Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:04 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So today, in honor of Black Friday, which is this week as we are recording, we wanted

00:00:16 ◼   ► to talk a little bit about sales or about variable pricing in general.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Should we make our podcast like 20% shorter to celebrate Black Friday?

00:00:24 ◼   ► It seems fair.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Never longer than 26 minutes or something like that today.

00:00:31 ◼   ► But it's a funny thing that happens this time of year where all of a sudden, all these things,

00:00:38 ◼   ► companies invent these ways to try and create demand for their products that wasn't necessarily

00:00:42 ◼   ► there before or you're dropping, you know, people are sort of interested in buying something,

00:00:47 ◼   ► you're trying to drop it just below the threshold such that they're interested in actually buying

00:00:51 ◼   ► it.

00:00:52 ◼   ► So it just applies to all these big box stores or all the crazy frenzies you see in videos

00:00:59 ◼   ► that are typically this time of year, as well as just in the App Store, where hopefully

00:01:03 ◼   ► with less frenzied buying, but it is certainly something that I think a lot of developers

00:01:07 ◼   ► do this time of year because there's a lot of sort of anticipation or expectation that

00:01:13 ◼   ► people have that, "Hey, today it's Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever holiday they've

00:01:18 ◼   ► kind of invented around reducing prices."

00:01:22 ◼   ► And wonder if there's any good deals.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And you can kind of go around and see, "Hey, is there something that's good to take advantage

00:01:29 ◼   ► of as a result?"

00:01:31 ◼   ► And it's something that I know for myself I struggle a lot with in terms of whether

00:01:36 ◼   ► it's something I should sort of take part in and get into because I feel like there's

00:01:39 ◼   ► this weird tension between what that does to the perceived value of your software or

00:01:46 ◼   ► the expectations you're setting for your future customers and the way you're treating

00:01:53 ◼   ► your past customers.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And then you serve on the one side and then on the other side, it's like it definitely

00:01:57 ◼   ► works and is definitely a powerful tool to, in the short term, get a lot of sales.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Because I know this for myself, even if you're not around something like Black Friday or

00:02:11 ◼   ► around Christmas or around New Year's or something like that, even if you just randomly

00:02:15 ◼   ► change your price one day, you will almost inevitably see a spike in downloads.

00:02:21 ◼   ► And that's just the reality.

00:02:23 ◼   ► But it's a tricky thing to get into the habit of doing.

00:02:25 ◼   ► I actually remember back in the very early days of the App Store, I had an app that was

00:02:32 ◼   ► paid, I think it was $2 or $3, and I found that I could maximize my revenue by, because

00:02:41 ◼   ► it was my recipe management app, which had most of its downloads happen on the weekend

00:02:47 ◼   ► when people are more likely to be cooking at home.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And I got into this habit where I wanted to be ranking really well on the weekend.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And so I would make the app $3 on the weekend, which was its regular price, but on Thursday

00:03:02 ◼   ► and Friday I would drop the price to 99 cents every week for a few months.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And I got this big jump in sales because the volume went up, and so I would rank better

00:03:14 ◼   ► in the charts, and then I'd raise the price and take advantage of it and come back down.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And I did this for a little while, but after a while, A, it didn't feel great.

00:03:22 ◼   ► It was one of these things like I'd solved an optimization problem.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I did overall average out to more money by doing this.

00:03:28 ◼   ► But I definitely got a lot of people who were kind of grumpy about when they bought it on

00:03:33 ◼   ► the weekend, which is most of my customers in many ways were buying it on the weekend,

00:03:37 ◼   ► and they were paying this higher price, and that didn't seem quite right or quite fair.

00:03:42 ◼   ► And it created these strange expectations and dynamics, and in the end I just decided

00:03:46 ◼   ► like this was a bad idea.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I should just stop doing this.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's one thing maybe to put an app on sale on a semi-regular basis, like a couple times

00:03:53 ◼   ► a year, but to be doing it in this very structured, calculating way started to feel kind of bad.

00:04:01 ◼   ► But there's always this tension, and it's something that I feel like we all just kind

00:04:04 ◼   ► of have to work through for working out where we feel most comfortable with and make choices

00:04:09 ◼   ► for us accordingly.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, because you can tweak the price like you did.

00:04:14 ◼   ► You're basically micromanaging the price to ride these waves and optimize for promotion.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And I think part of the reason why you get so many new downloads when you change the

00:04:24 ◼   ► price is that there are sites like App Shopper, I think is one of the biggest ones, if not

00:04:28 ◼   ► the biggest one, where there are sites that track app store pricing.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And you can just change the price on your app, and if it's at all popular, they will

00:04:38 ◼   ► report on that.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And there are people who watch their feed, who like, any app that comes up that they've

00:04:44 ◼   ► heard of, if it's on sale, you're gonna just buy it right there.

00:04:48 ◼   ► And so like, without even having to put any effort into promoting a price drop, if you

00:04:53 ◼   ► just drop your price, somebody like App Shopper will probably automatically report on it and

00:04:57 ◼   ► you will automatically get more sales.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So you can take advantage of that for a while, but I think obviously anything about the app

00:05:05 ◼   ► store, people are going to try to scam.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Developers are going to try to scam.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And not you, dear developers, not you listeners, other developers, the scammy ones, not you,

00:05:16 ◼   ► of course not, right?

00:05:19 ◼   ► You would never do anything like this.

00:05:20 ◼   ► But there are lots of, any way that you can make money on the internet or on the app store,

00:05:27 ◼   ► there are going to be a whole bunch of people trying to scam it at all times.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So that is the rule of making money on the internet.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And probably anywhere in life, really, but this is what we know.

00:05:37 ◼   ► So you can do things like writing these price changes, but if you do it too much, as you

00:05:44 ◼   ► said, you start having these problems.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And I think one of the problems would probably be that a place like App Shopper would probably

00:05:50 ◼   ► stop reporting it.

00:05:51 ◼   ► They probably have some kind of threshold where they will only report a certain limited

00:05:54 ◼   ► number of price changes for the same app at any given time or something like that.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Because they probably have to do something like that just to prevent constant spam from

00:06:01 ◼   ► people who are looking to exploit the system.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And I think the way your customers will deal with it also, nobody likes feeling like they

00:06:11 ◼   ► got ripped off.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And if you pay a price for an app and you go right back the next day and you see it's

00:06:17 ◼   ► listing and you see it's lower, that's going to make you a little bit upset.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Even if it's a small amount of money, because one thing that developers, especially developers

00:06:29 ◼   ► of paid up front apps, often complain about or have trouble understanding is we're talking

00:06:35 ◼   ► about relatively small sums of money here.

00:06:38 ◼   ► We're talking about dropping a price from $3 to $2 or from $3 to $1.

00:06:46 ◼   ► This is not major amounts of money.

00:06:49 ◼   ► But the way it's perceived by your customers has little to do with the actual amounts.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It's all about the feeling of being wrong, the feeling of being ripped off.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And it's the same thing that makes people really mad if you have a paid up front app,

00:07:05 ◼   ► they buy it, it's not really what they expected it to be, and so then they go leave a one

00:07:09 ◼   ► star review and say, "This app is horrible, I wasted my money."

00:07:12 ◼   ► And it's like, would they really get that mad over like $2?

00:07:16 ◼   ► Well the answer is, if they feel ripped off, yes, yes they will.

00:07:20 ◼   ► They could feel ripped off over 25 cents and they would get that mad.

00:07:24 ◼   ► The amount doesn't really matter, what matters is the psychology.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And so that all plays in here to any kind of price change and price decision.

00:07:33 ◼   ► If you change your price, no matter what you're changing it to or from, if you change it downwards,

00:07:40 ◼   ► you're going to have more people buying it.

00:07:41 ◼   ► If you change it upwards, you're going to have mad people.

00:07:45 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter what the amounts are.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And it creates this strange feeling too of, one of the things that I always, I notice

00:07:54 ◼   ► this most in web services, it's not something that I think you see as much in the app store,

00:07:58 ◼   ► but in that same vein is this weird feeling of, anytime I sign up for something online,

00:08:04 ◼   ► and right before the buy button they have a little box that says promotion code, or

00:08:10 ◼   ► coupon code.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Oh, I hate that.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And obviously this is a complicated thing, we have promotion codes in our sponsor reads

00:08:16 ◼   ► and things.

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's a very powerful tool for a sponsor to have that if you are signing up for a product

00:08:24 ◼   ► or a service as a result of hearing it somewhere else, they need a way to incentivize you to

00:08:29 ◼   ► let them know so they can do things accordingly.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Or it's just a tool for them to be able to do marketing and targeted discounting.

00:08:37 ◼   ► That makes a lot of sense.

00:08:38 ◼   ► But as a consumer, and this is the thing that I always struggle with in terms of the way

00:08:42 ◼   ► in which I'll do it, like in Feed Wrangler, the only sort of subscription web service

00:08:46 ◼   ► that I run, but I early on made a decision that I was never going to use discounted promotion,

00:08:52 ◼   ► that is.

00:08:53 ◼   ► If I did any price changes ever, I was just going to apply them across the board.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Because it reminds me in a weird way too of the way Apple does their pricing, right?

00:09:02 ◼   ► An Apple product's price is essentially static over its entire lifetime.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And it'll only ever change usually if it's replaced by something newer.

00:09:14 ◼   ► So the iPhone 6s right now is $100 less than it was when it was introduced.

00:09:19 ◼   ► These are very predictable and defined changes.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It's the same price for everybody.

00:09:26 ◼   ► There's not really like, "Oh, if you're this kind of special person or you have this kind

00:09:30 ◼   ► of code, you can get a different thing."

00:09:32 ◼   ► And there's a weird thing there both in terms of segmenting your marketplace.

00:09:37 ◼   ► As a consumer, I feel slightly ripped off any time I see one of those coupon code boxes

00:09:41 ◼   ► because it makes me feel like someone else is getting a better deal than I am.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And whether that's true or not, I'm going to always assume that that's the case.

00:09:51 ◼   ► If I see a box that's like, "If I had this magic code, I would have to pay less for this

00:09:57 ◼   ► thing."

00:09:58 ◼   ► But it also creates a moment of doubt.

00:10:00 ◼   ► It creates this moment of, "Should I buy this now or should I wait?"

00:10:08 ◼   ► Or in the case of an online service, it's a coupon code.

00:10:10 ◼   ► It's like, "Should I go scour the internet to see if I can find a code to get 10% off

00:10:15 ◼   ► this?"

00:10:16 ◼   ► And more often than not, if I do scour the internet, I will find a code.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And so there's a lot of confirmation there that that's probably a good thing to do.

00:10:24 ◼   ► But I have the opposite problem.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Every time I see one of those promo code boxes, I'm like, "You know, now I feel bad.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Now I feel like I'm a chump for about to be paying this full price."

00:10:32 ◼   ► So I go and look, and I don't find any.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Or the only ones I find are on those scammy coupon sites, and they've all expired, and

00:10:39 ◼   ► they're all invalid.

00:10:40 ◼   ► It's like, "Damn it."

00:10:41 ◼   ► So then I proceed anyway, and I'm like, "I know I could have gotten a better price on

00:10:45 ◼   ► this, but I didn't, and now I feel ripped off."

00:10:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But that's the best case, right?

00:10:50 ◼   ► That you did actually keep going through.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like, anytime I think getting a sale, someone to open up their wallet and give you money

00:10:57 ◼   ► is in general such a hard thing.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Any of these little barriers that we can create to making somebody have to think about it,

00:11:06 ◼   ► and the longer they have to pause and hover their mouse over the buy button or their finger

00:11:11 ◼   ► over the buy button on an app, the longer that pause is there, my guess is there's this

00:11:15 ◼   ► dramatic drop-off.

00:11:17 ◼   ► In a weird way, you want it to be almost as impulsive and quick of a transaction as possible.

00:11:25 ◼   ► The longer they consider it, the more and more they probably won't do it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And that's just speaking to the fact that most of what we make is confectionary.

00:11:35 ◼   ► We're not making meat and potatoes for people's lives that they absolutely need, and no matter

00:11:40 ◼   ► what, they're going to have to get it.

00:11:43 ◼   ► As cool as some of our products might be as app developers, very few of us are making

00:11:47 ◼   ► products that would fall into that essentials category, and so it is a choice.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And it's confectionary, and they can be like, "Hmm, maybe I will have this, maybe I won't."

00:11:56 ◼   ► But it's a weird thing.

00:11:57 ◼   ► And fair enough, we don't have promotion codes in the app store, but I feel like getting

00:12:00 ◼   ► into a habit of changing price a lot, and if someone goes to App Shopper for your app,

00:12:08 ◼   ► and they see that you're constantly changing your price—and I know I do this sometimes,

00:12:11 ◼   ► especially if I'm trying to buy something kind of expensive.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Like I'll see an app that's expensive, it's $20.

00:12:16 ◼   ► I'm like, "Whoa, $20, this is crazy!"

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's all relative.

00:12:20 ◼   ► Yeah, but I'll see that, and I'll see that there's this—it's like, "Oh, but it goes

00:12:24 ◼   ► on sale every few months for half off, say."

00:12:28 ◼   ► Like, there's a good chance I won't buy it then, unless I absolutely feel like I need it

00:12:32 ◼   ► at that moment.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It's like, "Maybe I'll wait."

00:12:34 ◼   ► And that's awkward.

00:12:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's probably—and I feel like if you can get away with never changing your price

00:12:41 ◼   ► and avoiding that perception that there's going to be a better deal somewhere else,

00:12:45 ◼   ► it probably benefits you in the long run, but it's always going to hurt you in the short

00:12:49 ◼   ► run.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I have not found that it's useful to experiment much with pricing in general

00:12:57 ◼   ► in my apps.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And with Overcast, this has been a little bit different, because it was not paid up

00:13:01 ◼   ► front.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And this is another thing, too.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Obviously, the type of payment that your app has, this will work differently for all these

00:13:09 ◼   ► things, right?

00:13:11 ◼   ► Price changes tend to have the largest impact on paid up front apps, not on in-app purchase

00:13:15 ◼   ► unlocks as far as I can tell or as far as I know.

00:13:18 ◼   ► So back when I had a paid up front app in Instapaper, I changed the price a few times,

00:13:25 ◼   ► but they were for long-term changes.

00:13:27 ◼   ► It was not just playing with sales, because I was afraid of this effect.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I had what was considered a fairly expensive app in its $5 price for most of its time,

00:13:43 ◼   ► and I didn't want that effect.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Because I would often get emails from people saying, "Hey, your app looks really good.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I'm thinking about getting it.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Maybe someday I will."

00:13:54 ◼   ► And it's like, if people are putting that much delay and forethought and planning into

00:14:00 ◼   ► your $5 app, let's be realistic.

00:14:03 ◼   ► They're probably not going to buy it.

00:14:05 ◼   ► That's probably a lost sale to you if people have to think about it.

00:14:11 ◼   ► And part of the psychology of price drops is creating the sense of urgency and the sense

00:14:15 ◼   ► of a limited time offer where you're trying to bypass that.

00:14:20 ◼   ► You're trying to say, "Well, I was planning on buying this maybe in the future, maybe

00:14:25 ◼   ► someday anyway, but now it's only $3.

00:14:28 ◼   ► So I really should buy it right now."

00:14:31 ◼   ► And that works.

00:14:32 ◼   ► That psychology does work.

00:14:34 ◼   ► That's why price changes like this are effective once or twice.

00:14:38 ◼   ► But the more expensive your app is, the more you're going to have that problem of people

00:14:43 ◼   ► who know that the price has changed in the past and then hold off even more for buying

00:14:49 ◼   ► it when they were already maybe going to hold off.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And that's not going to do any favors for your sales.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Sure.

00:14:55 ◼   ► And it's also, I mean, obviously the biggest reason, and probably a lot of people do sales,

00:15:00 ◼   ► is -- and this thing is probably worth discussing too -- is it's not just the impact of lowering

00:15:05 ◼   ► the price in and of itself.

00:15:07 ◼   ► It's that lowering your price is a way to get attention for an app when you don't have

00:15:13 ◼   ► anything else to promote it for.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Sort of like a non-content promotion where usually a lot of app development, for better

00:15:21 ◼   ► and worse, is promoted around new updates to the app.

00:15:27 ◼   ► There's something new that you have to show, and that can be problematic if we're just

00:15:30 ◼   ► inventing things that are different for the purposes of trying to get some attention,

00:15:34 ◼   ► which is certainly something that you can do.

00:15:37 ◼   ► But it's also the case that if you have nothing to show, but you want to try to be in one

00:15:44 ◼   ► of these big roundup posts, or a lot of sites will have lists or Twitter feeds that link

00:15:50 ◼   ► to apps based on their price changes.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And it's a way to get on that next level up marketing's radar.

00:16:01 ◼   ► I could even imagine, think of things like the free app of the week in the app store

00:16:06 ◼   ► is probably the most extreme version of this, where there's this very premium spot in the

00:16:12 ◼   ► featured tab of the app store that is available only to an app that is willing to take a paid

00:16:18 ◼   ► upfront app and make it free for a week.

00:16:21 ◼   ► And you're essentially saying that I have some other way that I'm going to benefit from

00:16:26 ◼   ► that beyond just the sales that I'm giving up by making it free.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Or similarly, I think you actually did this with Instapaper, right?

00:16:34 ◼   ► There's the thing they do with Starbucks where they give away apps for free at Starbucks.

00:16:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, the little cards, yep, I did that with Instapaper.

00:16:42 ◼   ► - And it's the same kind of thing, right?

00:16:43 ◼   ► It's like you're marketing it based on a sale, on a price drop rather than on an actual content

00:16:49 ◼   ► change.

00:16:50 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And there is a time and a place for that, for sure.

00:16:54 ◼   ► That should be considered as part of any marketing strategy for your app.

00:16:59 ◼   ► But yeah, you're right.

00:17:01 ◼   ► So often people will buy it in that kind of situation only because it's a good deal, not

00:17:06 ◼   ► because they were necessarily going to buy it otherwise.

00:17:09 ◼   ► The psychology of it does work.

00:17:12 ◼   ► That's why people do it.

00:17:13 ◼   ► But it also, I think if you are, if you're resorting to things like that, it does kind

00:17:21 ◼   ► of make your app look less premium and less in demand.

00:17:25 ◼   ► So for instance, if you look around on Black Friday today, look around at all the different

00:17:29 ◼   ► sales.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Look at what's on sale.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Apple products, which are these prestigious, high priced, usually in high demand products,

00:17:38 ◼   ► are barely on sale.

00:17:40 ◼   ► Like Apple does a token sale where they might cut like five or 10% off some prices, not

00:17:46 ◼   ► even on their best stuff usually.

00:17:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, well I think today's promotion, all of the things that have their, they don't

00:17:51 ◼   ► even do the deal, their prices are the same, but they're doing the you get a free gift

00:17:54 ◼   ► card.

00:17:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:17:56 ◼   ► - The only products that that's eligible on is all their old stuff.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

00:18:00 ◼   ► - If you wanted to buy an iPhone 6s today, you get a discount.

00:18:03 ◼   ► If you wanted to buy a Series 1 watch, there's a discount.

00:18:05 ◼   ► If you wanted to buy a non-new MacBook Pro, there's a discount.

00:18:09 ◼   ► - Or the Mac Pro, the Mac Pro's included in this promotion.

00:18:12 ◼   ► - That is kind of desperate.

00:18:14 ◼   ► - It's kind of sad.

00:18:15 ◼   ► But yeah, like a premium seller like Apple, they don't need to do price cuts to get people

00:18:22 ◼   ► to buy their stuff.

00:18:23 ◼   ► People buy their stuff anyway.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Also if your market is somewhat narrow or specialized or professional.

00:18:28 ◼   ► So like looking around, as many people do, I looked around to see the kind of overall

00:18:34 ◼   ► stuff I tend to buy for my pro needs.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Things like microphones and camera gear.

00:18:40 ◼   ► I looked around, are there any deals on that?

00:18:42 ◼   ► And basically the answer is no.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Because pro gear, things that are made for narrower professional markets don't need to

00:18:50 ◼   ► go on sale on Black Friday.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Because the people who need those things are gonna need them anyway.

00:18:55 ◼   ► And so they're gonna buy them whenever they need them.

00:18:57 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter if they're ever on sale or not.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And so if your app or your service is something like that, where it's not really like mass

00:19:06 ◼   ► consumer focused, all the benefits of the price drop and sale marketing machine are

00:19:12 ◼   ► substantially lessened on you.

00:19:14 ◼   ► So you might be able to put your stuff on sale, but you just might be just losing money

00:19:18 ◼   ► on it.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Now you're just making less money from sales you would have already had anyway.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So this kind of marketing is not for every app.

00:19:26 ◼   ► It probably works very well for things like games and mass market productivity apps, entertainment

00:19:32 ◼   ► apps.

00:19:33 ◼   ► But I wouldn't assume that it would work very well for things that are targeting professionals.

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00:21:35 ◼   ► And the other, I guess the next thing that's probably just worth touching on briefly with

00:21:38 ◼   ► pricing is the, I guess it's understanding that in the modern app store, like price is,

00:21:47 ◼   ► in a weird way it feels odd to be talking about it because I think increasingly price

00:21:52 ◼   ► is just gone to zero.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And like you can't discount zero more.

00:21:57 ◼   ► The ultimate Black Friday sale.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Everything in the app store is now free.

00:22:01 ◼   ► It's just free and that's where it is.

00:22:02 ◼   ► And in a weird way, it's a slight bit of a relief for this kind of a problem because

00:22:09 ◼   ► I did used to anguish over a lot of these things where I would come to it in Black Friday

00:22:15 ◼   ► and you get little notes from reporters or people saying, "Hey, are you going to do any

00:22:22 ◼   ► discounts?"

00:22:23 ◼   ► Or things like that.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And you're like, "I really don't want to.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It didn't seem like that was something that was great to do."

00:22:27 ◼   ► Or something like the free app of the week.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's like, "Hmm, that's interesting, but I don't know, is that a great use for me?"

00:22:33 ◼   ► And in a weird way, it's kind of a relief now that it's like all my apps are essentially

00:22:37 ◼   ► permanently on sale because I just give them away for free.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And that is kind of nice in a weird way.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Like it's kind of backwards and broken that I would anguish about taking it from $3 to

00:22:49 ◼   ► $1, but going from $1 to $0, somehow it just feels fine.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And obviously it's because it's a different business model.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Like I'm making money in a different way.

00:22:59 ◼   ► But it is kind of nice.

00:23:00 ◼   ► It's just something that feels good on a day like today when you look at something like

00:23:06 ◼   ► sale pricing and it gets kind of weird and murky and makes you feel kind of funny sometimes.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Or at least it's really complicated to feel like you're making the right choice about.

00:23:16 ◼   ► To then just essentially be giving all your stuff away for free and then you're just like,

00:23:20 ◼   ► "Well, I don't have to worry about it."

00:23:22 ◼   ► Pricing is a decision I made that I was just going to say, "I did the binary decision of

00:23:27 ◼   ► do I want to charge money upfront or not?

00:23:30 ◼   ► I didn't.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And great.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Now that's that."

00:23:33 ◼   ► And I can just focus entirely on other aspects of the development process.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And as someone who's more of a developer than a business person or a marketing person or

00:23:42 ◼   ► those types of things, in a weird way it is kind of nice that I can take this whole class

00:23:46 ◼   ► of decision and problem and just put it to the side and say, "You know what I'm going

00:23:50 ◼   ► to do instead?

00:23:51 ◼   ► I'm just going to make my money other ways.

00:23:52 ◼   ► I'm going to make it from tip jars or advertising."

00:23:56 ◼   ► At this point, honestly, mostly it's just advertising.

00:23:58 ◼   ► It's where I make my money.

00:24:00 ◼   ► My goal is to make as many people want to stay in my app as long as they can so they'll

00:24:04 ◼   ► see the ads.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I'm like, "That's a great combination of incentives that I don't feel like anyone's going to feel

00:24:09 ◼   ► ripped off."

00:24:12 ◼   ► And I definitely have noticed this too, that one of the reasons I love making an app free

00:24:15 ◼   ► is, as we were talking about at the beginning of this show, where people can get really

00:24:19 ◼   ► upset about seemingly small amounts of money.

00:24:22 ◼   ► People will still get upset every now and then for a free app.

00:24:25 ◼   ► But in general, if they download it, they don't like it, they'll just ignore it or forget

00:24:30 ◼   ► about it because they haven't invested themselves in it.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And there's certainly a downside that you don't create that same level of commitment

00:24:39 ◼   ► and loyalty in your customer because they didn't have to pay a cover charge to get into

00:24:47 ◼   ► the club so the club feels less cool maybe.

00:24:51 ◼   ► But it definitely is a nice thing on the flip side of that, that if people don't like what

00:24:56 ◼   ► they get to go in to extend that club analogy, it's like if they don't like what the band's

00:25:00 ◼   ► playing, they can just leave and that's fine.

00:25:03 ◼   ► They don't feel like they're not going to be angry as a result.

00:25:05 ◼   ► I'm laughing so hard in my head thinking about the two of us trying to start a club to make

00:25:10 ◼   ► people feel cool.

00:25:13 ◼   ► That would be something.

00:25:15 ◼   ► It's probably not in our core competency.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I don't think if we end up… if the app business just ends up being a terrible idea and doesn't

00:25:25 ◼   ► work at some point, I doubt that's going to be our next career path going into night

00:25:29 ◼   ► life entertainment.

00:25:31 ◼   ► We should try it for one weekend though just to see how it goes.

00:25:34 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:25:35 ◼   ► And if it didn't work, it would probably only be on for 30 minutes or less.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:25:40 ◼   ► It'd be the worst club ever.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It'd be in the middle of the day.

00:25:43 ◼   ► It'd be in 30 minutes.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Anyway, it'd be very well lit.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Yes.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Very quiet.

00:25:51 ◼   ► We'd do it with acoustic foam on the roof to make sure that it's really quiet.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Oh, that would be amazing.

00:25:57 ◼   ► We'd serve coffee, of course, like nothing else.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Oh wow.

00:26:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I guess we could end here with our special Black Friday episode that's

00:26:07 ◼   ► 15% shorter.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our sponsor, Linode.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Thank you everybody for listening and we'll talk to you next week.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Bye.

00:26:15 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]