I really hate these dark patterns but it seems par for the course for this industry. At what point do people realize good relationships with long term customers matters more than the incremental dollar?
- offer bug updates for v.2 existing customers with no additional feature development
- offer a paid upgrade with lower subscription for existing customers
- offer more affordable iphone-only or ipad-only subscriptions (currently it's $40/year for a suite of iphone, desktop, ipad apps)
- offer an ad-free v.3 upgrade locked to v.2 features to existing customers
- offer a v.3 upgrade requiring existing customer to make an informed choice vs. forcing it as an upgrade replacing their their current, paid for app with another one nagging them for subscription.
I spent 1 minute on these options, as an amateur in the field, and they all sound like viable possibilities for increasing revenue while retaining respectful trusting relationship with existing paying customers.