I thought I'd bring this to Hacker News because I know that many users on this platform build apps or market apps for a living.
My journey in the world of apps came after a career selling WordPress themes. I was tentative to launch my app, but when I finally did, the response blew my mind, the reason? The pricing. It was a pay what you want app!
So many users enjoyed the app, so I thought I'd release a new version, and this time I'd add cloud syncing, better features, a new interface, and... a recurring pricing model.
I was happy with this decision, so in May I launched the app to my 15,000 strong email database and to Product Hunt. It went relatively well, but as the months went on the over-arching feedback was... users are growing tired of the subscription model.
Dang!
I knew I had to make a switch, but changing your pricing is difficult, I was already working on some cool new features. So I thought I'd just take the dive, and update my pricing at the same time.
I settled on a once-off $19.
Well, a few days into it and I'm pretty happy with the result. I sucked it up and mailed my users, many of them happy with the change, and some have even converted.
The moral of the story is: it's never too soon to change pricing and go in a new direction.
I my post another update here on the long-tail affect, but for now, pretty keen to chat about pricing in general.