My program was free for a few months. With the latest set of new features, I split it into a lite and a pro version, just uploaded last night. There were, admittedly, a few hitches in the conversion which scared people into thinking they lost their data (and there is almost no way for me to communicate with them and help them fix the problem and find their data). At any rate, aside from comments complaining about seemingly lost data (it was just moved, not lost, I swear, but I have no way to TELL them, thanks market for nothing!!!) there were also a few complaints about the new lite version's limitations. The drunkards had gotten sloshed at the trough of my free version and were incredulous that I would now limit the new lite version (with all its new features) and charge for the new pro version.
...This in spite of the fact that I explicitly offered the old version as a download through my website for any users who wanted to revert to the older, unlimited version, and explained this fact on the splash screen and in the help document of the new lite version. Lessons learned: If you give your program away for free initially, and then try to charge later as you add features and deem the program's growing sophistication worthy of compensation, people hate you like the plague. Additionally, even if you provide a way to revert to the old unlimited version, thus effectively easing the new version from history with regard to any one user, people don't care, they still hate you even though they can get their old functionality back. They resent you for the very *notion* that you would start charging for a previously free product. On Mar 17, 6:17 am, Muthu Ramadoss <[email protected]> wrote: > Can't there be a lite and pro versions always? > > On Mar 17, 2009 6:40 PM, "Stoyan Damov" <[email protected]> wrote: > > Correction :) > > Started as *C* (release both paid and free), moved to B (paid only), > will move to C and then back to B :) > > On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Stoyan Damov <[email protected]> > wrote: > Started as B, now C... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
