
How I killed app sales by going freemium - shuss
https://medium.com/@shuveb/how-i-killed-app-sales-by-going-freemium-31c04c60d2f2
======
scriptman
I think part of the problem with freemium is that it changes your perception
of where the value lies. The user discounts the value of the free component to
nothing and only measures the value of the additional functionality that is
unlocked with buying the premium portion. A lot of the time, this looks like a
ripoff.

The developer on the other hand tends to look at the value of the whole
application and prices the premium portion in consideration of this.

I'm not sure that I have a solution, except to say that the developer might be
more succesful to discount the value of the free portion to nothing as well
and only price the premium portion at a rate that considers the actual value
that it adds to the user experience. I think you have to consider the free
portion as a marketing expense.

~~~
abhishm
Yup. And the problem now is if its not free, your product is not going to get
ANY users. I really hope, everyone starts rolling back on freemium, because
its hurting everyone (except customers).

~~~
mhomde
I would argue that it hurts customers too, at least for some apps. If a
developer doesn't get constant revenue there'd be little incentive or
resources to update and maintain the app.

The customers are then stuck with an app that might have been good but decays
over time.

~~~
glesica
Until the next cool freemium app in that space comes out, then the customer
just switches to that one.

The real problem is that we just don't need 80 gazillion apps. The "app"
market is extremely competitive, that's really what people are complaining
about, profits have been driven down to basically nothing. Normally you would
expect some developers to drop out of the market, which would help the
situation, but two things are stopping that from happening, in my opinion.

First, the platform companies (Apple and Google) have been incredibly
successful at promoting app development as a gold mine. For every developer
who gets sick of it and moves on to something else, two people become "app
developers".

Second, there's a startup bubble and the wisdom out there says you need an app
or your startup is nothing. This partly relates to the first point, the hype
around "apps", even years after Apple launched the app store, is deafening.

~~~
rokhayakebe
App stores should try charging people $100/year after the first year an app is
in the store.

Or the reverse, pay $100 to pull your app from the store after its first year.

~~~
nostrademons
I believe Apple does do this - it's $99/year to become an Apple Developer, and
I think you need to be an Apple Developer to have an app in the app store.

~~~
clarky07
It is $99/year to have apps in the App Store, but it is per developer account
and not per app.

I almost think devs would be better off if it was per app. At least any devs
planning to make a living off the store. It would cut down on a lot of the
crappy spammy apps out there.

~~~
detaro
It would also kill the one-off hobby stuff with which many, especially teens,
get their taste for (app) development, which would be a high price to pay.
Without a secondary path to distribute apps I think it would be a bad idea.

------
andrepd
I don't think this is a fair comparison. You changed the business model from
v1 to v2, by moving from a one time payment for unlimited articles to a pay-
per-article approach.

A more suitable change would be to offer the app for free, with 10 free
articles and 1 per day, and offer a one time purchase of 1.99 to lift the
limits entirely, turning it into the equivalent of v1.

The way you did it is you changed it so that the act of sending an article
cost money, instead of paying a small one time fee and sending as many
articles as you wanted.

~~~
bad_user
As a user I wouldn't understand why each article costs money, therefore I
would feel ripped off.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
Based on the article, I understand exactly why it costs money - he has to pay
for the server that does the hard work.

That said, as a developer I don't understand why the server is involved at
all. Here's the relevant part of the article:

> The server would then fetch the article, format it, package it into a .mobi
> file the Kindle can deal with and send it to Amazon for delivery to the
> device.

I understand all this, I really do. What I don't understand is why the
computer that I'm holding in my hand when I ask for the article to be
converted, which is probably as powerful as the $20/mo Linode instance, can't
do this conversion itself.

Surely it can fetch the article, convert it, and pop up an Email sheet with
the attachment ready to go and the "to" address filled in. All it would
require is for me to tap the Send button and it would get emailed to my Kindle
without having the developer's server involved. This way if the developer
decides to discontinue the app and take down the server everyone who purchased
it isn't left out in the cold.

~~~
bad_user
A server easily handling hundreds of thousands of requests per day would cost
only $10 per month. And if you want to link the app price to server costs, a
monthly subscription would make more sense.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
True, though having the conversion logic built into the app would require no
server (costing $0 per month) and scale up to billions of installs without any
effort on the developer's part.

------
vbsteven
Your app is too niche for a freemium model. You Said yourself that the app
solves a very specific problem and it's the only app in the store that solves
that problem. I would suggest you switch back to up front payment but jack up
the price to the 5-10 dollar range.

I've seen my revenue triple when switching from 3.99 to 9.99 for a very niche
app that was almost without competition. And that was on Android where people
are even less likely to pay.

~~~
tjradcliffe
This was my analysis as well, although we both have the benefit of hindsight,
and everything is obvious once you know the answer. But it looks to me like
the following models are likely optimal:

1) App that solves a trivial problem, no viral potential, lots of competition:
free (or don't do it at all). Apps that fall into this category are things
like distance measurement, to-do lists, etc.

2) App that has viral potential but lots of competition: freemium (games fall
into this category)

3) Niche app that solves a hard problem for a small number of users: paid,
with the price as high as possible.

There is a fourth category, but it's illusory: app that solves a hard prolbem
for many users and has viral potential. If you're an individual dev, the odds
are in those areas you'll be facing competition from players with much deeper
pockets who are often giving apps away free to drive their core business.

This person's experience tends to validate this general analysis.

------
eridius
If you want to experiment with letting people try the app for free, you might
want to consider just using a single permanent IAP purchase of some higher-
than-$1.99 value (say, $4.99 or $9.99) that unlocks unlimited articles.
Without this purchase, you could limit them to something like 20 or 50
articles. Enough for them to get a feel for what the app is doing and decide
that it's worthwhile. The idea being that anyone that does send enough
articles to hit the limit would likely have decided it's useful enough to be
willing to pay the higher cost (which they may not have been willing to pay
upfront if you simply charged that much).

Or you could just go back to your original price, since that was working out.
It's hard to say which would do better.

~~~
jpasden
Exactly what I was thinking. "Credits" feel like a huge ripoff.

~~~
gedrap
The credits makes people think 'Is this article worth sending to my kindle? It
costs money to do so. Maybe I should just read it?', that adds loads of
friction and poor UX.

But the OP was experimenting, so I guess that's all good :)

------
mgiannopoulos
Previously the user paid 1.99$ for unlimited use, forever. Now you nickle and
dime users, forcing them to think about credits, what the value of the service
really is, etc.

~~~
obel1x
This got me thinking about something.

What's to stop an unscrupulous developer selling an app for, say, $1.99 with
the (implied) promise that the app will work forever and then, once people
have bought it, turning off the backend so it no longer works?

Is this illegal? Would Apple shut down the developer's account?

~~~
e12e
I think it would depend on the jurisdiction, and the "degree" of "implied
promise". Eg. in Norway there's pretty strong protection for (private) buyers.
On the other hand, proving fraud in the case of the company behind the app
simply declaring bankruptcy/shutting down would probably be pretty difficult.

I suppose a relevant study would be Microsoft Zune/music store, and/or
Yahoo(?) Music that shut down and killed the DRM servers, effectively removing
music people had "bought"?

~~~
Elepsis
I'm not sure why Zune keeps coming up as an example in these threads. It got
rebranded to Xbox Music, but all the servers are still up and anyone who
subscribed still has all their music.

An earlier Microsoft DRM that was used by a bunch of services (PlaysForSure)
was indeed shut down, but it's not the same thing as Zune.

~~~
e12e
Oh, I was thinking of the earlier one. I suppose it's often conflated with
Zune, because of the spectacular flop of the Zune devices/rebranding thing.

------
shawnreilly
I don't view freemium as a business model, I view it as a distribution model.
The distribution model changed from paid to free. This usually results in a
user base that grows faster but pays less. By making the app free you've set
an expectation of not having to pay. This attracts a certain type of customer,
which are usually much harder to convert. If you're trying to build traction
for investors this might not matter. If you are trying to monetize then this
does matter.

The business model changed from a one time purchase model to a micro payment
model. My recommendation would be to try a monthly payment model for v3. Let
the users pay to access the service (setting an expectation to pay for value)
but allow them to pay less than what you perceive to be the cost barrier (the
amount you believe is the maximum amount they would pay to give it a try). I'm
going to agree with others that you are priced too low. One of the best
lessons I've learned is that it's not what you think it's worth, it's what
your customer thinks it's worth.

------
CodeWriter23
I noticed a key metric was missing from your article. What was the average
number of transfers per day per user with the original version? The
explanation for the drop in sales could be as simple as most of the existing
users were doing 1-2 per day...

------
ddv
After averaging $5.00/day for a year with my iOS app using a freemium model
($1.99 in-app purchase), I decided to switch to a paid upfront model just to
test. It resulted in a sustained average of $25/day. That's a big deal to me
and so counter to everything I read about freemium being the only way to go in
today's mobile market.

~~~
tuna-piano
Out of curiosity, what is your app? I'm interested in seeing what kind of app
that would happen to.

------
bentoner
How I killed app sales by switching to metered pricing

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Which is more-or-less exactly the same as saying "freemium", 99% of the time.

~~~
nicky0
Not really. Many apps have a one-off "premium features" IAP. Certainly more
than 1%.

------
cageface
FWIW a while ago I decided to publish a free + IAP version of my iOS
photo/video effects app, which was previously a paid-only app. At first the
results were a bit disappointing but over time it's grown to generate about
three times the revenue of the paid app, and about 20 times the overall user
base. I'm sure it's true that freemium is not a panacea but it's worked for
me.

[http://plastaq.com/liquidlens/](http://plastaq.com/liquidlens/)

~~~
archagon
Hey, this is off-topic, but I'm working on an app that's in the same market as
yours. (MIDI-based DAW-ish thing with an emphasis on ease-of-use. I don't
think my app would be competing with any of yours.) If you're willing to share
your thoughts, how easy was it get the number of users for, say, Sythe as it
has now? Did you do any marketing? Was the relatively high price point ever a
problem? Are you considering freemium for that one, too?

I was hoping that I could mostly wing it and just make a nice video and send
out some review copies to people who might be interested. The music app market
seems small enough where this might be possible. But this is just me guessing,
and it would be great to hear from someone who's actually had some success in
the space.

Anyway, loving your design aesthetic! Will give Sythe a download as soon as I
charge up my phone.

(And, obviously, if this is information you're not willing to share, then no
hard feelings! Just thought I'd ask.)

~~~
cageface
To be honest, Scythe was a huge amount of work and brings in about half of the
revenue of my photo effects app, which took about 1/10th of the time to write.
Knowing what I know now I would never write another iPad app again, and I'm
not sure I'd write another serious music app. If I do decide to write any more
music software I'll target the VST plugin market, where people are still
willing to pay $99+ for a good instrument. It's a shame because I think the
iPad has tremendous potential as a platform for music making but it seems like
the volume just isn't there to make up for the low price points users expect
for iOS apps.

One thing I would do differently if I started from scratch on Scythe today
though is make the base app free and make up the difference with IAP preset
packs and additional features.

~~~
archagon
Thank you for your insight! It's too bad Scythe isn't as lucrative as you
hoped... seems like it's hard to get serious software noticed in the App Store
over free, bite-sized entertainment apps. Incidentally, my app is targeting
the iPad as well, but I don't really mind the business reprecussions: I'm
writing it for my own personal use above all else, and I wanted to give my
trusty old iPad 3 something useful to do instead of just serving as a very
expensive web browser. I was thinking of going Lite/Pro, but perhaps freemium
might be better after all; I just really don't philosophically like the idea
of charging for individual features, especailly when they're part of the MIDI
standard already. (But that's just business, I guess.)

There's been a lot of talk recently about the iPad languishing, and it seems
that Apple is taking notice. Would not surprise me if they made more of a
marketing push towards promoting iPad apps in the coming years, especially
with the possible arrival of the iPad Pro.[1][2]

Crazy that the VST market can be so lucrative! It makes me happy that some
people are still willing to pay a fair price for their "workhorse" software.

[1]: [http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/08/apple-ipad-
grammys/](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/08/apple-ipad-grammys/)

[2]: [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/31/apple-expands-start-
some...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/31/apple-expands-start-something-
new-campaign/)

~~~
cageface
The VST market isn't really lucrative. I have it on good authority that most
plugins sell at most 200 copies. Music software is also very challenging to
write because it combines multi-threading with soft-realtime requirements. So
any programmer good enough to write non-trivial music software can easily make
more money with fewer headaches writing almost any other kind of app. So I'd
say the only good reason to write music software really is just for the
enjoyment of doing it.

As for myself, as much as I enjoy writing music software I enjoy making music
more and it seems like I only really have the mental energy for one or the
other.

------
corobo
As someone who would like this sort of app there's no way in a month of
Sundays I'd be willing to pay for each article after the first

This sort of thing is a one off purchase (if my device does the work) or fixed
monthly fee (if your servers do the work)

~~~
btdollar
This seems more fair. But it is weird, because thinking about it, isn't buying
N units of work the most fair pricing scheme? I didn't have the same gut
reaction to Amazon's Lambda service.

Perhaps it is that we know the article limit isn't related to any real-world
costs that make the difference.

~~~
corobo
It's fair but the worry comes in with what happens if I run out of units of
work and send a new article. Does it reject the article and I miss out? Does
it charge as and when I send an article[1]? Do I get charged extra for
unexpected usage?

If I have to ponder any one of these questions I'd just switch to a different
app, there's a fair few that provide this functionality

[1] In this case the main worry is what if I accidentally somehow send every
tab I have open to this service through a bug or something? Do I pay or does
the app maker take one for the team?

------
jonahx
Great article and I love the experiment, but as the author himself points out
this isn't apples to apples.

What you really want to see is a freemium version where you get:

1\. 3 _total_ articles for free 2\. A 1.99 in-app purchase that gives you
infinitely more articles.

The current free limits are high enough to support the majority of casual
readers.

------
kriro
I have never read up on app business models but intuitively I'd say in app
purchases create unneeded extra friction. Additionally if you pay up front you
have a sense of ownership.

My guess is that I'd only use freemium when network effects matter. The app
described in the article doesn't rely on network effects at all but it's nice
to see my gut instinct corroborated experimentally.

I'd be interested in seeing this repeated for Android because I'd suspect iOS
users are generally more likely to buy stuff.

------
bonobo3000
This comes up in advertising all the time - you can increase how many
impressions an ad gets easily by just showing it more but the conversion rate
depends entirely on the kind of user, match between user & ad than anything
else.

In this case, the people who paid for the app self-selected themselves by the
act of paying, but the barrier to install the free version is much lower than
that.

~~~
scriptman
I agree, it's a really complex interaction.

You have to consider: 1\. The number of users that would never pay for your
app, but are happy to download it for free. 2\. The number of users that would
never pay for your app without trying the free part first. 3\. The number of
users that would pay for your app without trying it for free.

You then have to consider the amount of revenue you lose from Type 3 to
support Types 1 and 2. Hopefully you come out ahead, but you may not.

------
kalleboo
Are there any good examples of successful Freemium apps that sell additional
functionality (rather than games or consumables like the article)? The only
major examples that come to mind to me are photo apps that sell filter packs.
Are there any apps that lock down their major functionality as demoware or
upgrades? (like say, "add iCloud support for $2")

~~~
scrollaway
Maybe an abberration but Cyanogenmod's ClockworkMod comes to mind. They
provide it for free but the auto updates are paywalled.

------
gambiting
I can only guess it's because he was faaar too generous with the credits. One
article per day? I send maybe one-two per week. Maybe a better solution would
be to give each user 5 credits total, and then they would have to pay to keep
sending articles(I would do it as an unlock thing, rather than selling them
more credits though).

~~~
dgoldstein0
yeah... definitely. Cut back on the free offering, and make it "pay to use"
for anyone who ends up using it anything resembling daily.

Also probably worth making it a subscription ($1/month?) instead of credit-
based - subscriptions can give dependable revenue, and users wouldn't feel
nickle'd and dime'd.

Anyhow, the simple lesson here is that freemium isn't a magic bullet -
probably takes some time to figure out the right place to put the paywall to
get growth / usage via free users, and revenue from not giving everything away
for free.

------
mhomde
I'm launching an app in a couple of weeks and I'm really worried about the
revenue model. It's an app that acts to an client to an other service and
they'll probably start charging for the API in the near future.

I felt like I had a few choices seeing as I'm foolishly doing this full time
and need some kind of revenue:

1) Free + Ads

2) Free + Freemium for "pro-features"

3) One-time fee

4) Subscription fee

I have a distaste for ads so I really didn't want to go down that road.

I don't like freemium because looking at "pro features" and valuing them based
on them alone it seldom seems worth it. Also keeping useful features away from
non-paying customers seems lose-lose.

I could go with a one time fee but then I won't be able to support it over
time and the API fee's will eat away any revenue, no matter how small, over
time.

So I've decided to launch with a subscription yearly fee (through a in-app
purchase). From all examples I've seen of changing revenue model to
subscription model _after_ you've launched it seems almost impossible without
the mob getting out their pitchforks. It also seems more honest to have the
subscription carry over than launching a separate new app that you have to buy
for future OS versions.

Still, mentally users aren't really used to paying subscriptions for an app so
it remains to be seen if its successful. Also since most people don't pay for
this service itself already there's another mental barrier.

Actually if the app wasn't dependent on a service I'd rather see you'd own the
app and subscribe to updates, it seems like a much better model since you
never lose "ownership" even if you don't pay, but unfortunately app stores
don't support that model.

I think my app is better than the competitors but will people choose a
competitor because of the subscription model? It will be interesting to see.

~~~
kh_hk
Funnily enough, I am just on the opposite side.

I've a free API that allows people to build clients for mobile apps (some are
free, some are one time fee, etc) and the costs of running this free API are
starting to worry me.

~~~
gscott
I ran a free system and while it is small it easy but as soon as you get tens
of thousands of users you are on the hook for all of the background costs
while your userbase grows exponentially because they are so happy. Better to
have 10 customers then 10,000 free users. I was never able to get free people
to pay anything. I bragged about my free users and I felt self-important while
taking away my ability to use my time more wisely.

~~~
tim333
I've noticed online services which probably cost a few cents per user to run
seem to either charge $0 or something like $10/month which works out quite a
lot. I wonder if there is a gap for charging say 3x actual costs which might
be say $5/year or $10 for 5 years or some such?

------
sebastianconcpt
1.0 is rewarding use and 2.0 is addig friction to use. For this app to
demonstrate value you should be able to freely use. The "buy credits" to do
this niche action feels like is not worth.

I will risk to say that there is a Cognitive Load inbalance. Fremium induces
people to track the economics behind the usage of the freemium app. If the
problem it solves is less painful than the Cognitive Load of tracking its
fremiumnality, then why bother?

It would be interesting to do tests about models without "risking the 1.0s"

------
SalesHelp
Would love some insight and helpful advice on sales.

We have a product that is ready for paying customers and we have a landing
page (only) that is to collect sign ups. We get 100 sign ups a week & up to
15% of those express interest in being customers, but once we get to talking
... after a few emails these talks taper off and even a follow up email leads
nowhere.

We have had talks with small parties no one has heard to huge Fortune 50 to
500 companies (this week a VP from Lowes started talks, previous Black &
Decker, Motorola, Samsung, Beats, etc).

It seems most people want to use our unique WEB technology for free, though
once we put it on the web these potential customers may just show their true
motives of wanting to know how we accomplished X and copy it.

Thus, I've been thinking of doing a freemium model myself where users can use
part of the product that is not our secret sauce yet have to pay X amount of
money to add our secret sauce into the product for their specified use.

What do you think is a better sales channel then we have it now and or does my
next sales channel idea sound solid?

------
opinali
Freemium is almost always a scam, remarkably for games where it degenerates
into "pay-to-win". As a parent of two young tablet users, I'll happily pay a
decent price for any game they want, but I won't allow them to spend even a
single cent in in-game crap.

~~~
DanBC
It's kind of scary the number of games aimed at children that have IAPs of
£69, and parents sometimes don't know enough to prevent their children
spending hundreds of pounds on IAPs.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/mar/13/s...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/mar/13/stop-
children-spending-money-in-ipad-games)

~~~
opinali
I wish we'd crack down on this kind of abuse, but it's an arms race, and at
some point hard to distinguish objectively. There's no solution without some
parental responsibility... many parents are just too lazy, the hand a device
to their kids and hope for the best. Parenting takes some effort; my
children's devices have parental control apps (I use and recommend
ScreenTime), as for purchases of any kind they have to ask me to put my
password every single time because I don't check the "remember" checkbox, it's
not terribly hard.

------
EGreg
Freemium allows you to have more users and more chances to sell.

With a paid app, the same users would have to make a decision to buy based on
just a picture, description and reviews.

Many freemium apps work really well by selling in-app currency. The most
effective ones, sadly, were games that made it increasingly difficult to
progress without spending said currency, making people addicted and choosing
to spend money instead of time, which they valued more after a certain point.

Angry Birds found out two years ago just how much freemium beats the pants off
them.

Look up pricing tricks online. One is when people see a too-low price that
looks out of place next to the others. They think they caught a good
opportunity.

------
TimPC
Freemium could potentially work here with better calibration. I suspect some
of the things that might be important for you users:

1) Unlimited usage or unlimited usage per month -> Managing credits is an
annoying experience for when I just want to share an article: I'll have faster
ways if the actual transaction is a hassle. Paying once and forgetting about
it adds a lot of value. This could work with your original paid model or with
a freemium model that includes an unlimited tier.

2) Better analytics to calibrate the use cases: How many articles were people
using. Did you have a way to detect how many of the articles were actually
being read? I suspect that 1/day might be a very high free tier if people are
switching to a mindset of: is this worth being my 1 article a day? Or
converting the cost of a paid article and asking "do I want to pay X for
sharing this to my kindle?"

Other have made the point that a key aspect of freemium is viral growth. Do
you have any social sharing features that people would want to use -> Could
you share an article to Kindle and/or Facebook + Twitter? Could you get shares
of your app in exchange for additional article shares to kindle?

If freemium was the right model it might end up at something like:

10 Initial Free shares 1 share/week free 3 shares/week free to device if also
shared to a social network A Paid credits/usage tier A Paid Unlimited/time
tier (monthly or weekly unlimited use pricing?) And Possibly a paid outright
unlimited tier.

You'd want to measure and track analytics on how you get users. Something like
web bounce links through your own analytics package on the way to the app
store.

Here you actually have an interesting tradeoff: You get less money per user
which you hope to balance out by driving down CAC through large amounts of
organic growth.

The purpose of freemium is seldom a try before you buy value proposition that
makes sense for the company, it's the ability to generate viral growth even
out of users who never spend money. If the app won't get substantial viral
growth then freemium is almost always wrong.

------
timeuser
I think the biggest issue is you switched to using credits. That and you've
only let this play out for 20 days. People can take quite a while to evaluate
an app and decide to purchase. You have more experimenting to do. A one-time
upgrade fee for unlimited or a yearly subscription seem like a better fit for
how a user would expect to pay for this type of app than credits. At the very
least perhaps add an "expensive" unlimited use option and I bet you get some
purchases of that.

------
rythie
Products with ongoing pricing turn out very expensive in the end. A product
that is $10/month will often workout more than one that it is $100 upfront. I
prefer iOS apps that you either pay or upfront or, even better, a one-time fee
to upgrade. I don't have to worry about ongoing costs then. I'm reminded of
ongoing costs everytime I get a statement or receipt, and then I look for
alternatives or look to cancel.

------
orasis
Fremium only works with high retention apps. The goal with a high retention
app is growth, not revenue. You want people to use it a lot, tell their
friends and they use it a lot. If you can hit 4%+ week-over-week growth then
this is a good candidate for fermium.

Anything that has low retention should be charging up front.

------
bigtunacan
This bit really hits the nail on the head, "One thing freemium compensates for
is the lack of a free trial system in the App Store."

There is no reason the app store should not allow developers to offer free
trials. This is the one thing that Microsoft got right with the failed Windows
phone.

~~~
clarky07
IAP does pretty much the same thing. I understand we wanted trials 6 years
ago, but I personally feel like this is a solved problem.

------
jakobegger
If people have a specific problem, and your app solves that problem, you don't
need a trial. Just tell people in the description that you solve their
problem, and they will buy it.

Free trials are only necessary when you want to sell solutions to problems
that people don't know they have.

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pcl
It'd be interesting to see what the retention numbers were like for those
initial v1 users, and how many people use the free version on an ongoing
basis. It could be that people stop usin the app after the first week or so
anyways.

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chebum
Freemium isn’t the only option to allow people try the app before buying it.
There are free trials that allows to use the app for several days and then
asking to pay the full price to continue using it.

~~~
SiVal
I think Apple would likely reject such a design as being a "demo" version,
which is explicitly forbidden--unfortunately.

~~~
chrisan
Has apple ever given a reason why they dont allow demo/trial apps?

A time limited trial seems like the perfect fit for productivity apps, not
sure entertainment based apps would want this model. You have a day/week/month
to use the app in its entirety, if after the trial you value the product you
purchase it, otherwise it no longer works.

~~~
nicky0
I don't think they ever gave a reason. Personally I like how it has forced
developers to come up with more creative product offerings than time limited
demos. While convenient for developers, time limited demos suck as a user
experience IMO. The whole "trial expired! buy now!" experience is very
grating.

~~~
btdollar
I am fairly certain the "trial expired" experience is exactly the reason.
They're also trying to make a commodity out of software and having an app
store half full of trial versions doesn't help them with that goal.

------
bobgod
Penis

------
bobgod
Penis.

------
paulhauggis
The startup world has pretty much destroyed future chances of making a living
from an application. Sure, the top 10 apps in the apple store might be making
good money, but most apps that charge $1.99 will most likely not pay a living
wage to the people that created it.

The same thing happened to the music industry. The total amount of revenue has
dropped 10 fold since 1999. I know a few independent artists and they can't
really make a living on just music anymore. They need to sell t-shirts or have
a day job. So in the end, free music and file sharing has decreased the
overall cost of music, but it really only hurt the small and independent
artists.

Even look at things like Spotify. 1,000,000 plays nets an artists something
like $100.

It has forced many artists to go with large labels because the large labels
will take all of the risk and actually pay them some sort of a living while
they are touring.

Software is going the same way. With all of the open source out there (and
more coming out every day), it has allowed companies to hire software
mechanics for pennies instead of software engineers for a living wage. Why?
Because all of the parts that need to be engineered are given out for free.
Development now in most businesses is mashing frameworks and libraries
together. It really doesn't take a computer science education to get the job
done.

Business owners are also becoming more tech savvy as the older generation
retires.

I've never seen so many smart communities of people put themselves out of a
job so quickly.

To me, apps are just an interfaces to a paid service, not the actual service
itself. So, I might have a service that you pay X amount of money to use and
the app is something free that is thrown in as a benefit.

~~~
quasiuna
Totally agree with your comments about the music industry, however I don't
think the same applies to software development.

If many businesses can now get by with "mashing frameworks and libraries
together" then that is a good thing - it means problems have been solved in a
repeatable way that many people can benefit from, and the real software
engineers, rather than doing the same old work over again can refocus on new
challenges and create the frameworks and libraries of tomorrow.

Is that really a bad thing? The only people putting themselves out of a job
are people trying to earn a living working on problems that were solved a long
time ago.

Suggesting there are fewer jobs now for software engineers than any time in
the past is a bit of a stretch!

