This 10000x. It is incredibly hard to compete today when there are 10 apps for every idea. Most of them suck - but it is damn near impossible to charge from day one and be successful unless you have a very large platform to advertise or are a prominent figure (something like Vesper from John Gruber). We're in it for the long haul with PaperBox (gopaperbox.com) - we intend to be the best app and continue to iterate for 3 years or so, and then figure out how to make money when we hopefully have a million or so users. Having said that, it is very hard to project out and keep growth going without a significant advertising budget.