Partly for my own benefit, partly for anyone else coming after me, my thoughts after a year of selling scripts inSL.
First of all; no-one wants to buy a script, much in the same way no-one wants software. People want magic to make their problems go away, and it’s the job of a scripter to get as close to that situation as they possibly can. Scripting is a customer service business more than it is anything else, to the point I was commenting to a friend I should call the store “Xugu’s Customer Service (and scripts) Store”.
Secondly, you probably cannot differentiate yourself from the competition on price. There are very VERY few scripts in SL that are too complicated for a bored developer to write because they fancy it, and then release for free. You therefore have to differentiate on features and support (which takes me back to my first point).
My attempts to sell more scripts by making them cheaper has only ever worked if the script is free. My most profitable item has been a L$1,000 swing/slide/blind/phase door script, despite the fact it’s the most expensive (equal) thing I sell. Temporary sales will help, if marketed correctly, but flat out setting the price low will mean people assume it’s of lesser quality.
On the other hand, features are the way forward, particularly the tricky stuff. This is a two-edged sword; get too fancy, and you’ll trip yourself up. However, scripters with a good grasp on vector mathematics (for making things spin, move, etc. in smooth ways) are rare. Scripters with a grasp on web services (for external storage, for example), also quite rare.
Thirdly, know your target audience. If you don’t know why someone would want a script, how you persuade them they do? For example, I do a builder tool for re-texturing prims; about a year before this one was written, I wrote something similar for someone else, but they wouldn’t tell me exactly what they wanted it for. Net result, they got something better suited to window texturing, and I got something I couldn’t readily sell until someone else came along with better requirements and I could finish making a script people wanted.
On a related note; shopping is inherently a bit dull. You can either make it easy, or more fun. To make it easy, focus on getting the key points about a product across to the customer; the images I use in-world and in XStreetSL are designed to provide key bullet points on a product, for example. While most of my products now have instructions available before you buy, maybe 1 in 20 avatars actually ever reads them before the purchase. To make it fun, put out widgets. You’re a scripter, this should be easy; people like things that spin, or talk, or just do fun things if they click them, leave a bunch around. My store has a rezz-day present giver, a big button marked “Do not press” and an age/height detector, for example. There are other product demos around too, but seeing a door swing isn’t so much fun (unless you’ve been really looking for a swinging door, in which case it may be the most awesome thing in the world to you).
Finally, pricing. Unfortunately, you can’t price a script by how complex it was to write, but instead you have to price based on how much the customer wants it. If you don’t think you can sell enough to cover your time, at a price the customer will pay, then don’t write it. This means selling some scripts for more than you’d like to (example: Click ‘n’ tell) and some for less than you’d like to (example: Bell script); in the end, you just have to hope it all balances out.
Also, if you put an item out, and it’s not selling well, be cautious of changing your pricing. If you got the price wrong at the start, why? If not, why are you changing it? Look instead at marketing. Talk to your target audience, get them to give you feedback on the sale stuff. I have an ongoing issue with my texture/color changing HUD scripts, for example. It’s got better since people went “Hey, you know that script you’re marketing at hair/eye producers? Considered it would work well for shoes too?”, but once I have more time it’s on my to-do list to go over the marketing materials for.