - there's a lot of ways to get your work infront of people. Don't be afraid to start with a high number and come down as reality hits. 
  
  
  
• You likely know we think a lot about site developers/designers vs. site owners/editors in everything we do. It is a lot easier selling stuff to the site operators than it is the site developers. 
  
   
• The more something costs, the nicer the Clients/Customers. This is one of the great mysteries of life, but it's completely true. I've worked with clients on million dollar projects that were far from perfect - but the people were always a joy to work with and the expectations were reasonable. Conversely, I routinely get emails from people who are struggling with our free software on a budget webhost having bought nothing at all from the marketplace telling me "YOU CAN GO TO HELL FOR WASTING MY TIME." You do have to provide support for at least 30 days, so you might want to think about that hard. Which is better; 10 clients who each paid $150, or 100 clients who each paid $15?
  
   
• The marketplace is still young. Yes, it's mature and it pays for a lot things around the office - but we're hardly operating at the scale of Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla! yet. You might want to go look at some of the many marketplaces for those projects and ponder what is missing entirely from our marketplace. We're always eager to see a better mousetrap - but there's still some low hanging fruit out there folks. 

That's all I know. Feel free to PM me questions.

-frz, ceo.