Should the app be free forever?
Managing and running Notifications has its cost, I have to pay for bandwidth, the server, and work on it to make sure everything run smooth. The bottom line is: “should the iPhone app be free forever for you?” of course it’s not possible, and I would be stupid to think I could run this service forever with my customers having paid $2 once in a lifetime. I do understand how amazing it would be for you, but that would just not be a sustainable business.
Why not mentioning it in the appstore description? This application was kind of a test at the beginning (*), see if people like it, if the community (you) likes it, uses it, and talks about it. I also needed to see how many notifications you send yourself to figure out what to do, what numbers I should look at.
While it seems to now take off, I need you to tell me what you would prefer.
What I do want :
- fair price, I don’t want to feel ripped off as a buyer, I don’t want you to feel this way
- if you don’t use it (or uses it very little), you should not have to pay
- I don’t want you to feel you have to pay all the time, so no monthly fee.
So here is what I came up with. When you buy the application (I might raise its price a bit too, so be aware of that), you can use it for X months (X could be 3 or 6 months, I would prefer 6), and receive Y notifications (Y should be fairly high, I think of 10,000 notifications). 10,000 notifications means 50 notifications a day, for 6 months! Whatever reaches the limit first, triggers a “buy new credits” which gives you the same amount again. You can play again, with a 7 days thinking period while you still receive your notifications.
(*): when I say a test I don’t meant I was not committing to it, in fact I worked on this concept for months, since about April. But I did not know if Apple would have approved it, which would kill the project, or if the community would have bought it. Now I know :)
