Hey devs, what is your plan for financing the app?
Hey team. Thanks for a great app!
I was just wondering, and not sure if you have already mentioned it, but what is your plan for a funding model for the app in the long term?
Some kind of one-off payment maybe, or a subsrciption model?
After all the crap at Reddit with Christian being essentially priced out of making an affordable app by spez, it’l be interesting to see how you plan to go forwards financially here. I ask this knowing that there will be ongoing costs your side and I would willing to help fund that.
On a side note, I guess Memmy users are signing up through many different instances. Apart from whatever your funding model is for the app, would it be possible to also add a payment option for those who want to donate to whichever instance they use? IMO that’d be a pretty useful extra feature.
Would love to know what y’all think.
I'm seeing some conflicting comments in this thread. Feels like some people are confusing us with the server admins, and also how Lemmy works in general.
Some points:
Sorry for the rambling, I am very bad at organizing my thoughts. Let me know if you guys have any questions.
Thanks for the reply and your thoughts!
Love the app, love your ethos. Keep being awesome!
The best in my opinion as a user would be to offer a basic version and a very cheap (like 2 or 3 bucks) one time payment premium version which has some convenient features.
I do not pay for premium versions to get rid of ads, and I would hate to see ads in the basic version. I do pay off it's cheap and I appreciate the dev
An alternative would be what Wikipedia or Ao3 does: a banner pinned to the top indicating their needs.
I don’t think a one time fee that small would be enough, especially as the Fediverse/this instance grows, and while it’d be most convenient to put it straight into the app, as another option, I imagine Apple would swallow a hefty chunk of any earnings.
We would literally never ever put ads in this app lol. Plus its OSS, you could always fork it and remove adds and use it (if you knew how).
They will charge crazy high fees for API access
Fantastic idea. Are there any downsides?
None. Nothing bad will happen. Source: Spez.
First I can't speak for the Memmy devs but here's my personal experience:
In theory something like a mobile app doesn't really have any reoccurring costs, at least not with Lemmy, etc... Not natively, anyway. Sure there's the $100 cost for an iOS dev account but that's nothing in the end. Should Lemmy start to introduce API access fees, again that could change, but that's a long way off if ever.
The question really comes down to, long term, how much time are the devs spending on development and if they want to make money with this or not.
As some of us find this sort of development, well "fun", and just do this as a hobby rather than as an income stream. And any small costs we'll just eat because quite frankly we were going to build these apps anyway, if not just for ourselves why not share them with the rest of the community?
Long story short, Memmy (and the other mobile apps) may not need to charge anything as it's not costing the devs anything more than time. Now Lemmy itself, is a completely different story.
I am more than willing to also invest in „just their time fun projects“ if that keeps the motivation high.
Besides: they might need to include other APIs $$$ have future or hidden costs for hosting or want to pay for media (logos) or licenses and whatnot. Or simply afford actual testing devices instead of simulators…
Long story short I would embrace paying for the App, be it one-time or recurring.
Totally agree.
Just wanted to point out that app development has different costs, sometimes none, associated with it vs hosting something like a Lemmy instance.
But p.s. logos and artwork can be bundled with the app itself. I assume, but I could be wrong, that many mobile devs have at least a handful of test devices available. Although the simulators have come a long way. But agreed test devices, especially newer ones can be expensive.
I think he meant paying designers to have logos made, not hosting, which is actually a cost for us at the moment as we are planning on doing that 😁
He really meant that and If your are not at least considering http://yannicklung.com for the gig he is a little bit disappointed 😉
Oh those are so nice. We could definitely consider him. Does he use Memmy?
Honestly, idk. But he made the current woolly icon and outdid himself with an additional apollo logo.
I've actually had an idea for funding both 3rd-party apps and potentially server instances: a reddit gold-equivalent.
It essentially would function like a super-upvote (no impact on post/comment rank, just "cosmetic"). Users can buy it through the app or website (for instances that allow and support it), and the cost would be fixed to some (low) value. That way, it's like a donation with perks.
However, this would only support the app/instance where "Lemmy gold" is purchased. So, instead, when the user gives gold to a post/comment, the donation gets split between the user's home instance, the instance where the post/comment is hosted, and the app/instance where the gold was purchased (either even split or some percentage TBD).
I think this would help offset the costs of running an instance, developing an app and handling banking transactions, but of course it's a rough idea. I'd be happy to know what potential issues/avenues for exploitation people could find with such a system.
I do have a bit of relevant programming experience but sadly not much time for it. I'd imagine the way to get it started is to run an experimental instance and collaborate with a specific app like memmy in the beginning, then make one-on-one agreements with other instances until it becomes a norm across the federation.
Some random thoughts:
Thoughts? (Sorry for the wall of text, had this idea brewing for some time)