this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy
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Yeah man...I am a dev myself but $20 to remove ads is just too much, especially without regional pricing.
I'll be working on this full time and plan to make this the best Lemmy app possible.
I think the pricing is fine if the quality matches it. Considering how much time we spend on our phones it could be great value for money.
I'm very curious to see how the advertising option works out for you, as currently I'm not aware of any lemmy sites with sustainable finance models.
Beehaw is currently financially sustainable.
I wouldn't call it financially sustainable. It pays for the servers, not for the labor.
No offense to beehaw, they're doing great work.
Most of FOSS doesn't pay for labor, its volunteers.
I bought Reddit Sync Pro way back when you gave out coupon codes for a discount when you first created it. (just found my receipt... November 2013 for ONE DOLLAR!!!) Used it for what was probably a decade for that low initial price and watched it just get better and better over time.
I assume that I'm going to be using Sync for Lemmy for a decade, and I have zero issue with the upfront ad free cost.
Aside from regional pricing issues, I think some of these potential customers just don't realize how much they're going to be getting from you for this price.
Ultra Lifetime is really tempting...
Will you be supporting kbin in the future?
$20 once, for an app you're going to use daily for the foreseeable future mind you, is not the unreasonable take that people on here seem to think it is.
You get what you pay for, and Sync has proven it's track record with the Reddit app already. This isn't just some random app dev asking for money on his bejeweled clone.
It's $100 once. The $20 option is a yearly subscription.
Edit: Some misunderstanding. It's $20 to remove ads, and $100 to get all features. Maybe the $20 subscription is for full features and removing ads?
You have completely misread the app. The "Sync Ultra" is not the same as the one-time "Remove Ads" option.
If you want "Sync Ultra" for a lifetime, it's $100 or w/e it's listed as, that comes with all the extra features listed in the app. If you just want to remove ads and use the app without the Ultra features, you only have to pay $20 once.
Re: your edit
Yes, the subscription option has a monthly/yearly/lifetime structure set at $2/$17/$100 respectively. Each of those unlocks all the Ultra features (which includes removing ads).
Which is separate from the one time payment of the $20 to only remove ads.
Fresh college graduate dev, long-time power internet user here:
Price not important, pricing method and value is important.
A one time $20 is fine. I'm currently poor, but a one time payment for an ACTIVELY developed app that will probably end up being a great app that I use every day for years?
Not a big deal, at all. I think the vast majority of people on Fediverse want web 3.0. like going from [waterfall and hierarchy] to [agile and scrum], people want more control over good-faith interactions. And one time payment to an app that WON'T TRACK US OR COLLECT OR SELL OUR INFORMATION (I'm looking at you, Sync dev!), or even small reoccurring payments are absolutely the way to go.
It's all about following the energy and purpose of the moment. And right now, on here, most people can't pay much a year since we're already getting absolutely squeezed by every direction. But, we do want to support the devs and platforms, and are willing to pay.
There's a lot of mouths to feed over time, but, I think as long as everybody involved in all those steps followed the philosophies of original copyright purpose, and aren't using this to get ultra rich, and were just using it to make a comfortable and honest living, everybody here could and would get behind that.
For example, if the dev of Sync needed to buy a house, a car, and save for retirement, and was willing to work 30-40hrs on this app for the next 15-20 years (the app probably doesn't need that much time), then it wouldn't be that much trouble to have a formula driven sliding scale for the app subscription for all it's users.
If it was a variable amount per month in the range of $0.50USD to $1.00USD per 6 months for ALL users unless you're under 18, and the amount and sub (treating the app as premium only) were always opt-in and like crowd source where users set a max they're willing to pay and say "I'm in" or "I'm out" (maybe even tiers) and if the need of the dev isn't met, then pricing model for the next series of months changes from those tiers... I think something like that could work.
That's basically the dream for users AND devs. Users don't want to or can't pay much, but want to support somebody's needs if they're actually working, and, like Wikipedia has been saying for years, if everybody pitched in a dollar, everybody would only need to pitch in a dollar. And, devs want to be able to focus on their apps without worry for income, knowing they have the stability and capital backing.
I know it seems kind of like a pipe dream, but I'd love to see (and would love to be a part of) a sort of "low cost, high volume, bundled services" subscription offering for stuff like this. I don't know if you could make it user-variable, because that threatens the high volume aspect. I also am aware there's a huge amount of trust that goes into all parties involved for something like this to work....
But, times change and so must business innovation.
Am I just completely out of touch here? Partially? Am I just a dreamer? A modern hippie?
Nobody likes ads, but that's because most ad-based models have positive feedback loop mechanics where: nobody pays, the ads increase, and when the ads increase, so do ad blockers, and when ad blockers increase, so do the ads, repeating until (surprise) a payment model is found or the platform pulls a Reddit.
And nobody wants that. The only way out is basically public services and price control (almost anybody else has any good ideas).
You have to strike a balance between innovation, no greed, good will, and value. Developing and supporting an app is a job, and we the users have to pay the worker(s) or an investor will come in looking for even more money somehow. Nothing is free. Not for the workers, not for the investors, not for the users, not for the infrastructure.
We have to do this together, all of us, or it'll crumble to more enshittification. And I'm tired of that.
Agreed. $5 MAYBE, $20 is out to lunch. And a subscription model for full features? Nah get outta here with that, that MIGHT be worth $20. The direction app development has gone over the last few years is a huge disappointment
$5 as a one-time payment is not enough for a single developer to sustain his livelihood on.
And ultimately, "worth" is based on what the market decides.
You make valid points, however, I'd like to point out that most games on the play store don't cost a lot because the real costly transactions are in-app purchases. It's common, in my experience, for the popular free apps to have IAPs upwards of $100 for in-game currency.
There's also that matter of the no-cost version of the app. It seems perfectly usable, making the ad-removal an optional purchase.
Considering the smaller user-base and the finite economic value of life-time purchases I'd say $20 is fair. But that's my stated opinion and I have yet to put my money where my mouth is.
This is by far the best app for Lemmy. By a mile. It's a lot faster and nicer looking. That said, pricing feels a little steep. Imagine being able to sustain your livelihood on making an app for Lemmy, an otherwise free service providing no additional content. It's not like we are paying the persons who invest in all the infrastructure for the servers running the Lemmy instances. They provide for the actual service. If a part of the money went to instance servers it would feel way better. Because if they go down, so will Sync.
Not taking anything away from the massive work Lj is putting into this, but pricing do feel a tad off. If 1500 people subscribe he has a yearly income equal to a decent job. If he gets 5000 subs he will earn almost 100 000 dollars a year. Which in Sweden equals to about 2.5 times of a well paid job. That's excluding ad revenue from everyone who don't subscribe or pay for removing ads. Pricing can be fairer without compromising the livelihood of said dev. That's all.
That's like saying imagine someone wanting to sustain themselves or running a public transport network. All they do is help you get to and from work. How can they have so much hubris as to believe that's worth anything?!
Exactly. Doing anything, if it requires work and provides value to you, has a value, and thus could be expected to be charged for. Ad-supported software has kinda ruined a lot of people's perception of money and value, expecting everything to be free.
Wha? A yearly ultra sub is 15 bucks. 1500x15 is 22500. 5000 times is 75000.
And that's not 'the same as a full time job', not by a long shot. Google takes its cut - what, 20%? Then you have income tax, insurances etc, another 20-30% at least, and so on. So, for 5000 subscriptions, he's left with around 42k at the end of the day.
I'm pretty sure his calculations were based on the monthly price, as for me monthly shows up as 2.99 per month. I'll also say that including income tax in your calculation is crazy. We all have to pay income tax, but the income told us when we get a job or see a job posting is gross income.
Other than that, if you want Sync for lemmy and willing to pay for it, that's fair. I paid 3 bucks for Nova Prime years ago and I have used it everyday. It came with me to every new phone I owned. I also redesign my layout quite often using it. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to pay that amount monthly when Nova Prime was a one time payment.
The fair pricing is what the market will tolerate. I'm not saying it's 100% "justified"; even the dev understands that he needs to tweak it for other regions. But the value add is from the superiority of the app experience, which right now is much better than anything else available (for me; of course this is all subjective). In the future, perhaps other apps will achieve parity with Sync, at which time market forces will cause the developer to course correct on pricing.
I'll also add that I purchased Sync for Reddit (Pro) for USD$2 nine years ago. If I get nine years out of Sync for Lemmy that's a bargain at even 10 times the price (which is the current offering).
If that is the case, well then in some of the larger coastal areas in the U.S. such a salary is far below what a decent software developer can expect. Cost of living is very high in those areas.
Talking about prices and costs is very difficult in a global ecosystem, because even different regions of the same country can have significant differences in market that change the value of money, even setting aside currency exchange.
He's in the UK, I thought.