7 ms·

This is great! I've been needing a solution to this problem. However... I would pay $20 one time for it. But a subscription is a deal breaker. My guess is you

This is great! I've been needing a solution to this problem. However... I would pay $20 one time for it. But a subscription is a deal breaker. My guess is you'll make a lot more revenue by doing one time fees tied to a specific AirPod version. So each time I upgrade my AirPods, I pay a new one time fee instead of the subscription.

truncate 2y ago
+1. As much as I realize that the developer may think their app is important enough for consumers to subscribe, from consumer perspective there are 30 other things that I would love to use -- which ask for subscription as well -- and I will probably subscribe to top 5-10 of those. Particularly $25/year is quite high for what it does, and it would definitely not make it to that list. On the other hand perpetual license for $20 is something I would definitely consider. You can release V2 after 2-3 years and people can choose to upgrade if they find the value.
- simple10 2y ago
  Fair points. I just think you'll make more charging a one time fee as most people won't want to do a subscription. Either way, I'm guessing it will be hard to make a full time income off a single utility app. But if you have plans for other related apps, then lowering the price of one app to use for lead gen to upsell to other apps seems to work pretty well for app devs. Best of luck!
mrtksn 2y ago
Thanks! Much appreciated. Unfortunately I don't see how 20$ one time fee will works for such a niche app. After commissions and taxes $20 becomes $10. Anywhere in the developed world the money required only to survive is at least 2000$, which means I will need to be selling 200 copies every month as long as the app exist only to get basic level of income and accumulating customers that I will have to support the years to come. What happens if the next year sales drop to 100 a month? It will become an abandonware and make me enemies or eat up all my time for nothing. Many years ago I purchased Halide and later it become a subscription app, I felt deceived and still hold grudge and I don't want to be that guy. It's subscriptions right away and have only the people who think that 2$ a month is a fair compensation for the service. One time payment is either paying for abandonware, charity or scam. With subscriptions, it's a service. It's the best for everyone. Some people associate it with greed but I don't agree that expecting getting paid for work is greedy.
- dijit 2y ago
  Are you implying that developing this software and maintaining it is a full time job? I'm not saying it's not, I'm actually curious. If it is indeed a full time job I don't think it's worth the time investment required to be perfectly honest. :\
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    It is a full time job even when you have a single user, you can't just get the payment deliver the app forget about it. It doesn't work like that, bugs happen the environment changes etc. People don't simply shrug and go buy a new software, they expect the thing get fixed.
    - dijit 2y ago
      But do you have to work on the program for forty hours a week or four?
      - mrtksn 2y ago
        How much do you think is my fair price? I will leave it here because it's weird to higgle on it. If I'm going to be "on call" I expect to get paid and I don't think this is greedy or unreasonable.
        dijit 2y ago
        the going rate for a freelancer is $100/hr in my part of the world, but you can check your going rate. You can calculate your expected baseline yearly sales from this, based on how many hours you expect to work bugfixing and improving things on average per year. You can timebox the work- having a half-dozen services like this is exactly how Panic Inc. came to mass prominence. Everything depends on the actual amount of time you have to spend on the app, nobody is asking for minimum wage work, that's totally not fair; but perhaps expecting this single project to support you full time is unlikely. The upshot is that if you're more successful than your baseline, that's "profit", and it's unbounded.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

truncate 2y ago

+1. As much as I realize that the developer may think their app is important enough for consumers to subscribe, from consumer perspective there are 30 other things that I would love to use -- which ask for subscription as well -- and I will probably subscribe to top 5-10 of those. Particularly $25/year is quite high for what it does, and it would definitely not make it to that list. On the other hand perpetual license for $20 is something I would definitely consider. You can release V2 after 2-3 years and people can choose to upgrade if they find the value.

simple10 2y ago
Fair points. I just think you'll make more charging a one time fee as most people won't want to do a subscription. Either way, I'm guessing it will be hard to make a full time income off a single utility app. But if you have plans for other related apps, then lowering the price of one app to use for lead gen to upsell to other apps seems to work pretty well for app devs. Best of luck!

mrtksn 2y ago

Thanks! Much appreciated. Unfortunately I don't see how 20$ one time fee will works for such a niche app. After commissions and taxes $20 becomes $10. Anywhere in the developed world the money required only to survive is at least 2000$, which means I will need to be selling 200 copies every month as long as the app exist only to get basic level of income and accumulating customers that I will have to support the years to come. What happens if the next year sales drop to 100 a month? It will become an abandonware and make me enemies or eat up all my time for nothing. Many years ago I purchased Halide and later it become a subscription app, I felt deceived and still hold grudge and I don't want to be that guy. It's subscriptions right away and have only the people who think that 2$ a month is a fair compensation for the service. One time payment is either paying for abandonware, charity or scam. With subscriptions, it's a service. It's the best for everyone. Some people associate it with greed but I don't agree that expecting getting paid for work is greedy.

dijit 2y ago
Are you implying that developing this software and maintaining it is a full time job? I'm not saying it's not, I'm actually curious. If it is indeed a full time job I don't think it's worth the time investment required to be perfectly honest. :\
- mrtksn 2y ago
  It is a full time job even when you have a single user, you can't just get the payment deliver the app forget about it. It doesn't work like that, bugs happen the environment changes etc. People don't simply shrug and go buy a new software, they expect the thing get fixed.
  - dijit 2y ago
    But do you have to work on the program for forty hours a week or four?
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      How much do you think is my fair price? I will leave it here because it's weird to higgle on it. If I'm going to be "on call" I expect to get paid and I don't think this is greedy or unreasonable.
      - dijit 2y ago
        the going rate for a freelancer is $100/hr in my part of the world, but you can check your going rate. You can calculate your expected baseline yearly sales from this, based on how many hours you expect to work bugfixing and improving things on average per year. You can timebox the work- having a half-dozen services like this is exactly how Panic Inc. came to mass prominence. Everything depends on the actual amount of time you have to spend on the app, nobody is asking for minimum wage work, that's totally not fair; but perhaps expecting this single project to support you full time is unlikely. The upshot is that if you're more successful than your baseline, that's "profit", and it's unbounded.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]