5 ms·

Here's a habit I have gotten into: not paying $9/month for someone's code, in perpetuity, if the data are locked behind that payment. And, for all that is holy

Here's a habit I have gotten into: not paying $9/month for someone's code, in perpetuity, if the data are locked behind that payment. And, for all that is holy, please stop trying to convince me to pay by using lines like "for less than two cups of coffee." Where I come from, that's as much as a family of four has for dinner, many days. It's what 85% of the world and 65% of the US have per day for non-mandatory spending. It's pretty damn privileged to worry about gamifying habit tracking and justifying it with $4.50 coffees.

marclou 5y ago
You can choose to pay for the game after the free trial is over but the Habit Tracker is (and will always be) 100% free. Thanks for your feedback :)
- toshk 5y ago
  Looks like a great product!!! Well done.
  - marclou 5y ago
    [dead]
- jeanlucas 5y ago
  Ah, that is unclear. Looks like you have only 7 days to decide to pay.
  - marclou 5y ago
    [dead]
JanSt 5y ago
Do you offer your work for free? It‘s a fair comparison for EU+US market in my eyes. For EU customers data export has to be possible
- number6 5y ago
  Yes, thus this advise is free: And no one should spend 4.50 on coffee. It's a bad habit - spending it on absolving oneself from procrastination is even worse. Better spend $10 on "Getting things done" and reread it every month or so.
  - alar44 5y ago
    I'm going to buy an extra coffee today just for you.
    - number6 5y ago
      Was it worth it?
      - alar44 5y ago
        Yes as it takes me approximately 5 minutes to earn that money.
        number6 5y ago
        5 Minutes? That's quite quick. It sure seems like you are proud of you ability to earn money this fast.
  - ljm 5y ago
    Different things work for different people and oftentimes the difficult part of habit forming is the accountability piece. If you're great at holding yourself accountable then maybe re-reading Getting Things Done every month will work for you, or you can just change things through sheer willpower. If you need something else to help keep yourself accountable then maybe $9 a month for an app that tries to make it into a game will work, or maybe another subscription would help because the payment makes it feel like you've put more skin in the game. Maybe you can afford $80 an hour for a weekly session with a professional coach! One thing is for sure, beng judgmental about how people go about improving themselves is a sure-fire way to kill their motivation. To that extent, I don't think your post constitutes good advice and it wouldn't be worth much even if you did charge for it.
aerosmile 5y ago
- hall0ween 5y ago
  I respectfully disagree as I found the comment (1) insightful that upon terminating a subscription the data is no longer accessible, (2) that $9/month could be seen as a lot to many people [honestly did not cross my mind, I guess that’s a priviledge of mine] - it’s the same argument as “$9/mo is too expensive for me” using different words and (3) it did not come off as overly negative, especially compared to some comment sections on controversial topics. > uses sloppy reasoning, and tells us a lot more about yourself than about the topic you’re commenting on. An example of being overly negative in one’s comments.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    > (1) insightful that upon terminating a subscription the data is no longer accessible This doesn’t seem to be true. > (2) that $9/month could be seen as a lot to many people This is a fairly worthless piece of information in this context. Do we really need a “check your privilege!” comment every time we discuss a product? > (3) it did not come off as overly negative, especially compared to some comment sections on controversial topics Complaining about privilege in this context seems overly negative.
- katet 5y ago
  Wow, I'm impressed how grumpy one can seem in a few short sentences. Take an upvote for that alone. GP has a certain - admittedly orthogonal - point. At what point does "just two coffees per month" translate into "too many coffees traded for services"? If it's relevant, a fairly high-end black coffee made from medium-roasted in-house coffee beans - which I strongly enjoy - costs me $1.70 in my local economy. So this costs me 5x coffees, or a work-week of coffee. And I'm a pretty well-paid foreigner living in a strange land. If I were to take a charitable reading of the GP - with no expertise in economics on my side - I'd say they were pointing out that you are potentially losing a 65+% of your market for whom $9 is not "a couple of coffees". That's not an indictment - maybe you don't care! Maybe 100x customers @ $9 = $900/month and the service pays for itself. I am a big fan of what I think is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) / Pay What You Can (PWYC), even though I see it pretty rarely. I guess it depends on whether you want to provide your product/service to as many people it can benefit at once, versus the minimum number of people who can support your costs with a profit. Neither position is inherently "wrong"/"privileged", they just seem to have different incentives and/or target markets. The voice of a potential target market that is being excluded seems valuable to me - even if the revenue increase might be negligible per-user, perhaps it's worth considering the volume of potential users in that market :shrug: (To re-iterate that I'm trying not to pick a side here: maybe it's not - maybe the business model is to target affluent consumers. That doesn't make criticism of the exclusionary nature of this approach "privileged", however, in my view. YMMV) (Edit: minor emphasis)
collegeburner 5y ago
I guess he is probably targeting America and Europe where people have disposable income then. Nothing wrong with that. And there's a free tier.
- marclou 5y ago
  [dead]
ge96 5y ago
There is this site I found a while back, wip.chat it's like a social-media/shared to-do list but you have to pay $20/mo to use it. Maybe there's mechanics on dropping money on something that makes you stick to it. I did not sign up for wip ha.
- marc 5y ago
  Maker of WIP here. Yes, many members note that having to pay $20 motivates them to be more consistent in using the tool which in turn helps them be consistently productive. It also helps pay my bills so I continue improving the service :)
maps7 5y ago
Well then I have a great solution for you: don't pay for it. You're not in the market for this app. It's akin to crying because you can't afford an expensive car.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

marclou 5y ago

You can choose to pay for the game after the free trial is over but the Habit Tracker is (and will always be) 100% free. Thanks for your feedback :)

toshk 5y ago
Looks like a great product!!! Well done.
- marclou 5y ago
  [dead]
jeanlucas 5y ago
Ah, that is unclear. Looks like you have only 7 days to decide to pay.
- marclou 5y ago
  [dead]

JanSt 5y ago

Do you offer your work for free? It‘s a fair comparison for EU+US market in my eyes. For EU customers data export has to be possible

number6 5y ago
Yes, thus this advise is free: And no one should spend 4.50 on coffee. It's a bad habit - spending it on absolving oneself from procrastination is even worse. Better spend $10 on "Getting things done" and reread it every month or so.
- alar44 5y ago
  I'm going to buy an extra coffee today just for you.
  - number6 5y ago
    Was it worth it?
    - alar44 5y ago
      Yes as it takes me approximately 5 minutes to earn that money.
      - number6 5y ago
        5 Minutes? That's quite quick. It sure seems like you are proud of you ability to earn money this fast.
- ljm 5y ago
  Different things work for different people and oftentimes the difficult part of habit forming is the accountability piece. If you're great at holding yourself accountable then maybe re-reading Getting Things Done every month will work for you, or you can just change things through sheer willpower. If you need something else to help keep yourself accountable then maybe $9 a month for an app that tries to make it into a game will work, or maybe another subscription would help because the payment makes it feel like you've put more skin in the game. Maybe you can afford $80 an hour for a weekly session with a professional coach! One thing is for sure, beng judgmental about how people go about improving themselves is a sure-fire way to kill their motivation. To that extent, I don't think your post constitutes good advice and it wouldn't be worth much even if you did charge for it.

aerosmile 5y ago

hall0ween 5y ago
I respectfully disagree as I found the comment (1) insightful that upon terminating a subscription the data is no longer accessible, (2) that $9/month could be seen as a lot to many people [honestly did not cross my mind, I guess that’s a priviledge of mine] - it’s the same argument as “$9/mo is too expensive for me” using different words and (3) it did not come off as overly negative, especially compared to some comment sections on controversial topics. > uses sloppy reasoning, and tells us a lot more about yourself than about the topic you’re commenting on. An example of being overly negative in one’s comments.
- rosndo 5y ago
  > (1) insightful that upon terminating a subscription the data is no longer accessible This doesn’t seem to be true. > (2) that $9/month could be seen as a lot to many people This is a fairly worthless piece of information in this context. Do we really need a “check your privilege!” comment every time we discuss a product? > (3) it did not come off as overly negative, especially compared to some comment sections on controversial topics Complaining about privilege in this context seems overly negative.
katet 5y ago
Wow, I'm impressed how grumpy one can seem in a few short sentences. Take an upvote for that alone. GP has a certain - admittedly orthogonal - point. At what point does "just two coffees per month" translate into "too many coffees traded for services"? If it's relevant, a fairly high-end black coffee made from medium-roasted in-house coffee beans - which I strongly enjoy - costs me $1.70 in my local economy. So this costs me 5x coffees, or a work-week of coffee. And I'm a pretty well-paid foreigner living in a strange land. If I were to take a charitable reading of the GP - with no expertise in economics on my side - I'd say they were pointing out that you are potentially losing a 65+% of your market for whom $9 is not "a couple of coffees". That's not an indictment - maybe you don't care! Maybe 100x customers @ $9 = $900/month and the service pays for itself. I am a big fan of what I think is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) / Pay What You Can (PWYC), even though I see it pretty rarely. I guess it depends on whether you want to provide your product/service to as many people it can benefit at once, versus the minimum number of people who can support your costs with a profit. Neither position is inherently "wrong"/"privileged", they just seem to have different incentives and/or target markets. The voice of a potential target market that is being excluded seems valuable to me - even if the revenue increase might be negligible per-user, perhaps it's worth considering the volume of potential users in that market :shrug: (To re-iterate that I'm trying not to pick a side here: maybe it's not - maybe the business model is to target affluent consumers. That doesn't make criticism of the exclusionary nature of this approach "privileged", however, in my view. YMMV) (Edit: minor emphasis)

collegeburner 5y ago

I guess he is probably targeting America and Europe where people have disposable income then. Nothing wrong with that. And there's a free tier.

marclou 5y ago
[dead]

ge96 5y ago

There is this site I found a while back, wip.chat it's like a social-media/shared to-do list but you have to pay $20/mo to use it. Maybe there's mechanics on dropping money on something that makes you stick to it. I did not sign up for wip ha.

marc 5y ago
Maker of WIP here. Yes, many members note that having to pay $20 motivates them to be more consistent in using the tool which in turn helps them be consistently productive. It also helps pay my bills so I continue improving the service :)

maps7 5y ago

Well then I have a great solution for you: don't pay for it. You're not in the market for this app. It's akin to crying because you can't afford an expensive car.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]