Hello again everyone. We're back to preparing for Black November already. It feels unreal in a way. What can we expect for the coming months? I have no idea. Prices are all over the place with some companies slashing prices to compete and others raising prices to try to make more money. We're already seeing Pre-Black Friday sales popping up and many developers are trying to get ahead of the game by slashing prices lower than what they will offer in November. It's going to be an interesting one this year.
Here is my handy guide for all of you to help prepare for the coming sale apocalypse:
1) Make a budget. Know exactly how much money you want to spend, give yourself a buffer and do not go over that amount. What I mean is to walk in with a goal amount and a hard cutoff. "I have $400 I want to budget for plugins/libraries/etc. and would like to keep it in that area but I will give myself a $100 buffer that gives me some wiggle room if something is over the budget I have set or a sale pops up I really want but I will NOT go over that $500 mark."
With all the sales that pop up, it's very easy to spend more than you anticipated on spending. I've done it, pretty much everyone I know in this industry has done it. We'll buy a lot of the things we wanted to buy including a few surprises but there are always one or two companies that do a late sale that leaves us head-desking because we hit that hard budget wall already and we end up spending more than anticipated. This brings us to...
2) Make your list; check it twice. Put together a list of the things you've been planning on buying in November now and rate them by importance so you can gauge how much you're going to need vs want vs "maybe if it goes low enough". Open a spreadsheet and colour code it with names, prices, links, etc.
Ask yourself if you truly need what you buy. This will help you budget things better. There have been things on my list that I've had on it for three or more years and never bought because I never truly needed it because maybe it wasn't something I'd use in a project at that point in time. On the other end, I've bought things I wanted to buy that never got used. With as quickly as the tech changes in this industry, some libraries can get outdated just as quick so ask yourself if you need them for an existing or upcoming project before you buy because it sucks to spend $150 on a library that sits unused for 2 years only to have another company put out a similar product that is much better than the one you bought and never used. Being completely honest, there are things I've bought on Black Friday sales over the past decade that simply never got installed because I didn't actually need them...
3) For the stuff you know you want to buy, it's a good idea to search and look at the company’s sale history so you know exactly when to expect their sale to hit. Many companies will do their sales around the same week every year and some of them end up being late season sales in which case you may have already spent your budget and have nothing left by the time their product goes on sale. Looking this up beforehand using this subreddit's search bar will also give you an idea whether a product or company does a winter sale (i.e. Xfer Records does not do sales so if you were hoping to get Serum for less, you will be disappointed.
4) There WILL be sales you didn't expect, so expect to spend money you weren't anticipating on spending even if you make a list. There is sure to be many announcements in the coming weeks for new releases before Christmas. For some reason, companies have this wild idea that it's great to announce a new, previously unannounced product this time of year. If you're a developer, it's not great. Stop doing it. Wait till Mid-January at the very least. :P
So, expect that there may be something coming out with an intro price and try to set something aside for that possibility as well. Worse comes to worse, you have money left over for Christmas.
5) Now is the time to demo! If there's something you've been considering or wondering about, don't wait till it's on sale to try it out and make sure it's something you want. You have the chance now ahead of time to do that.
6) Also remember not all sales happen in November. Some companies will wait to do their sales in December for some unknown reason so we wait and wait and end up spending a good part of the budget we had for their stuff on something else only to see them drop it later. Stick to the list, have a buffer if you can for extras. If something you were planning on didn't go on sale, you get to keep some money in your bank account for January when they start up the inevitable New Years sales. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I hope these tips are able to help you all prepare for the coming sales.
Remember if you're interested in some real-time plugin discussion, we're pretty active on our Discord server so if you're not over there yet, you're missing out.
https://discord.gg/ZY3qYDw