I can see your point, and it seems less slimy in that context. But every time I see a paid subscription for more features, it feels to me like just paying as a means to an end, rather than supporting something bigger than myself. Yeah I'll pay for the features if I want them, but that's because I want them; not because I want both the features and to support the developers. It's so impersonal. I think there is much more money to be made when you make users feel like part of the family (and not by just putting "Join the <app_name_here> family!" in a subscription prompt ) I understand this is significantly more difficult as your app scales, but that's a node of the problem I'm wanting to solve. And I cant relate to what constitutes a self-defeating attitude— I understand well enough that I could walk the well-travelled path that others have paved in order to make money from an app. My incentive here is to get help brainstorming novel methods of getting revenue in such a way that users feel like theyre actually contributing instead of just buying stuff.