I agree 100%. The key thing is that the monthly subscription should be cheap. That way it really does work for everyone - the user does not end up paying very much over a lifetime and they are getting value for it. And I think in most cases the subscriptions are cheap enough because those that aren't get no business. Of course there are rip-offs out there, and there's nothing wrong with them existing, but just don't subscribe to them.

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RugnirViking 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

this. I would happily pay subscriptions if they reflected an app's value to my daily life. The unfortunate truth many many app developers would immediately find out is that their sun tracking app or sprit level app or game I play on the train twice a year or whatever is worth approximately 10 cents a month if they're lucky.

It's far too common for me to download something ive never used before and for it to ask me to cough up 10 dollars a month. Thats what I pay for netflix or youtube or whatever, things I use for hours each week!

I suppose theyre trying to target some mythical user that checks the sun position every morning and evening obsessively or some nonsense, as though their strategy should be to capture the entirety of the value a top 1% poweruser gets from their software. No! it's expected that a top 1% poweruser will get a lot of value, if you design your monetization for them, they'll be humming and hawing and comparison shopping, and nobody else will ever even entertain the idea of paying. And then you'll get half of 1% of your addressable market.

But of course, the entire reason it really exists is to profit off people who forget about the subscription. This is clear to see when looking into the financials of it, or the number of people paying for things they havent used in a year. This also affects incentives!

Finally, the neccasary structure around the apps means for the most part, if a company goes bankrupt, decides its not worth mantaining, or plain gets bored, you lose access to the thing.

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dabluck 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The cheaper it is then the more people you need to sustain it. If there are only a small number of obsessives who want the sun tracking app, and the sun tracking app is really great and serving their needs, it should probably be more expensive not less. If the sun tracking obsessives want it to exist, they have to pay for it, because nobody else cares.

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RugnirViking an hour ago | parent [-]

no, they really don't. if the sun tracking app didn't exist, I or some other enterprising fellow could make it, and release it for free. It's at best a series of calculations, or just taking data directly from some api.

Just because a business model can be made around something, does not mean a business model needs to exist to sustain that thing

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dabluck an hour ago | parent [-]

That's totally fine, if you want to work on the sun tracking app in your free time and release it, I encourage it. But there's a lot of weird obsessive niches and I don't think you're going to make all of them, so the people who want weird things to exist should probably fund their obsessive niches. Of course, if you aren't interested in that niche, you shouldn't feel any obligation to use it or pay for it.

	▲	RugnirViking an hour ago \| parent [-]
		as I mentioned in my initial comment, I believe that a great many products are priced wrongly compared to the market. There may be some where it makes sense to go after power users (say, a train simulator game). I believe many more are common things most people will end up wanting at some point, just once or twice a year for a few seconds.

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Lucent an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For some reason the floor price is $5 a month when given the complexity of the app and the benefit to my life, the price should be between a few cents and a dollar at the high end.

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fusslo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

also friction-less

I am so burnt out of making accounts. verifying my email. entering 2fa. re-logging in. entering cc info. getting spammed with marketing email.