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b'T-shirts\\n\\nI am doing another run of t-shirts for the show. After I did the campaign for them last fall I heard from a lot of people that they missed out. This year I\\u2019m giving the campaign a nice long run (through April 28). The shirt design this year combines three distinctly geeky things\\u2014underscores, square brackets and fixed width fonts.\\n\\n\\n\\nShirts are $14.59 (never longer than 15 minutes). Get one at http://teespring.com/developing .\\n\\nWrapping up\\n\\nI have published the consolidated, summarized article for my Towards a Better App Store series.\\n\\nUnconventional Wisdom\\n\\nToday I thought it might be fun to start another series of episodes. I like doing series because then I don\\u2019t have to think so much about my topic each week. The concept I\\u2019m starting with is modeled a bit after debate exercise where you are given a topic or statement then told to take either the pro or against position. The process of having to defend either side of an argument often helps to think in ways you wouldn\\u2019t otherwise. Along those lines I\\u2019m going to try and take the intentionally contrarian position against \\u2018conventional wisdom\\u2019 in the software business.\\n\\nThe result is something that isn\\u2019t 100% my actual position on things but should be productive and hopefully thought provoking nevertheless. I\\u2019ll be making sweeping, un-nuanced statements for effect. As with everything in life, it is more complicated than I\\u2019m going to present it. The interesting part of being in business is navigating that nuance for yourself.\\n\\nThe first topic I\\u2019m going to attack is pricing.\\n\\nPaid software is good for customers and developers?\\n\\nWhen I first got into the software business nearly 6 years ago the prevailing \\u2018best practice\\u2019 for software sales was to charge a reasonable up front price for your product. Then provide minor update and bug-fix update patches for free. Then charge (with upgrade pricing) for each major update to the product. This model had worked pretty well for many years and had grown up in the era of boxed software. More importantly this system had been widely accepted by customers as reasonable and appropriate.\\n\\nIt is, however, an awful way to sell software. For, at least, 3 reason.\\n\\nBarrier to entry\\n\\nSoftware typically has an extremely low marginal cost. Unless you are hosting media for your customers you can typically add one more customer to your user-base for a tiny cost. Even with things like customer support you each additional user is essentially free. As such charging a large up front amount for your software doesn\\u2019t make sense. This pricing model could only be maintained in an uncompetitive marketplace. Otherwise, you will quickly be undercut by someone else who is willing to lower their prices, to get them closer to their marginal costs.\\n\\nYou are also scaring away potential customers. Often the hardest part of selling software is getting it known to potential customers. If you finally have a customer considering your product (after whatever long, drawn out marketing effort) and then you put up a barrier to them then actually getting it you are shooting yourself in the foot. That is likely your only chance to convince them to download it, make that process as easy as possible.\\n\\nUnsustainable\\n\\nThe paid software model is fundamentally unsustainable. To most clearly demonstrate this imagine a world where your paid sales are going well, you\\u2019ve built up a reasonable customer-base of happy users and then suddenly your sales drop off. The reason for the drop off isn\\u2019t particularly important. You now find yourself in an extremely awkward position. You continue to have expenses and have made commitments for minor updates to your customers but have no income to back them up. You either need to start squeezing your existing users progressively harder for additional income or go out of business.\\n\\nThe fundamental flaw in this model was that each purchase was necessarily short-lived. You had no plan to make a continuous income from your product. Each day you need to find more people to buy your software. A process that will be progressively harder and more expensive to do. You\\u2019ve spent all the good-will of your customers all once.\\n\\nImagine instead a business model that is based on subscriptions or advertising. This is far better. Now your viability as a business is directly based on how used your software actually is! Should your application fall out of favor and your customers stop using it, then fine, your income drops but nobody has any commitments that you are then not following through on if you cease development. If it is wildly successful then you have a virtuous cycle of more revenue for more development.\\n\\nHorribly Abrupt\\n\\nThe nature of the paid model is to get large bundles of income along with significant updates. Your sales will often then fall down dramatically thereafter. This means that you are essentially in a feast-and-famine cycle. You need to store up and be frugal enough with the days of plenty to survive through the days of want. I can say from experience this is horrifically stressful. As you chip away at your storehouse your level of comfort will dramatically reduce. While conceptually you could say that it is functionally identical to getting the same overall amount evenly over the same period, human nature says otherwise. There are few things as comforting as a dependable, consistent income. Something paid apps simply don\\u2019t provide.'