

There's Value in Charging - jarederondu
http://blog.jarederondu.com/there-is-value-in-charging

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arohner
Absolutely true. The other big reason to charge is you'll get dramatically
more honest feedback from users about what to improve. Feedback on a free
SaaS: "oh, that's nice". Feedback on a site costing $20/month: "I won't buy
till you fix X,Y,Z".

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Xcelerate
I agree. The problem is that the things I would pay for -- no one else would.
I'm the type of person who would rather pay extra for television with no
commercials at all. (I actually don't watch TV, but that's just an example).

One thing I'm wondering is: what if Instagram had charged $0.99 for their app?
Would it be where it is now? I would certainly pay, but I'm not sure everyone
else would. Or even Youtube. Would Youtube have succeeded if they charged for
access?

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MJR
_The problem is that the things I would pay for -- no one else would._

This is just not true. People value and will pay for lots of things that
others think have no value and won't pay for. In most cases, you are not your
audience.

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mrwilliamchang
I think the case you are making is a little exaggerated. It is not impossible
to judge whether something you created is any good or not, without charging
for it. The feedback that Joe is getting in the app store is not entirely
worthless.

Additionally customers who are not willing to pay aren't necessarily "better"
customers. For example in the case of Twitter verus App.net. I'm guessing the
people who are willing to pay for App.net are a very selective group of geeky
tech nerds. (I'm one of those people.) Listening to those people will lead you
to develop a version of Twitter that appeals to them. If you want to develop a
version of Twitter that appeals to normal people, charging money will attract
the wrong crowd.

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noinput
Agree wholeheartedly. As my first attempt at iOS I built an iPad app for
Tumblr. It was an experiment, and fun, and of course I put it up for free
since I played the "I just don't know if it's worth it" game, teamed with a
"well, I don't want pissed off comments" dance.

Fast forward over a year. 120K downloads and 1.6m+ app-based reblogs later, I
still have daily feature requests, hate/love mail, a horrible set of reviews
and no inspiration to build it up to be worth a few dollars. Of course my
situation is only mine and one can say "now's the perfect time", but that's
another debate.

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jarederondu
Thoughts?

