I use Instapaper free and am happy with it. The ten article cap doesn't bother me because I clear my backlog quickly. I actually like choosing from ten articles, reading one, archiving it and seeing a new one pop into the menu. Free used to not save my place in the article and I almost upgraded for that, but then Free started to save my place and I didn't upgrade. I am vaguely aware of some other features Pro might offer, but ignorance is bliss...
Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
21–30 of 117 posts
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#22As an alternative viewpoint, his thinking seems incredibly shortsighted. When it comes time to launch "InstaAlbum, share your family photos", he is going to have 1/3 the potential audience to draw customers. 3x the existing customers could make the difference between the top of the charts and the press recognition that goes with it. Part of his rational is that some tiny percentage of the free customers complain, and…
...Marco should man up
If it gets under your skin and you are meeting your revenue expectations is there a good reason to invite haters to your party?
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#23"Maybe you think I can only do this because Instapaper is already popular. But it built its popularity while charging a lot for an iPhone app from the start." AND there was a free version out. He's neglecting the "critical mass" factor. The free version helped him sell the full version until it reached that "critical mass" that was required for the popularity of the full version to continue to drive sales of itself.…
AND there's a free website that drives people to know about the ipad version in the first place.
Interesting that for all the arguments about charging for the iphone/ipad versions, he's not charging for the website service itself (which presumably costs money to run too). Perhaps there's value in 'free' after all?
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#24As an alternative viewpoint, his thinking seems incredibly shortsighted. When it comes time to launch "InstaAlbum, share your family photos", he is going to have 1/3 the potential audience to draw customers. 3x the existing customers could make the difference between the top of the charts and the press recognition that goes with it. Part of his rational is that some tiny percentage of the free customers complain, and…
...Marco should man up If it gets under your skin and you are meeting your revenue expectations is there a good reason to invite haters to your party?
Yes, there is good reason. The haters bring 1000 normal people that you can sell your product to.
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#25I am sad about this since I was an Instapaper Free to Instapaper paid convert. In fact, I would never have used it if I hadn't used the free app. I know I'm in a minority of users, but I still think the free is useful. Having initially spent many months using my iPhone and not paying for any apps at all (only downloading free apps), I took my first step into paid apps with a cheap $0.99 app, and realized that for the…
And you'd be losing some very good customers if you removed the free app.
He's presented empirical evidence that he's not losing any, the exact opposite happens, he gains customers by not having a free app.
You've presented your gut feeling.
There might be something behind the 'critical mass' argument that some are saying, but that's impossible to test. Yours seems very wooly though.
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#26I'm one Android user who would definitely pay $5 for an official Instapaper app.
I have had no issues with InstaFetch and it serves the purpose pretty well.
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#27As an alternative viewpoint, his thinking seems incredibly shortsighted. When it comes time to launch "InstaAlbum, share your family photos", he is going to have 1/3 the potential audience to draw customers. 3x the existing customers could make the difference between the top of the charts and the press recognition that goes with it. Part of his rational is that some tiny percentage of the free customers complain, and…
...Marco should man up If it gets under your skin and you are meeting your revenue expectations is there a good reason to invite haters to your party?
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Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
...Marco should man up If it gets under your skin and you are meeting your revenue expectations is there a good reason to invite haters to your party?
Yes, there is good reason. The haters bring 1000 normal people that you can sell your product to.
Again, he seems happy with his revenue generation and he cuts down significantly on annoying chatter in his ear. Seems like a good decision. Some folks would talk about his "lifestyle business" and how he needs to change x and y, I'd say just keep on trucking.
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#29I totally get Marco's decision to go with a paid version of his app. Of course, he doesn't provide an option for publishers to opt out of providing free versions of their content, which is what they're doing when Instapaper strips all the ads off of them.
Re: Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
#30I am sad about this since I was an Instapaper Free to Instapaper paid convert. In fact, I would never have used it if I hadn't used the free app. I know I'm in a minority of users, but I still think the free is useful. Having initially spent many months using my iPhone and not paying for any apps at all (only downloading free apps), I took my first step into paid apps with a cheap $0.99 app, and realized that for the…
And you'd be losing some very good customers if you removed the free app. He's presented empirical evidence that he's not losing any, the exact opposite happens, he gains customers by not having a free app. You've presented your gut feeling. There might be something behind the 'critical mass' argument that some are saying, but that's impossible to test. Yours seems very wooly though.
That critical mass was likely there from Instapaper the web app. I went straight to paid since I was a fan of the service. I suspect there were many others