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Charge more for app subscriptions

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Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#141

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

leoedin wrote: post #139
fbelzile wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My trick for international pricing was to copy Microsoft. Minecraft in the US sells for $26.99 USD [0] Minecraft in the UK sells for £22.49 GBP [1] or about $29.60 USD (+9.22%) Minecraft in Mexico sells for $479.00 MXN [2] or about $22.18 USD (-19.56%) Surely, if it's good enough for Microsoft, it's good enough for a company of one. The Big Mac index, while provides similar results, is a bit too disconnected from the…

That price is not really based on mass market affordability though. The UK GDP per capita is $43k USD and the US is $63K USD. The average salary in the UK is $38k/year and the average salary in the US is $63k. By all measures the UK is a significantly less wealthy country. Perhaps Microsoft choose their pricing based on other measures.

"average" is a particularly weak measurement of almost anything. As is often noted when walks into a bar, on average everyone in the bar is a millionare.

You can't make a direct comparison of "wealth" by looking at salaries. You have to take into account purchasing power parity, for a start. But then you also have to find a way to include the somewhat non-linear results of tax rates and services provided by those taxes.

For example, the typical US family of 4 spends $23k a year more on healthcare than the equivalent family in France.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#142

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

vosper wrote: post #86
sudhirj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a tool to calculate product or service prices for different parts of the world based on the Big Mac Index (the price of a local mcdonalds lunch burger). That method makes more sense to me because all your customers have a similar point of reference. McD is thought of as a premium product in some very poor areas, but on the whole they aim for mass market affordability, which makes it a fair comparison. https:/…

This is cool. I think it would be helpful if the input was in terms of units of currency, rather than Big Macs. Like: I want to charge €10 a month for my product in the EU. Use the Big Mac pricing model to tell me what that is in Brazil. According to your site, a Big Mac in the EU is €4.21 (is it really the same across all EU countries?) which means €1 buys you 0.237 burgers. €10 is therefore 2.37 burgers. At the cur…

The statistic you're looking for is called "purchasing power parity" or PPP.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#143

Post by vosper »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #142
vosper wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool. I think it would be helpful if the input was in terms of units of currency, rather than Big Macs. Like: I want to charge €10 a month for my product in the EU. Use the Big Mac pricing model to tell me what that is in Brazil. According to your site, a Big Mac in the EU is €4.21 (is it really the same across all EU countries?) which means €1 buys you 0.237 burgers. €10 is therefore 2.37 burgers. At the cur…

The statistic you're looking for is called "purchasing power parity" or PPP.

Thanks, I've long since forgotten most of my Econ courses from uni :)

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#144

Post by Kaze404 »

zepto wrote: post #64
Kaze404 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people don't use your product if they don't have the pressure of sunken cost, then maybe they're not really benefitting either way.

The whole point of subscriptions is that they aren’t sunken cost.

For people with disposable income, sure. For the people parent is talking about, they definitely are.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#145

Post by dwighttk »

GordonS wrote: post #138
dwighttk wrote: post #35

> The first thing you’ll notice is that people are much more willing to make a one-time purchase. This X 100 I would rather pay you $50 with a major update every year that costs $50 than $50/yr subscription. Because if the resubscription comes up and things are a little tight I lose access to the app. Or if I don’t use the app I don’t have to worry about accidentally autoresubscribing

For desktop software, and mobile apps without a backend, I agree. For everything with a backend though, I just don't see how it's a sustainable business model to allow customers to keep using the backend in perpetuity. Of course, a lot of consumers know knowing about the tech that's involved, so as a software engineer I have a different perspective here.

sure, but don't tie in a backend if it isn't required (e.g. adobe) sell it as a separate service.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#146

Post by srg0 »

There is a problem with in-app subscriptions which is rarely brought up -

- apple/google cut. OK for a $2 purchase. Not OK for recurrent payments. If it is indeed a valuable service, it should have a web site. More often than not online subscriptions will be priced more competitively. See Babbel subscriptions in app and online.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#147

Post by Shared404 »

zepto wrote: post #133
Shared404 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I subscribe to something for a month, and then feel compelled to use it that month instead of some better tool because I paid for it, I would say that's a sunken cost. A time limited one, but still there.

Technically true, but seems like an exotic case, and proves the point that sunk cost isn’t a substantial issue here.

>Seems like an exotic case,

I've worked with enough people who used adobe because "I've already payed for this month, so I have to use this" that I'm not sure it's that exotic.

And while sunk cost may not be a huge issue, it's definitely still there.

I'm not going to make any sort of comment on anything else in this thread, because I don't really know what I'm talking about.

However, I don't see how it's possible for someone to derive more benefit from an app overall by paying a higher subscription.

Your subscribers might correlate better with people who are benefiting, but for an individual, either they [Pay less and have the same amount of possible benefit] or [Pay more and have the same amount of possible benefit]. How does it work out that they get better value from the second option?

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#148

Post by edpichler »

sudhirj wrote: post #77
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

This analysis is very US/Euro-centric. Bumping the price from US$20 to US$100 might indeed allow you to focus more on your most dedicated customers . It also bumps the price way above anything that billions of people around the world can pay for such a thing. At Ardour, we have 3 subscription price levels: Regular: US$10/month Low Cost: US$4/month Developing World: US$1/month We leave it to users to decide which cate…

I wrote a tool to calculate product or service prices for different parts of the world based on the Big Mac Index (the price of a local mcdonalds lunch burger). That method makes more sense to me because all your customers have a similar point of reference. McD is thought of as a premium product in some very poor areas, but on the whole they aim for mass market affordability, which makes it a fair comparison. https:/…

Just an information so may you do not rely too much on the Mac index.

The Mac is expensive in my country, for instance, just because of crazy tax rules. It's fancy to eat on Mac Donalds here. It does not tell us about purchasing power in any way. I wish it would be that simple.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#149

Post by egypturnash »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #88
crooked-v wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Affinity line of apps are also pretty great, and have (I think) full feature parity across desktop and iPad.

Affinity Designer not having DXF / DWG import export ... Is preventing me from using it in a professional capacity. I purchased Affinity Designer without checking for the feature, and people have been asking for the feature for at least 5 years . Edit to add the forum link I forgot to paste in: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6756-dxf-o...

I think a lack of support for spot colors was one of my sticking points, personally. That and 20+ years of Illustrator work to pull resources out of to make new images faster, and multi-year projects meticulously built to maximize re-use and speed, and honestly that's the killer feature for me at this point unless Adobe completely falls apart.

Not that Illustrator lacks its share of long-running requests, "rotate the view" has been near the top of their publicly-voted bug/feature request site ever since they opened it, and would be "picked up shortly" back in 2017. https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-...

(And I know I was asking for it years before they abandoned the old "here's a hole to put your bugs and feature requests into" setup.)

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