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Charge more for app subscriptions

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Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#91

Post by sudhirj »

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…

Yup, I need that too. Will add it in.

The Euro zone is reported as a single economic zone in the index (it's published by the Economist). I'm not sure if the prices are actually exactly the same, but from an economic reference point of view, they ought to be. I'm sure there are differences in the prices within each city that McD operates in as well... the currency prices are probably an average.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#92

Post by Semaphor »

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…

> According to your site, a Big Mac in the EU is €4.21 (is it really the same across all EU countries?)

Just googled prices for Germany: Apparently it’s €5.29 here.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#94

Post by dkersten »

cercatrova wrote: post #13
input_sh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world where people have a decent disposable income, those arguments might be true. In the real world, it's not that "people don't want to pay anything", it's that people have a small amount of money to throw at things for a marginally better experience. I sure like keyboard-driven apps, but I'm never going to pay as much as I pay for my entire Internet package for any online service. Hell, all of them I p…

Yes, it seems your comment is reinforcing my point. Consumers like you don't want to pay $30 and that's fine, you are not their target audience. You may like keyboard-driven apps but you don't like them enough to pay $30, so in terms of microeconomics, you don't believe you'll get as much value from the tool as you'd spend. Again, that is fine, because the company should only target customers who do realize your prod…

I’ve backed people on patreon and never accessed the rewards. I’ve bought humble bundles that I never played the games or read the books. I have, on occasion, bought apps just because I liked the idea and wanted to support the developers. I sponsor people on GitHub whose projects I like but don’t actually use.

Not everyone is aiming to pay $0 for everything. Some of us like to support things we like our values even if we never actually use them ourselves.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#95

Post by dave_sid »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56
seanwilson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the goal is "never leave money on the table", your strategies will be very different than if you goal is "raise enough income to do something you want to do". The pay-what-you-say-you-can approach is problematic when you want to "raise enough" when you can't rely on people to be truthful about what a fair price is though. I can easily imagine this killing a niche app that's not making thousands of sales.

I choose to trust people. Partly because I've seen how corrosive not trusting people frequently ends up.

Not being funny, but if you trust people, why don’t you offer a free option also?

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#96

Post by jay_kyburz »

valuearb wrote: post #23

The higher revenues for onetime purchase show the weakness of subscriptions vs the old upgrade model, and I wish Apple would understand it. Subscriptions carry the fear of paying for something you won’t be using, or being nickel and dimed for years on end. Upgrades are a much simpler purchase decision. Am I using the app? Is it offering a good value? Does the upgrade provide new features I want or need at a reasonabl…

What does Apple need to understand? I don't believe there are any rules about publishing MyApp2.0 and then heavy advertising it in your previous versions.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#97

Post by dkersten »

dvcrn wrote: post #65
esperent wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last couple of years, my income has gone up a lot, from "barely scraping by, >50% of my income spent on rent" to "comfortable, can make any small purchases I like without worrying". This has led to a huge change in my attitude to buying things like app, books, games, movies. If it's a small company/author who cares about their product/book etc. and charges a reasonable amount, I want to pay for what I'm usin…

I am with you on that. I buy apps if they provide value to me. If it has a one-time purchase option next to a subscription, even if it is $30 - $50, I pick the one-time purchase. If it's a journaling app, a calendar app, a habit tracker or a drawing app and it wants me to pay monthly, it's a hard 'no' for me as well unless it has a cloud component that I feel justifies the price. There is mostly nothing in it that ju…

Subscriptions also add cognitive load. If I pay upfront and later stop using the app, oh well. If I pay a subscription and stop using the app, I have to remember to unsubscribe.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#98

Post by jwr »

Pricing subscriptions higher has more side effects:

* you get users who care more about your app * you get users who will not place irrational demands ("I paid $0.99 for your app, now implement this feature or I want my money back!") * you get to focus on features that matter and long-term development, without having to implement shiny cruft just so that a "major version number upgrade" is justified * you have a sustainable business

I've reached a point where I am worried if an app I use regularly does not have a subscription model with reasonable pricing. Experience shows that this means that sooner or later the authors will lose interest and abandon the app, or go overly broad with features. I've seen this happen so many times that I'm actually wary of even starting to use new apps at this point.

As for the "but it's too expensive" problem, well, perhaps you don't need all those apps after all? There aren't that many apps that I use regularly and I'd much rather limit the selection and then pay for those that I use and need.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#99

Post by dkersten »

egypturnash wrote: post #8

Man I dunno, for the sector they're in, folks are pretty likely to already be paying for a subscription to the Adobe suite, and honestly I think the whole "subscription" thing is gonna strangle Adobe in the future when there's a generation of artists who grew up using other tools that were buy once, use until upgrading something else breaks it, and/or were easier to pirate. Also I have a piece of hardware I bought fr…

Some time ago I wanted to do something in photoshop and the old ”a few times a year” task. So I looked for alternatives and found Affinity Photo. Now I doubt that I will ever pay for photoshop.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#100

Post by HatchedLake721 »

semireg wrote: post #78

I’m an indie dev that wrote a useful Electron app for designing and printing labels (both rolls and sheets), data import, rendering batches of images, etc. My competition is either free (DYMO/Brother) or $500 commercial software for expensive printers. So how do I price? For a year I had my price at $47.99 one-time and did OK. A month ago I segmented my licenses/users into Personal (same price of $47.99) and Business…

Now test removing one time price for businesses and keep monthly pricing.
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