Founders

There are 3 business models for apps.

1. Free with ads
2. Subscription
3. Transaction fee

The common thread for all three models is the user—a person, business or AI—has money to spend. 

That’s obvious for 2 and 3 since the model involves spending money directly with the app.

But for 1, if your user base doesn’t have money to spend, the ability to monetize via ads will be low.

Working on Farcaster and Warpcast. Longer thoughts at https://dwr.email

Pay one time has mostly been replaced by subscriptions.

Many games still have this model. MMOs of course are subscription. 

But if you do still have that model, it’s pretty common to charge once per version, eg HipsterCalendar v1 v2 v3 etc, which is basically a subscription just opt in vs opt out. Same applies to AAA games with a regular release cadence, eg Call of Duty.

good things take time—frictionless experiences—product × strat × ops

I still remember back in the early app days when I'd be disgusted that some app cost $5 in the app store.

Little did I realize that the free ones weren't truly free.