Maybe sell a code-like template of your app with a short tutorial for devs? If your own app trickled off on the market, its direct value is marginal now and clones will not hurt much while you get money from sharing knowledge & tricks.
Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#22I wouldn't recommend Patreon or anything similar in your situation. Basically you need to compare your app income to the additional work it takes to keep customers happy and buying. And at some point you might just as well open source it and move on...
It seems as if Donations don't work for most Open Source projects. Even when they do, it's often almost a B2B like relationship.
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and it took him 2 years as the developer of one of the biggest JS frameworks with thousands of users to reach that level. And even then, over 80% of his Patreon comes from 3 backers at 2000/mo and 18 backers at 500/mo. I assume those are all companies. The revenue he has from individual users is peanuts.
I hope Patreon doesn’t take a percentage out of that..
Why wouldn't they...? Shouldn't they be compensated for the service they provide?
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#24I have a free social network app that makes $122/month on Patreon[0] (from 43 patrons). Userbase is about 3.4k with ~200 DAU. I offer in-app recognition and the ability to vote monthly on what features I work on. I won't be quitting my job, but it's nice to not have to pay for servers and marketing out of pocket. 0: https://www.patreon.com/pindigo
Thanks for sharing real world numbers. And congrats, sounds like you have a success on your hands (not every project needs to be a home run, and like you said, it's great to have it be a source of income rather than a drain).
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and it took him 2 years as the developer of one of the biggest JS frameworks with thousands of users to reach that level. And even then, over 80% of his Patreon comes from 3 backers at 2000/mo and 18 backers at 500/mo. I assume those are all companies. The revenue he has from individual users is peanuts.
I hope Patreon doesn’t take a percentage out of that..
Patreon take 5%, as I understand it.
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#26Ads in desktop software are dead. Also, just think of the amount of serious, transient eyeball traffic you'd need which sounds like an unlikely demographic for a Mac app. Especially if you think these same people would be interested in your Patreon. You'd basically have to burn all goodwill to make a few pennies off them. The only reason ads make a little money on mobile is because of the lack of adblocker penetratio…
> Donations aren't a source of income. Though I encourage you to try a tip jar like Patreon just to see how vanishingly impossible it is. While I agree wholeheartedly with what you said, I still wonder about if Patreon might be a reasonable way to charge for services. There are at least a few people making a living off of Patreon. Of course, I've not really heard of anyone scaling it beyond that. It's possible to mak…
It's 5% on top of payment processor fees (which vary according to the number and size of the donations).
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#27If you're trying to make a living from the app (I don't think the post is too clear), I found my only success with a unity plugin was to release it for cheap/free to build users and charge for new features at freelance rates.
People who REALLY need features are businesses or projects who have money and usually a deadline.
At one point I was making maybe 1k/month from sales and 3k in feature inplementations. (Helps that I also freelance so not a big jump in terms of my day to day flow) Not crazy, but I was also freelancing at the same time.
The real time drag is supporting the free users. The people paying for features and using the plugin commercially were a lot more competent.
TLDR: build free reputation & word of mouth, then go B2B. Obviously depends on the target audience
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#28If you move to a Patreon model, it seems like what you will be selling is more of a dev blog / newszine centered around a tool, rather than the actual tool.
If you are good at writing and teaching, maybe that is a good direction to move.
> I’d rather just give everybody all the features, and let people who want to financially support me do that. I don’t know how the economics would compare, though.
Have you thought about the sublime text model? Give people unlimited evaluation period with occasional nagging.
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#29Derek Banas produces high quality educational videos[1] and he is not able to meet a modest goal of $500 per month on Patreon[2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwRXb5dUK4cvsHbx-rGzSgw
[2] https://www.patreon.com/derekbanas
This is just one data point but seems like when people have an option of not to pay, they won't pay.
Re: Ask HN: Paid app to free and Patreon?
#30Derek Banas produces high quality educational videos[1] and he is not able to meet a modest goal of $500 per month on Patreon[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwRXb5dUK4cvsHbx-rGzSgw [2] https://www.patreon.com/derekbanas This is just one data point but seems like when people have an option of not to pay, they won't pay.
Meanwhile, CGP Grey gets $19k+ every time he posts a video (though that's become pretty rare!)
https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey
(Edit: I should note that I'm sure that Patreon has the same sort of long tail that everything else does... unless one is doing something unique and notable and gets discovered, Patreon is likely to produce little revenue, just like other revenue sources)