{"id":29848,"date":"2020-08-24T16:43:58","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T20:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=29848"},"modified":"2020-09-11T15:57:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T19:57:45","slug":"subscription-or-no-subscription","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/24\/subscription-or-no-subscription\/","title":{"rendered":"Subscription or No Subscription?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ia.net\/topics\/subscription-or-no-subscription\">iA<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/ia.net\/topics\/subscription-or-no-subscription\">\n<p>On the developer side, <em>moving<\/em> to subscriptions can be a gate to hell. They usually make <em>less<\/em> at first. Incidentally the first year you pay the higher fee. Over time they <em>can<\/em> make more&mdash;if you manage to keep your users. That is not a given. The switch from paid to subscription can cost you a fortune. Not technically. The technology is there. It will cost you: users. And angry users don&rsquo;t just leave, they rate you angrily and write angry comments. They feel harmed and they try to harm you as much as possible. Anonymous ratings, upvoting, and reviews make revenge fast, easy, and cheap.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>You might have noticed that there are no subscriptions for Apple&rsquo;s own productivity apps. They are either free, like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, or very expensive and paid, like Logic, FinalCut, Motion.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Apple is more likely to help, feature, and support a popular app if it has a subscription. Apple will still show interest in your future if you sell a lot of apps. If there is no subscription planned, Apple&rsquo;s interest vanishes in circles. They come back, showing interest in a featuring here and there, asking questions about your future, and if your response is &ldquo;no subscriptions&rdquo; or &ldquo;no subscriptions only&rdquo; their interest evaporates. Until they don&rsquo;t ask anymore.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>We tried high prices, mid-range prices, low prices, free, and freemium. Getting Android users to pay for software is not for the feeble-hearted. So far, offering a free basic version with a choice between paid and subscription seems to be the only thing that works. And that doesn&rsquo;t mean we buy yachts, it means that we might be sustainable in one or two years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>They&rsquo;re charging $5\/year or $30 to buy the app.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"subscription-or-no-subscription-update-2020-09-11\">Update (2020-09-11): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=24403827\">Hacker News<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iA: On the developer side, moving to subscriptions can be a gate to hell. They usually make less at first. Incidentally the first year you pay the higher fee. Over time they can make more&mdash;if you manage to keep your users. That is not a given. The switch from paid to subscription can cost you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-08-24T20:44:02Z","apple_news_api_id":"8aae0131-6af0-4f08-ac84-e24c13252f7e","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-09-11T19:57:48Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Aiq4BMWrwTwishOJMEyUvfg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[248,91,1421,101,239,31,1667,26,30,32,39,1666],"class_list":["post-29848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-android","tag-appstore","tag-app-subscriptions","tag-business","tag-iawriter","tag-ios","tag-ios-13","tag-iosapp","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macappstore","tag-macos-10-15"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30099,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29848\/revisions\/30099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}