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Subscription Hell

techcrunch.com

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Re: Subscription Hell

#161

Post by beberlei »

rgbrenner wrote: post #149
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

About Ulysses specifically... they say when they were charging a monthly fee their users still expected regular updates after they paid.. and that sales would spike after a release, then fall to an unsustainable level: https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching-ulyss... "that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the software" That's just an unfounded assumption by the author. He sa…

well, that is economics 101. consumers price goods by value, not by costs. if your costs are higher than consumers are willing to pay, then you will at some point go bankrupt.

Re: Subscription Hell

#162

Post by FPGAhacker »

weavie wrote: post #105
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

From the developers perspective though it is way easier to run a business when your software is sold on a subscription basis. If you know to a decent level of accuracy how much income you have, you can easily work out how much you can afford to spend to keep running and growing the business. If you have no idea how much income you are going to make, stuff become a hell of a lot more complicated, unless you have a sub…

I get this, but how much more predictable are subscriptions? I mean, unless you are holding customers hostage with data lock-in, they are going to come and go.

And if you get a reputation as a hostage holder, you will likely spawn competition that avoids your negatives.

I’m sure you will get some residual low hanging fruit in the form of people that buy subscriptions and don’t care enough to cancel.

Doesn’t seem like a winning business model though.

Re: Subscription Hell

#163

Post by zerostar07 »

whatever1 wrote: post #9
scarface74 wrote: post #2

You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you deal with intrusive ads.

Was Bloomberg making $35 from ads from my 3 visits to their site per month? If not why do they ask me now for $35?

I think they idea is that they expect only a small percentage to pay the subscriptions. The rest may get one or two free articles a month, which for them counts as a lure to attract new customers.

Re: Subscription Hell

#164

Post by tdurden »

$35 a month for Bloomberg is an insane amount to ask - even if they cut that number by 90%, it is still very debatable if the content is worth the price.

Re: Subscription Hell

#165

Post by zerostar07 »

Semirhage wrote: post #3
scarface74 wrote: post #2

You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you deal with intrusive ads.

The irony of saying that on a popular site that does neither of those things should be lost on no one.

that wouldn't be the case if YC wasn't paying for it.

Re: Subscription Hell

#166

Post by usrusr »

open-source-ux wrote: post #135
3pt14159 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle ground doesn't work. See MS Windows update hell. The way things should work is like this: Subscription for when you want to use the software and open format data files that you're always easily able to export and download. If a company goes out of business or does something stupid then another one will pop up to handle your needs. This aligns incentives correctly while still allows a healthy dose of compet…

> The middle ground doesn't work The "middle ground" has been the most common model for desktop app pricing for decades. You buy version X of a product. When the next major version is released you pay an upgrade price. In fact, the "middle ground" has been the norm for the majority of software apps over the history of desktop computing. It's the SaaS subscription model for cloud-hosted software that is the new deviat…

> The "middle ground" has been the most common model for desktop app pricing for decades. You buy version X of a product. When the next major version is released you pay an upgrade price.

Mobile app stores killed that model, when they made continuous, perpetual updates the norm. At the time, everybody was too busy pointing out the implications of going from 50$ to 50ct when the even bigger change was a farewell to major version upgrade sales.

But there, after a few cycles of companies ruining themselves by hiring in the short-lived money surge of growing an app to saturation, parts of the industry seem to have found their way to quite reasonably priced subscriptions.

Re: Subscription Hell

#167

Post by fuball63 »

gkya wrote: post #154

> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence that, given the same content,…

This struck me as an interesting statement too. Especially with "thin" versions of site surfacing, for example thin.npr.org, it seems like people are more accepting of the trade of loading gifs and high Def images for speed.

Re: Subscription Hell

#168

Post by sturgill »

“You’ve found market price when buyers complain but still pay.”

Subscription revenue is great business. And the optimization of price to maximize profits is a set of fun math problems.

It sounds to me like the author doesn’t love how much he spends on things but isn’t willing to do without. Also known as optimal pricing...

Re: Subscription Hell

#169

Post by AndrewKemendo »

techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

There really isn't a better way to run a business (even if it's just a single app) than to get someone to pay you an amount on a fixed interval. It's predictable and generally weathers shocks pretty evenly. This is also why for most investors dividends are a big selling point - consistency.

Even Apple somewhat relies on this, except it's been in 2 year intervals. It's the point of so called "planned obsolescence."

So if you're an indie developer, you only have a few options.

1.Go through the rat trap of doing ads and trying to grow a huge userbase with marketing etc..., which everyone hates but most tolerate because it's free.

2. Charge a 1 time fee and hope that you price it right to support long term development and sustainment, knowing that you'll probably limit your market significantly.

3. Charge a recurring low(er) fee and draw a balance between losing a lot of very price sensitive people and having to run a marketing campaign and ad system.

No good option there but subscription seems to have the most benefits. By the way, everything needs upkeep.

Re: Subscription Hell

#170

Post by brockwhittaker »

tlrobinson wrote: post #111

Not to be that “just add blockchain” guy, but this would be a great usecase for permissionless cryptocurrency micropayments, e.x. Lightning Network. Create an open protocol, build it into browsers, let content sites ask you to pay $0.01 (or whatever) to view an article. Maybe you could set your browser to automatically pay for the first N articles or M dollars per site per day. Or maybe a site could offer an unlimite…

Blockchain isn’t necessary. You can have a debit account system and change cents per article without the high friction cost of making people buy some cryptocurrency.
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