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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

old.reddit.com

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#71

Post by jdminhbg »

infofarmer wrote: post #61
jdminhbg wrote: post #31

> Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. I just don't understand why developers underprice their apps so much. You're talking about an app that people are constantly raving about, and that people use for multiple hours per day. Charge $5/mo…

You also don't understand how 95% of the world or 80% of HN lives. $5/month is a very significant expense.

That's fine. If you can't or don't want to pay, you can look at Reddit's ads. I do not use Reddit very much, so it's not worth $5/month to me. But why would I expect to get a third-party ad-free client for free?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#72

Post by sebzim4500 »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #53
jdminhbg wrote: post #31

> Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. I just don't understand why developers underprice their apps so much. You're talking about an app that people are constantly raving about, and that people use for multiple hours per day. Charge $5/mo…

well the problem with mobile apps is the alternatives are free. It's a bad business and why I didn't take my passion for mobile apps as a career.

The reddit ones won't be though, unless they scrape instead of use the api. I doubt that's viable for a consumer app though, Reddit will probably break your app constantly.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#73

Post by Alupis »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #67
jdminhbg wrote: post #31

> Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. I just don't understand why developers underprice their apps so much. You're talking about an app that people are constantly raving about, and that people use for multiple hours per day. Charge $5/mo…

What percent of the app's current customer base do you think would stick around at paying $5 a month to browse r/funny on the phone?

Who cares? It doesn't matter one bit. OP built a profitable business off free API access. That is the mistake here... assuming it would always be free.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#74

Post by RhodesianHunter »

granshaw wrote: post #57
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has seemed rudderless for a long time. Their ads platform is damned near useless compared to their competitors. It's a wonder they have any revenue at all. Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate.

Far from it. They have great recent user growth and everybody is appending “Reddit” to the end of their google searches in the quest for non-gamed search results

I didn't say anything about user growth. I said their ads platform is trash, which is evident to anyone who has attempted to use it.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#75

Post by Rebelgecko »

egberts1 wrote: post #27

have you seen the latest Reddit app for iOS/macOS and its data privacy: there is zero privacy. This is why I am sticking with the web-based Old Reddit. Any further strangulation and it's "hasta la vista, Reddit".

Presumably that's why they've been making old reddit worse over time before they turn it off (kinda like i.reddit.com)

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#76

Post by nightpool »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #13

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

You cannot just "change the APIs" to inject ads—ads require a lot of external verifiable measurement and have specific requirements over display and placement that third-party apps can't provide. Injecting ads into existing third-party apps would mean putting specific requirements for measurement SDKs (binary third-party code from trusted adstech vendors) and developing a lot of new APIs for reporting that that third-party developers would have to implement

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#77

Post by NelsonMinar »

APIs should not be revenue generators! I don't mind companies charging for an API, either to cover the costs of service or to encourage efficient behavior. But Twitter and now Reddit seem more like they are rent seeking with their APIs and it's just not going to work out well. Particularly galling since they're effectively charging to access all this content that users generated for free.

The other explanation is these charges are intended to kill third party uses of the API. I'm pretty sure that's what is mostly motivating Twitter (down to the weed joke price).

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#79

Post by rvz »

Unsurprising as that was inevitable and Reddit needs to make money. Unless you can afford the high prices, don't build your whole business solely on someone else's API. Twitter made that clear and now so did Reddit.

Like I said before in [0]

"Either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you purchase a high price for it."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087219

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#80

Post by raydev »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #13

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

> If they want more ads, they can change the APIs to inject them.

Reddit wants freedom to arbitrarily change the design of their app and placement of ads, etc. Ads are a huge (primary?) source of revenue for them.

If they are tethered to supporting third party clients, it's harder to make reasonable estimates of how many captive users will see ads or new features.

Reddit could enforce ad presentation in third party clients, but to appease advertisers Reddit has to make guarantees around visibility. It's not enough to check if third parties are calling the correct API, they will actually need to regularly audit all third party clients.

It really isn't worth the time or effort if you can just charge third parties the cost to cover loss of ad views.

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