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Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

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Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#3
I'm surprised Marco is billing $1/month in 3 month intervals... I'd have just billed $12/year.

$12 is hardly a large payment chasm for a customer, particularly if you've already told them that they're not going to get anything particularly extra for their subscription and they're still interested.

But it also makes the fixed-fee on the transaction a lower %age of the total sale and of course from a cash-flow perspective you have a full 12 months income in the bank now.

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#4
post #3

I'm surprised Marco is billing $1/month in 3 month intervals... I'd have just billed $12/year. $12 is hardly a large payment chasm for a customer, particularly if you've already told them that they're not going to get anything particularly extra for their subscription and they're still interested. But it also makes the fixed-fee on the transaction a lower %age of the total sale and of course from a cash-flow perspect…

This does give him the flexibility to raise prices in 3 months though.

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#5
post #3

I'm surprised Marco is billing $1/month in 3 month intervals... I'd have just billed $12/year. $12 is hardly a large payment chasm for a customer, particularly if you've already told them that they're not going to get anything particularly extra for their subscription and they're still interested. But it also makes the fixed-fee on the transaction a lower %age of the total sale and of course from a cash-flow perspect…

Well unless he's still trying to discover the sweet price point.. If he thinks he wants to charge $3 a month after 3 months, he will still have most of the early adopters ready to pay instead of waiting for a year for the subscription to expire for the early adopters

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#6
Instapaper on my Kindle is well worth $10/month.

I used to skim all the long articles I came across, now I read them all. The longer, well thought out ones are some of the best.

If he released a more native Kindle integration, I'd definitely pay for it.

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#7
post #3

I'm surprised Marco is billing $1/month in 3 month intervals... I'd have just billed $12/year. $12 is hardly a large payment chasm for a customer, particularly if you've already told them that they're not going to get anything particularly extra for their subscription and they're still interested. But it also makes the fixed-fee on the transaction a lower %age of the total sale and of course from a cash-flow perspect…

Like he says: PayPal takes a minimum of $0.30 from each transaction, so processing a bunch of $1 transactions is wasteful.

He probably also doesn't want to scare people away who might not want to spend more than $5. Spending $3 won't scare people away.

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#9
post #3

I'm surprised Marco is billing $1/month in 3 month intervals... I'd have just billed $12/year. $12 is hardly a large payment chasm for a customer, particularly if you've already told them that they're not going to get anything particularly extra for their subscription and they're still interested. But it also makes the fixed-fee on the transaction a lower %age of the total sale and of course from a cash-flow perspect…

Don't forget, Marco is not shy to charge $4.99 for Instapaper in the App Store. I do not have the statistics right now to back it up (although I'm sure a few Google queries could), but I'm fairly confident that's above the average price for an app.

Re: Instapaper Subscriptions (beta)

#10

$1/mo to support one of my most used services is a no brainer. I hope others feel the same way - Marco is going indie and he's definitely getting my $1/mo to support his new full time business venture.

I honestly would have paid $5-$10/month for Instapaper. It is by far the most used app I have on my iPhone.

I wish Marco the best of luck, and can't wait to see what new features he comes up with.

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