
Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation - rufo
http://www.marco.org/2011/04/28/removed-instapaper-free
======
dpcan
"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.

I've personally found that by just offering a paid version of an app from the
beginning is quite frustrating. But once I put out a free limited version,
sales took off. So, MAYBE I'll try losing some of my free versions to see what
happens, but I think that free-to-paid actually works just as well.

~~~
mgkimsal
AND there's a free website that drives people to know about the ipad version
in the first place.

~~~
mgkimsal
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?

------
patio11
I second, third, and fourth the notion about pathological customers. iOS is
practically training a generation of them. I'm glad they are far away from me.

~~~
JonLim
Many of my friends own iPhones, and many are flabbergasted when they find out
that my phone is not jailbroken nor is it filled with free apps.

I happily pay for quality apps. Why? It's going to cost me anywhere from $1 to
$10, and that is honestly chump change for an app that will provide much more
in value.

For some reason, if you give away your work for free, all of the cheapskates
and losers come out and start insulting the service and/or claiming they
didn't get enough support.

What do people expect when they don't pay for a valuable app...?

~~~
Xuzz
As someone who works on software for jailbroken phones, I just want to make it
clear that jailbreaking and piracy are _not_ the same thing.

Yes, jailbreaking makes piracy possible, but Cydia has multiple warnings about
adding the repositories required for piracy. In fact, our best statistics show
less than half of all the jailbroken devices have pirated an app.

I agree with your points, but I don't want people to misunderstand the point
of jailbreaking: jailbreaking is about controlling your own device and doing
things the App Store doesn't even conceptually allow.

~~~
lukifer
You seem like you might be a good person to ask: I love the idea of
jailbreaking all my devices (I did so on my 1G iPhone as soon as it was
possible). However, modern-day Cydia scares the bejeezus out of me. I have no
easy way to discern what's reliable, let alone trustworthy, and I wish I could
know what's getting installed under the hood, especially regarding background
processes and changes to the underlying OS.

Can you give me some tips on how to discern quality and safety in Cydia
packages, or are these things simply endemic to the jailbroken app ecosystem?

~~~
thematt
I don't think quality and safety are concerns unique to Cydia. Why does it
scare you to use it? Do you really have any way of knowing what "genuine" apps
downloaded from the appstore are doing?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/10/04/iphone-apps-
transmit-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/10/04/iphone-apps-transmit-
phone-id-numbers-study-finds/)

~~~
lukifer
To some extent, there are privacy and trust issues in both places. But I have
a bit more confidence in Apple's ability to police their store, and more
importantly, official apps are sandboxed and can't touch the filesystem or OS
directly.

But honestly, I'm more concerned with quality than trust. I think that
malicious apps are probably very rare on Cydia; I'm more concerned with
background processes that eat battery life, changes to the underlying OS which
make the phone unreliable, buggy code with unintended side effects, etc. I
don't think this is the norm, but I have very little information with which to
separate the gems from the junk.

On a computer, installing apps with no restrictions is the norm, and so there
are countless forms of social proof to discover which apps are safe and
reliable. I'm looking for something equivalent for Cydia packages, as well as
detailed manifests of what is installed and running with each install.
(Perhaps I should just stick to paid packages, where the author has higher
incentive to maintain quality.)

------
corin_
There's some incorrect logic in there to point out.

 _"The math to explain this is simple: most Free users won’t give me anywhere
near $3.50 worth of ad impressions."_

So, a free user is less valuable than a paid user, fair enough. But not 100%
of people who would use the free version will buy the paid version.

As he said in the second paragraph, _"it’s hard to say which portion of the
increase, if any, is attributable to Free’s absence"_

While I'm not saying this is for sure, it is a possibility that, while one
user with adverts gives him less money than one user who pays, cutting off all
the free users could lose more money in advertising than it generates in
sales.

~~~
macrael
But as he points out there are other costs to be taken into account. The
amount of ad revenue can't be directly weighed against the money generated by
sales. You also need to consider the development costs of maintaining the lite
version, deciding what should be a universal feature, etc.

~~~
corin_
Sure, I'm not arguing for/against removing the free version, just with the
logic of comparing the advertising revenue per person with the cost of the
paid version.

------
maukdaddy
Excellent analysis and line of thinking. The tech community really needs to
give up the idea that hard work should be given away for free. Trail periods
are fine, but legitimate businesses need real cash flow, and very, very few
can survive off advertising alone.

~~~
jamesbritt
_The tech community really needs to give up the idea that hard work should be
given away for free._

Does "[t]he tech community" even have that belief to begin with? The techies I
know, both OSS contributor and not, believe that there is value in giving away
some things (e.g., open sourcing projects) but proper and expected to charge
for other things.

While people may not agree on what exactly should be free I've met no one who
flatly claims hard work should be given away for free.

~~~
jarek
The web appears to, but it actually follows the OTA television model (with all
the implications). The Apple-led smartphone world is in an odd large-scale-B2C
place right now that is looking increasingly unsustainable.

------
jrockway
How does he know nobody will buy the Android app? I barely use any free apps
other than the ones that come with Cyanogen Mod.

Titanium Backup? Paid. ROM Manager? Paid. Treking? Paid. Android IRC? Paid.
X-Plane? Paid.

Android users have no problems paying for apps. Non-Android developers are
afraid of the unknown.

~~~
xinsight
I ported an iOS app to Android. I've sold three (!!) copies while in that same
period, the iOS version has sold about 300. I dropped the price from $5 down
to $2 over easter and still didn't sell a single copy during the sale.

The two apps have the same content and the sales funnel is exactly the same.
(The only difference is the iOS app has lots of 5-star reviews.) It seems
clear to me that Android users can't or won't pay for certain kinds of apps.

~~~
dkarl
To all app developers, please don't give up on Android. If your market is
educated middle class folks -- i.e., if you don't sell games and fart apps --
then give us a chance to start showing up in the Android market. Most of us
bought iPhones back when they were clearly superior, and we are unwilling to
throw away a couple-hundred-dollar piece of electronics that works perfectly
fine. The new line of Android phones look great. I'll certainly be there in
less than two years, maybe less than a year depending on how long my phone
lasts. At that point all my spending will move to the Android market. I'm not
a huge purchaser of apps -- I've probably spent somewhere between $50 and $100
on apps -- but I did buy Instapaper!

~~~
dkarl
Okay, what bias did I run into here? Not everyone who is excited about Android
is going to immediately shell out a few hundred bucks when they already have
an iPhone. For me, that's enough money that I think about how to spend it, and
new gadgets usually lose out to other priorities. Does that make me a bad nerd
or something?

~~~
xinsight
I'd also like to see Android thrive (mainly to keep Apple from behaving badly)
and you make a good point that Android is steadily moving into the mainstream.
But it will be a challenge for Google to shake the impression that Android
users are reluctant to buy apps.

btw, another post from marco that shows his skepticism towards Android:
<http://www.marco.org/2011/04/02/time-bombs>

------
karterk
This post reminds me of a post by Jacques Mattheij about an experiment he did
by doubling the price of his app:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+(and+no,+Im+not...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+\(and+no,+Im+not+kidding\))

These two articles definitely make a case for experimenting with the pricing
based on your market and target audience to find the sweet spot.

------
dk
I've been using the free Instapaper iPhone app for some time, until it just
completely stopped working. Trying to update, it would tell me that there was
no network connection. Uh, wrong. Over and over. Eventually I logged out,
wiped the local cache, and tried logging in fresh. And what did I get? A blank
page with "403" at the top.

My impression of the app at this point was that either the developer is a fuck
up or that I've been geo-locked out because I'm not in the U.S. Actually the
second implies the first. I didn't care, I just stopped using Instapaper.

On the basis of this post, I took a leap of faith. Despite a complete failure
of user experience with the free app, I bet $5 that maybe the paid app would,
well, work. And so far it has.

Marco, if you're listening, you make some great points in this post, but your
upselling in my experience is... as described.

------
jcampbell1
As 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 write negative reviews. Marco should man up and simply accept he
has a good product and is a talented developer. That way he doesn't have to
give a damn about the haters. It is sad that the %.1 of the population that is
inherently bitchy, is driving his business decisions.

~~~
bradshaw1965
...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?

~~~
jcampbell1
Yes, there is good reason. The haters bring 1000 normal people that you can
sell your product to.

~~~
bradshaw1965
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.

------
michaeldhopkins
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...

------
goforth
I think Readitlater (and lately Readability) strips down the content much
better than Instapaper. Instapaper always has a lot of weird extraneous stuff
around the text. The others do not. +1 for them.

~~~
TetOn
In fairness, it's worth noting that Readability app _is_ Instapaper; it's just
been repackaged. <http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/instapaper-readability/>

~~~
goforth
Not true. Read it again -- the partnership is different. Readability was
stripping away stuff long before it's partnership with Instapaper, and Safari
incorporated it long before said partnership.

------
modernerd
Instapaper has little need for a free app because it's so unique; there are
few paid alternatives, let alone free ones. If you're building something less
extraordinary, offering a free app with an in-app upgrade path makes more
sense.

The free-to-pro transition seems to work better with a single app using in app
purchases (to remove ads and unlock features) than with two separate apps.

It's possible to structure the experience in a free app to make the upgrade
more compelling too. Thermo and Astronut (both for iPhone) are two examples
that handle it well in different ways: Astronut (game) presents an upgrade
option when you reach the end of the first stage; Thermo (temperature widget)
shows an ad at the bottom with a tempting X button -- when you tap that,
you're prompted to upgrade.

------
jfruh
I 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.

~~~
hullo
He actually does:

<http://www.instapaper.com/publishers>

~~~
haribilalic
He also does through Readability (<http://www.readability.com/>). He's an
advisor to Readability, Readability's iOS apps are based on the Instapaper iOS
apps and Instapaper can be linked with Readability to provide Instapaper
activity to Readability so that publishers can be paid.
<http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service>

------
gcv
Great article. I particularly liked the points about filtering out undesirable
and unprofitable customers. Some clients really are just wrong, and far more
trouble than their business is worth.

------
ilamont
I recently bought the paid app, based on the recommendations of a friend and
the number of positive reviews in the app store, but am quite disappointed in
what I got in return for my $4.99. I won't turn this into a review of the
functionality or criticize the developer for wanting to increase sales, but I
will say that buyers should have a way to vet the product before purchasing it
(there was no free option when I purchased it).

------
rubergly

      Not only did sales increase incrementally, but nobody seemed to notice.
    

What does this mean? This "nobody even noticed!" attitude he expresses several
times seems _very_ ignorant to me. Sure, very few people heard that Instapaper
had a free iPhone app, didn't look for it right away, then a month later
searched for it, saw it wasn't in the App Store, and emailed or tweeted Marco
personally asking what happened. This is the only chain of events I can see
leading to a potential user giving Marco direct feedback, the lack of which is
what he seemed to interpret as "nobody noticed."

If you change a bunch of road signs, but everyone from the neighborhood is on
vacation and so no one sees the new configuration and exclaims "What is
this?!", does that suddenly mean that new drivers won't act differently in
response to the new road sign configurations? Note that assuming that somehow
"everyone from the neighborhood is on vacation" is _not at all_ an unrealistic
assumption to make. People who had already downloaded the free app were golden
when he removed it, so long as they didn't wipe their iPhone or upgrade. You
could argue that maybe they would've thought "huh, why haven't I gotten
updates in a while?" First of all, I doubt anyone thinks like that. I know I
certainly don't think about updates until the App Store tells me I have 10 and
I get frustrated at it; I only notice when apps require updates, not when they
don't require updates. Second of all, they may have just thought the free app
would be getting less updates than the paid one.

And there are countless other reasons why "no one has personally emailed me
about the absence of this" is a terrible reason to conclude "nobody really
cared" and especially (what I think he is implicitly getting at) "no potential
future buyers of the paid app were turned off by the absence of a free app."
Maybe they only cared a little and got bored once they couldn't find it in the
app store, but otherwise would've been engaged by the app or (since he
acknowledges that there are few converts) have been interested enough to tell
friends who would eventually pay for it. Maybe, and this is _crazy_ to
propose, a significant number of geeks went looking for the free app having
heard a lot about Instapaper, saw there was no free app, were pissed, but
didn't know or think or care to email Marco about it; maybe they thought he
did it purposefully and didn't want to bug him, maybe they were intimidated,
maybe they didn't know who Marco was, etc.

------
rakingleaves
I'm one Android user who would definitely pay $5 for an official Instapaper
app.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Why? Read It Later is a great, overlooked service that does the same thing.
It's also well designed. And it's cross platform.

~~~
rakingleaves
Thanks for the tip. Just gave it a try, and it looks great so far.

------
rkudeshi
Perhaps the free app might've converted better if Marco had added an in-app
purchase to upgrade to the full version.

~~~
r00fus
Or perhaps not. I've spent hundreds on apps, and have yet to spend a single
dollar in IAP.

Horses for courses... it all depends on what type of market your app caters
to.

~~~
logic
Agreed. I've upgraded from a free version to paid from within an app
(MobileRSS) before, but I'm not an average iOS user.

I think marco's point about the free version creating a "bad neighborhood"
around his paid app really nails it. If you're not generating appreciable
traction from the free version, but are starting to develop a negative image
and generating significant headaches as a result of it, it's probably a smart
move to suspend the free version.

------
hrktb
I have a lot of respect for all the hard work, especialy since I am hooked to
Instapaper like services, and getting rid of the free version might be a good
move I think. Now, he seems to have such a policy of ignoring his competition
in his talks.

I would guess one reason he doesn't hear complaints about the loss of the free
version is because ReadItLater and others have a free app to catch these
users. He talks a lot about the cheapstakes that wouldn't upgrade, but the
free version couldn't get me to register when I tried it. When it worked
afterwards, it was so stripped down it wasn't funny.

In contrast the decision to buy the ReaditLater (same priced at the time) pro
version was natural, and I kept the free version on devices I didn't care to
sync.

At least, he is totally right, after using the Instapaper free version, I am
bitching a lot.

------
rumblestrut
I had tried the free iPhone app and could never get the thing to accept my
credentials. So, I gave up and didn't give it much thought.

But then I kept hearing about how great Instapaper was. I didn't get it. My
experience with the free app was bad so I didn't know what I was doing wrong.
Instead of writing a terrible review of the free one, I went ahead and
purchased the paid app.

And now I'm hooked. I find Instapaper to be incredibly useful and love its
simplicity. I then turned it on in my Twitter client, expanding my use even
more.

The free app is a detriment to Instapaper rather than an asset. Marco is
likely better off sticking with a great product customers are willing to pay
for who end up loving the service, than having a mediocre app that doesn't
build up a fan base that translates to paying customers.

Keep up the great work Marco!

------
xinsight
Thoughtful approach on app pricing and customer selection.

The point that resonated with recent experiences was this one:

"How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are
unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything? (This is also a major reason
why I have no plans to enter the Android market.)"

~~~
gordonbowman
agreed, that point stood out to me too.

also his note about not needing _every_ iOS-device owner. And his footnote
illustrates just how huge the iOS market is:

"If “only” 1% of current iOS-device owners bought Instapaper, I’d make about
$5 million. I’d love to have 1% of the market"

------
jranck
I applaud the fact that a developer can charge for his time and effort into
building a good product. While I love hearing about these success stories,
lets not forget the fact that all applications are different. There is an
inherit and perceived value for everything and it's all dependent on the
audience. The ROI per user is different for everyone, what works for you may
not work for someone else. Marco's audience is made up of mostly tech savvy
individuals where the implied value is greater than the cost of the service.
This isn't the exception to the rule but it isn't the typical audience that a
lot of startups are trying to capture. Every audience and product is different
and take inspiration with a grain of salt. With that being said nice work
Marco.

------
fragmede
> On the website, this cost is defrayed by ads from The Deck, but people using
> the iOS app might never visit the website.

That's theoretically true, but how true is it? What percentage of people who
have used the iOS app have also logged in via a desktop web browser? How many
people have _only_ logged in via a desktop web browser.

A look at the web server statistics would prove quite fruitful - it would tell
the author where to spend development time. Do most of the active users have
an iOS device? Do they ever use the mobile safari 'read later' bookmarklet?
Spend time getting iOS push to push new articles to the app vs. time improving
other things; but only if the data justifies it.

------
alanfalcon
It's like a reverse of the iShoot story that caused everyone to run out and
make free lite versions of their apps several years ago. Different market
(productivity Vs. game, early app store Vs. current app store) but it's still
interesting.

------
prestia
If it weren't for Apple's pricing restrictions, I would love to see a free
version of Instapaper that is "unlocked" to a full-featured version if the
linked account is a paid subscriber. (For those that don't know, Instapaper
also utilizes a subscription model: <http://www.instapaper.com/subscription>)

I happily pay the quarterly subscription fee and would love a full-featured
application to go along with it. That said, I no longer own an iOS device.

------
alexknight
I don't think the App Store is necessarily fostering a new generation of
entitlement minded people. I think those people have and will always exist no
matter what. IMHO I always prefer paying for apps, and I never complain about
the prices that are in the App Store. I prefer to support the hard work that
goes into the quality apps that I use. I also don't feel it's fair or right
for me to complain about a product when it's provided for free. I think Marco
made an excellent decision.

------
volandovengo
Yes - he fails to note that the reason that most people learned about
instapaper is because he offers a free version of it. I love instapaper but
haven't contemplated paying for it because the differences between the free
and paid versions are relatively minimal.

Freemium has a lot of perks, the chief one being - getting the word out about
the product. How many people would know about dropbox if they didn't offer a
free version?

------
thibaut_barrere
These days I really prefer to pay a service or an app, hopefully to give it
some sustainable fuel, rather than invest in a free tool that doesn't allow
the author to pay its bills.

------
ameyamk
I love instapaper, but I really really want search built for it...

~~~
rubergly
The latest version of the iOS app has search. Pull down when in a list of
articles, and a search bar comes up.

------
napierzaza
I like his arguments since they are logical and backed up with data. But at
the same time I never would have bought the app if I didn't use "free" for
several weeks and got the idea it was useful.

This is after reading about Instapaper everywhere and hearing from close
friends that it's almost the main reason they even have an iPhone (which was
probably an overstatement on their part).

Edit: Can we please stop the tired argument of "you paid 600$+ for the device,
what difference is 5.00$..."?

It's like people who pay 6000$ for a HDTV don't mind paying 100$ for the HDMI
cable. Some people do indeed do that, but I for one determine the value of an
app or accessory based on the sunken costs of the device. I value a HDMI
cable's value at about 5-10$ because that is the cost of a quality one from
Monoprice.

~~~
tomg
> But at the same time I never would have bought the app if I didn't use
> "free" for several weeks and got the idea it was useful.

There's a middle ground between only having a Paid app and giving a way a full
featured, Free, ad-supported version. For example, you can create a Trial
version that stops working after a certain amount of time. If you're making a
game, you can only have the first few levels in the Free version. If your app
creates content, then you can make a Free version that works exactly as the
Paid version but does not allow for saving the users work. [I'm assuming these
tactics are not forbidden by some EULA or whatever.]

Anyway you get the idea: there are alternatives that let the user see if they
think your software is worth buying that don't involve giving the entire thing
away and hoping to get enough ad impressions / conversions to make it worth
while. Why so many iOS developers go this route instead of the above and just
give away their app with some low eCPM ads is beyond me, though I've only
dabbled in iOS development so maybe that's just what works for people :)

~~~
joegester
The time-limited demo idea is forbidden by Apple's TOS.

~~~
zheng
Does anyone know why? That seems fairly petty and arbitrary.

~~~
tjogin
I'd assume it's got something to do with user satisfaction. Users hate when
things are taken away from them.

------
unwantedLetters
I 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 small price, it made my app (and
phone) experience a whole lot better. After that, I was always willing to
spend money on apps (even if it was just for experimentation) and Instapaper
became one of the first apps I bought.

I don't know if this is an unusual thing, but I've noticed a lot of my friends
act in a similar manner. After paying for that first app, they are very
willing to pay for more. And you'd be losing some very good customers if you
removed the free app.

I suppose I understand Marco's decision even after all this, I'm still unhappy
that we might see it go.

~~~
mattmanser
_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.

~~~
bbgm
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

~~~
achompas
Instapaper fan here. Used the web app like crazy, wanted to support Marco so I
bought the $5 app. No regrets.

