Subscription Hell • Hacker News Board

Re: Subscription Hell

#181

Post by un-devmox » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #50

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…

One con of the pay per article is that it siphons money into the money making kinds of stories. The sports and celebrity pages can do a lot of funding for the slow grind investigations that are important for holding those in power accountable. It’s not like an a la carte model couldn’t also fund profitless journalism, but I think it might push things even more in that direction. I think they do understand what people…

There's no reason why a publication can't charge more for an in-depth piece. I'd gladly pay far more for a comprehensive exposé.

Re: Subscription Hell

#182

Post by makomk » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #120

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possibly the worst use of the term "pyramid scheme" I have ever seen used in print, and that's really saying something with how often it's abused nowadays.

Yet you left your entire argument up to our imagination. I explained why I find the description fitting. You could at least entertain us with why "future users pay for your upgrades" does not fit in the context of one-time-paid "perpetual license" software beyond disagreeing with the phrase I chose to name the predicament.

It seems to me that there's one very obvious difference: once software is created, creating more copies of it is almost free. The reason pyramid schemes collapse is that they require an exponentially increasing amount of new deposits to keep up with the payments owed to existing depositors, and that's just not how software publishing works. So long as there's a sufficient stream of customers buying, it doesn't cost much more to keep everyone up to date than it does just the new customers, and if there isn't then forcing repurchases won't necessarily fix that.

Re: Subscription Hell

#183

Post by weavie » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

FPGAhacker wrote: post #162

weavie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed they are going to come and go.

But, generally this will be to a much more predictable level that if you are relying on upfront sales. Unless you really mess up your product, if someone subscribed last month, you can generally predict that there is a, say, 95% chance that they will still be subscribed next month.

If it is a one off payment, then you know you aren't getting any income from them and you just have to hope your sale people are going to do their job next month.

It has nothing to do with lock in. That's a bit of a red herring. You can have just the same (or more) chance of a repeat subscriber by creating a really good product as you will with some kind of hostage strategy. As you say, not a winning business model.

My experience here comes from more business to business where a months worth of expenses would be covered with 1-2 sales. I had times when the sales people would just disappear on extended unannounced holidays or decide to move to a different job without informing anyone. With our business strategy relying so heavily on upfront sales to maintain the cash flow, it was not a fun position to be in!

Things may well be different with consumer products where sales volumes are in the thousands of units.

Re: Subscription Hell

#184

Post by lajhsdfkl » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

Sylos wrote: post #132

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing ads is unethical now? >Maybe if the service is only marginally profitable without acting unethically it should shut down. Also I love this neo puritan thinking. I'm sure all the users of these services agree with your ideology and you forcing it down their throats is for their own good correct?

No, tracking is unethical, which most ads rely on. And yes, it is for their own good to not have thousands of databases with their data littered across the internet. I know, this is not a very American way of thinking, but no one can be an expert at everything. Most people are not experts at computers and even less can grasp the outreach and effects of their data being everywhere. These people need help just as much…

>And yes, it is for their own good to not have thousands of databases with their data littered across the internet.

"With their data". Aka whether or not they liked a group pertaining to motorcycles or whether they searched for fishing rods on google. Yeah, we definitely need to shut off what is the most consumer friendly way of monetizing services in history so that a database of inane shit that is only relevant to marketers isn't tracked.

Re: Subscription Hell

#185

Post by crooked-v » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

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…

I feel like Ulysses wouldn't have gotten nearly so many complaints if (a) they'd given some way cross-apply the license purchase price to a subscription, instead of expecting recent purchasers to shell out a premium price a second time to get updates, and (b) they'd actually had any substantial feature updates to show for it, instead of almost all attention since then going to just making the iOS app act more like the desktop app.

Re: Subscription Hell

#186

Post by johnchristopher » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

> 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. That “quality” costs enormous sums in engineering and design talent, not to mention massively increasing bandwidth and storage costs.

Says who ?

In other news: stuff costs money.

Re: Subscription Hell

#187

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #177

“Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format.” Oh come on, NO I do not want that! One of the biggest problems with ads, news sites and other stuff is that almost any of these “experiences”, especially with video, are a drain on data plans and implemented terribly. Give me an article . If that article has some simple images…

Yes, this made me laugh as the first thing I did when I got to that page was was switch to Reader view.

Re: Subscription Hell

#188

Post by jhare » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

sturgill wrote: post #168

“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...

Came here to find this sentiment and am glad.

My bit to add: Since somewhere they can't be responsible for doing without a given service (have everything), someone is at fault! The developers! Of course, those lazy bastards.

Re: Subscription Hell

#189

Post by siidooloo » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #134

microtonal wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also surprising how much other subscriptions cost compared with Office 365. Office 365 contains the most complete office suite in existence, probably larger than many operating systems. It also includes 1TB of OneDrive, and free monthly Skype minutes. And the 99 Euros that you quote are for five persons. Most subscription software is a terrible deal in comparison. I have tried to avoid subscription software as…

There was some low hanging fruit for companies to create subscription plans who shouldn’t have been adding them. The more subscriptions your target customer has, the harder it is to convert them on the new one. For the business side the ceiling is a lot higher, but for consumers there is a very low limit. Each market is different, but when I look at an area like Photoshop or Illustrator, the competition keeps getting…

Its going to be a real problem for Adobe. Their biggest apps (PS/AI/IND) haven’t had real upgrade worthy updates in years. Competing apps like Affinity Photo are pretty much 1 to 1 replacements. Eventually some significant portion of Adobe’s core users are going to go elsewhere.

Re: Subscription Hell

#190

Post by sturgill » Sun, May 06, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

nixpulvis wrote: post #174

sturgill wrote: post #168

“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...

To me the issues isn't directly about price (though it's often a part of it), but more about the idea of paying for something continuously versus once. Almost a form of out of sight out of mind.

For me, those two points are inseparable. But I’ve also spent the last several years of my career focusing on maximizing profits within consumer subscribeables...

There are only so many ways to make money: ads, once off charges, term payments, and recurring charges. A consumer license to use vs physical ownership is incredibly interesting. Buying a Mario Brothers cartridge for the original Nintendo vs games delivered online. You could see a compelling case for the Nintendo Switch to offer a subscription service giving access to X games every month.

I don’t find either right or wrong. They just “are” so to speak.