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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely to succeed. Your users won't want to be monetized and they're from countries that are relatively unmonetizable. You don't say what you do for a living, but—personally—I'd slap this on my resume as a 'look at the awesome user base my apps have had' sort of event, and move on. Great way to gain better leverage for the next job move or raise request, but not likely to be more than that at present.

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I don't think anyone would object if you added a 'Please donate' plash screen or had a page that advertised your other apps (get them to click anywhere on the screen but the donate button to continue to app. Delaying loading the app for x seconds is annoying). Users can ignore it easily if they can't/won't without impacting your user base.

Good point. I'm a software dev by trade. Considering the opportunity costs, perhaps I should just use the app's success for brag rights.

I'd definitely try to leverage the success of this app towards something else. The reason why this app is so popular is because it is simple and free. The good will is kind of a big deal.

That said, I think adding support for other social networks may be a fair unlock. How about a "Social Lite+"? A separate paid app that supports more social networks?

I'm thinking this is the way to go. Leave the existing app as is and use it to up-sell.

So do I add the photo upload feature (most requested feature/bug) to the existing app or put it in the paid only app???

Good guy me says put it in the free app, evil me says make em pay...

You mean business you!

lol....

It sounds like you've produced a solid, stable piece of software that's been actively used by 55,000 people. That's a comendable thing, and I don't think anyone can rightly fault you if you decide you'd like to be compensated to improve on it further.

My suggestion would be to have a premium version, but charge a minimal amount for it (especially considering your demographic). Your goal should be a high conversion rate of your existing user base at a very low price. I would suggest waiting to launch until you have a more expanded feature set though (image upload probably isn't enough, but if it supported multiple new features and multiple social networks, that should be an easy sell).

> So do I add the photo upload feature [...] to the existing app or put it in the paid only app???

Give it for free to all your existing users. Going forward, any user who has the feature can also gift it (at zero cost) to new users. Otherwise paid purchase.

> Good guy me says put it in the free app, evil me says make em pay...

I'd say this is generously evil, or avariciously good ...

P.S. I'd suggest making the app produce use-once gift codes (say up to three at a time) that people could post.

This is really up to you and how well you know your users.

Like some have said, you're not being evil by making all new FEATURES to only in the paid app. Alternatively, you could make this app as full-featured as possible, and make the new app for multiple platforms only. What do you think is the right thing to do, both for yourself (how much time and money do you have?) and your audience?

A way to promote the new app inside the old app:

- Add a button that says, "new features!" that you keep updated whenever you 1) release new bug fixes or features to either the regular or the beefed up version. This way, all users of the regular app will stay updated on whats going on in both the regular and the beefed up versions. Many of them will buy the beefed up version.

Silly question perhaps but is the app able to display notifications? (primarily for 'messages' from facebook) as this is the main reason most people install the official apps. Perhaps you could build a messaging client that works in conjunction with it and that could be your income stream?

Unfortunately this wouldn't be technically possible as the app just wraps the FB mobile web app.

technically it is possible.

Tell me more... I suppose one could do some form of page scrapping in the background and then generate a notifucation

The first question to be answered is where do you want to go with this app? Do you want it to be something you can brag about? Or do you want it to be something that you nurture and grow from one stage to the next? Either is fine, and there are lots of other options. But knowing the answer to that question will determine your next features in the app.

Keep the app free, and if ad-free, keep it like that. Try to make it bigger. This is your investment in the future. If you have an app with +1 or +10 million installs, that's a beautiful item on your resumé. If you really want to use that app for money, create new functionality via in-app payments, or give all old users a life-time free version that can be transferred to other devices. Better use it to attract attention from investors and let them give money to you for a second app.

it is but a bird int he hand is worth 2 in the bush. Got to wonder how many people saying use it for resume have had a similar experience, used it for resume and then gone on to their dream life vs people who tried to monatise, maybe failed but learnt something along the way. Personally no experience of either but when you have soemthing its always worth attempting to leverage it, you still have the figures later even if you fubar

I strongly disagree. Since he has access to the DOM of the FB mobile website (he can definitely load custom JavaScript into any page, which is all he needs), there is a ton of stuff he can do to monetize. For one, he can inject ads into FB timelines, which wouldn't piss off his users..Facebook itself does this and people are fine with it. He could pre-roll video ads on any videos that are played. These are just two of several possibilities. He can have monetization on every single page viewed through his app, integrated directly into the FB interface.

The trick would be getting access to offers targeted at these countries, but a major mobile ad network like MobPartner could easily give him some.

This is probably the quickest route to a cease and desist from FB. If you choose this path, you'll need to take a scorched earth strategy because you will not get a second chance. Lots of ways to inject ads into someone else's content, and all of them are against TOS.

It is incredibly unlikely that FB could actually litigate this - it falls under the same legal doctorine that protects ad blockers. Also, a few years ago there was a company called Sambreel that had a product called PageRage. They modified FB pages and inserted ads. Facebook never sued them. In fact, Sambreel actually sued Facebook [1] because the only thing that Facebook could do was pressure advertisers not to work with the company [2], and the company felt wronged. Their lawsuit against Facebook was dismissed, but Facebook was never able to do anything legally against them. One interesting quote from the lawsuit:

"...between July 2009 and October 2010, PageRage grew significantly, and was regularly garnering more than 1 million users per day, and generating more than $1 million in monthly revenues....by mid-July 2011, PageRage had grown to more than 4 million users per day"

In this case, however, there aren't 4M installs. We're talking about less than 300K installs. Facebook would probably not bother with such harsh tactics here.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/114953759?access_key=key-1...

[2] http://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/sambreel-locked-ou...

Regardless of whether they would have legal ground to stand on, it doesn't sound like the OP has the time or money to get into litigation with FB. If they were to send a cease and desist letter, not many people would dig their heels in and take things to the courts out of their own pocket.

Injecting or substituting ads is shady.

You're degrading the experience with less targeted and lower quality ads at the expense of Facebook's brand and perceived quality of service. The end user assumes the crappy experience is from Facebook itself.

How's this different from malware that injects/substitutes ads?

Demographic indeed is a useful piece of information on your monetizing model. Good to know.

I strongly disagree. In my experience, people are more than willing to pay for a service that they view as valuable, regardless of where they live. But understanding the value proposition is key. You'll need to find ways to engage users at lower price points in those geos. Your users are spending money, you just need to convince them to spend it on you.

I live in the third world. The greatest obstacle to paying for apps I like was never the money (compared with the smartphone, good apps are cheap), but the payment method.

Banks hate poor people and we hate them back, so not many people have internationally valid credit cards where I live.

What payment methods do you like?

I like the debit card from my credit union, but nobody outside my country would accept it because it's not affiliated to any payment network like Visa or Master Card.

Other popular payment methods are mobile payment networks provided by the same companies that provide the cell phone service. It's a pre-paid phone service that lets you use your phone credit (that which originally only let you buy talk minutes and text messages) and transfer it to a different phone number. Lots of people accept it as actual currency, and you can even pay utilities with that.

> "they're from countries that are relatively unmonetizable"

all them got a smartphone, what makes you think they (the people) are not monetizable? Any reference/study about spend on apps per country?

A common problem in those countries is that you can buy a phone in a store, but you can't just throw your money to the developer through a phone screen.

You need an internationally valid credit card to purchase apps.

Yup!

I know in some places they rely heavily on pay-by-phone services as a credit card alternative, even for face-to-face transactions. The cost of whatever they're buying gets subtracted from their phone credits and the phone company passes the money on to the actual business. I'm not sure how one would go about integrating this as a payment option for a phone app though, or if it's possible to do this without violating the Google Play agreements.

That would be awesome. I think if it were possible to buy apps through the pay-by-phone service, the local phone companies would have offered that service long ago.

In my country, you can use those to pay utilities and even some taxes. But you can't buy anything from outside the country (or really, from anywhere that doesn't have cellphone coverage for that particular company), and you can't pay in foreign currencies.

And the first appeal is to users without enough storage.

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