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.