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Comment by sutra_on | Hacker News Reader

> I decided to go with a very cheap subscription model because I suspect further development might be needed as bugs emerge or API behavior changes

Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model.

> I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it

Not to sound too negative, but your app might not even exist a year from today. It's a single utility app, let people buy it if they want to fix a bug with Bluetooth+AirPods, not to subscribe to a bug fix.

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>Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model.

They abandoned their products once the growth stopped and/or switch to subscription and gave their one time purchase makers a year of subscription to make it up.

One time payment for lifetime support doesn't make sense whatsoever. If it is a large company they have to employ people for a product that doesn't bring in money and for indies it means that they need to switch context from their current project, study their code and try to remember what they did and why they did it to fix a single line code.

Having a live product is a full time job even if you change a single line of a code once in a while. It's fine doing it for fee(in other words on your parents dime) when you are a teenager or when it is a passion project, otherwise its abandonware or your life destroyer(which is abandonware with delay).

Other options exist of course, like giving away the product for free then selling its control to people with other motives(widespread among browser extension developers) or sell services around the product like cloud something AI something (this one is nice actually, just not applicable to all apps).

> They abandoned their products once the growth stopped and/or switch to subscription and gave their one time purchase makers a year of subscription to make it up.

That's categorically untrue and if you're doubtful, I'd be happy to give you a list of wonderful software I've bought over the years for a singular license which has remained well supported and functional for years to come :)

I understand a lot of people are telling you the same thing here, but hopefully it will serve as a lesson. If you want any success in this space, you need to figure out your pricing.

> Having a live product is a full time job even if you change a single line of a code once in a while.

I run several live products and also hold a full time job. This isn't true.

> Other options exist of course, like giving away the product for free

I think this is exactly what a junior macOS developer should do if they want to get good enough to start building real products.

Sure, I can I have the list? I wonder how the success looks like, maybe we simply don't agree on what a good business is. I'm strongly against get paid once support forever, I will skip on that success.

Are you by any chance an employee at a large corporation, working for them then donating your time as free apps or apps costing you more than bring in? If that's the case, I will skip this success too.

Are you talking from position of a business person who made more than they spent or are you working from position of a corporate philanthropist?

Anyway, I think you should just clone my app and sell it on your rates and on your terms. Everybody wins.

Here are three I've bought in the last few months :)

- BettterTouchTool: https://folivora.ai/buy

- Synergy: https://symless.com/synergy/purchase

- Loopback: https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/buy.php

Mertol, I'd encourage you to check out those apps, consider what the product does and the utility it provides, and then try and rethink the pricing on CrystalClear Sound to be more in line with what other professionals in the industry are doing. I hope that's helpful :)

Ah - I've seen your edit. It sounds as if you've already decided what you want and aren't looking for advice. Perhaps you'll get used to your idea of skipping success.

I'm just trying to understand who is providing the advice. Are you giving an advice as someone who built actual business or are you someone who works in an actual business and donates his time and giving me the advice to do the same?

You do realize you are on a tech forum?

>Having a live product is a full time job even if you change a single line of a code once in a while.

I have launched dozens of products and changing a single line of code once in a while is definitely not a full time job. Honestly, this makes no sense.

> They abandoned their products once the growth stopped

This is obviously false (take basically any popular app with a single license and look through their update log). Your stated reason -- fixing bugs or updating API usage for existing products -- should not require a subscription. Maybe it's an old school assumption, but I expect single line bug fixes to be included in the initial cost.

If this was an incredibly complex project that required years of research and development I could see some logic behind your argument. However, linking to a 50 line code snippet as your inspiration and explaining that you faced some challenges when building the production app does not look serious.

Charge 80 bucks for small tools, or 800-6000 for other tools. And don’t forget to pay for upgrades

This just in: people do things to maximise profit.

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