Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business

Re:Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business by luigi on Wednesday February 01, 2012 @12:00AM (#3536780)

Would Marco make more money giving away his app for free and charging $1.99/month for the service? It's always seemed odd to me that you pay for the web service upfront with a one-time fee, though that seems to be working well for Pinboard.

It may be the case that a one-time upfront cost is the best way to attract paying customers.

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Re:Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business by adelevie on Wednesday February 01, 2012 @12:18AM (#3536815)

If lack of a monthly fee made some sense in the early days of Instapaper, it makes plenty of sense now that Apple has "Reading List" installed on millions of Macs and iOS devices.

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Re:Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business by hrktb on Wednesday February 01, 2012 @05:46AM (#3537433)

I don't have the link at hand, but he actualy bloged about it. He tried recurring billing, and gave up/couldn't because it was tailored for recurring publications, and not services like Instapaper.

Edit: this was his take on it: http://www.marco.org/2012/01/06/autorenewable-subscription-r...

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Re:Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business by freshlog on Wednesday February 01, 2012 @01:12AM (#3536917)

Pinboard also has a $25/year plan for archiving of links, in addition to their one-time signup fee.

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