While we may have varied from original topic of the thread, it is very
relevant.
For $9 who would you run instead? How much hosting would that buy you at
DreamHost? Or Amazon Or Rackspace. Same question at $50, and $500
Most solutions have sweet spots in pricing, and as one of the larger
consumers of GAE, I should be one of the most irate about the price
increase, and after the FAQ, and some concessions that were made with
smaller instances for Python. I'm not sweating it. Would I have been
happier with a pricing model that was 30% less, or charged for my memory
rather than my Instance. Yeah, but I think Google did the fairest thing
they could do, suck a little more out of everyone about equally. Probably
me more than most because My App is so far from what the expected use case
was that I was practically a free loader before this.
I don't look to pick fights when I say "$9 is nothing you can make that
back" I don't mean that as a smack to your personal model, I mean with a
sense of reality. Do you think Google Gives Chrome away for free because
they are nice people? They are in it to make money. "Free samples are now
limit one per customer" doesn't seem like a bad change when so many people
(me included) were making a lunch of them and not buying anything more than
a pack of gum on the way out.
But Google isn't going to make money on a $9 account, to make it work YOU
have to graduate to being a $150, 300, 500, and $5000 a month account.
("There is no payment service that will let you bill $.50 a month") the
amount of time Greg and Ikai and all the Googlers put in to this forum
likely costs more than our combined bills. I know that that support they
have given me personally wouldn't cover my monthly spend, and I suspect I'm
in the upper 1% of spenders.
When the NPO's say they aren't able to come up with the $9 I feel bad for
them. The rest of us. No. If we build an app it should either be "fun" and
we don't care about the $120 a year, or it should be break even or better.
I know there are quite a few Berkley Grads at Google, but it aint no hippy
commune. This is capitalism and that's what drives innovation.
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Vinuth Madinur
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 1:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [google-appengine] Re: FAQ for out of preview pricing changes
1. What I pay for appengine is not a function of my revenue. Whether or not
I will put adsense in my app is beyond the scope of this thread.
2. Exceeding free quota doesn't happen in as big step as $0 -> $9. Mine is
an app that deals with images. I would cross free quota only in terms of
space consumed. I don't have an option to keep going within the free
quota(it's not just about serving requests). And if I were to pay for this
extra space consumed, $9 is steep, much steeper than the price if free quota
was absent.
3. Frankly, there is a whole spectrum of applications, with different
resource requirements and revenue making potentials. Discussing $9 in these
terms is not productive. I could say that since you easily make $2500 from
adsense alone, you should also be able to charge your customers $0.50 per
month and be able to pay google $500 per month. That kind of talk would of
course be rubbish.
Thanks,
Vinuth.
On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:20 PM, Brandon Wirtz <[email protected]> wrote:
Pay pal will do $5 a year annual subscriptions.
It has a front end... if there is a front end you can stick ads there...
Yeah iphone sucks for ad revenue....Have you considered that "Other" mobile
OS, the one from Google?
;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeff Schnitzer
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 12:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [google-appengine] Re: FAQ for out of preview pricing changes
You presume that my app has a web front end. Most of the users of this
particular app are iPhone clients, and the developer responsible for that
code has moved on to other projects.
...and actually, there does seem to be a vast chasm between successful apps
and unsuccessful ones. I'm not entirely certain why. It may partly be due
to the fact that no payment system in the world lets you charge $0.50/mo.
Jeff
On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 12:21 AM, Brandon Wirtz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Anything getting enough traffic to cross the free barrier should be
> able to have a revenue stream. Especially if you thought it was going
> to be a commercial venture. And this is cold hearted but if you have
> loyal users who are using the app that much and none of them will pony
> up $.50 a month... That's rough.
>
> The Reason I don't think anyone should complain about the $9 number is
> that anyone should be able to put Adsense on their app and make $9.
>
> I may be biased, but I have an App that averages a penny a day right
> now, and generates $2500 a month in Adsense. There has to be some
> economic model that works between my extreme and yours.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeff Schnitzer
> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 12:10 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [google-appengine] Re: FAQ for out of preview pricing
> changes
>
> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Brandon Wirtz <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> Put some ads on it and it should get to the $9 a month. Put a donate
>> button on it.
>
> It's never that simple, and certainly isn't in this case.
>
> That said, Google certainly doesn't owe anyone a free service layer,
> nor a linear ramp-up to paid service. And apps around the limit of
> the free service tier are probably something to discourage since they
> actually consume resources. Still, I'm more likely to contribute
> *some* money for my forlorn projects if the cost was not a
> discontiguous function.
>
> Jeff
>
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