Tell HN: Why I'm ecstatic at Apple's subscription model.

The AppStore is not an easy-money kind of environment. It rewards hard work and quality, and consequently we've been able to do relatively well there. But as it has evolved it has become clear that low app costs are a permanent fixture.

So, for the past several months I've been working on moving our bread and butter app from a "Pay us $3 and use it forever" to a SaaS model. We'll make the app free, and give people 3-4 months of cloud service to go with the app. (This cloud service is a genuine value add for the app, so we're shifting models by adding a fundamental new feature.)

Then for the ones that like our App and stick use it-- and we get about %20 retention with some really fanatical users now-- the cloud service is a $1 a month subscription.

So, instead of making $2 per customer, we'll be making $8.40 per year for customers retain.

Further, as a free app we'll get at least an order of magnitude more customers, which means likely 5 times as many long term users as we're getting now trying to collect Customer-Lifetime-Revenue before they've even had a chance to try our app.

This is a much better model for apps where it makes sense.

Why are so many people complaining? Generally, it seems those who are complaining are not making their own product. I can understand how reselling something another person has made means tough margins. (Which makes me wonder how these book publishers are doing on Amazon where they take %70 in many cases, and only go down to %30 if they let you set the pricing.)

I looked at the Amazon Android Store terms the other day. They are horrible. The wording is vague but it looks like Amazon will pay you between %20 and %70, and they get to set the price. Which means if Amazon wants to do a $1 sale on your app to promote their store, tough for you.

But I also think the publisher model is on the way out- at least on the app store.

If I make an iOS game, I don't need to find a publisher, I don't need to appease the publisher producer, or any of that crap. I've been down that road. The game industry is broken because of the power that publishers have. (Or it was broken when I left.)

I am very happy that all I have to do is just distribute on the AppStore. Apple takes %30, but handles distribution, updates, customer service, taking credit cards, does a decent cross sell and will send me good marketing if I happen to get featured. That's worth %30 to me.