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<div id="newHeaderAG1" style="font-size: x-small; padding:1em;
background-color:rgba(220,220,240,0.4); border-radius:3px;"> <b>Subject:</b>Re:
Donations<br>
<b>From:</b>Ben Bucksch <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ben.bucksch@beonex.com"><ben.bucksch@beonex.com></a><br>
<b>To:</b>Tb-planning <br>
<b>Sent: </b>Monday, 01/05/2017 21:22:30 21:22 GMT ST +0100
[Week 18]<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:ac5f0003-45bb-9d2f-76e8-4c79c02e0912@beonex.com"
id="mid_ac5f0003_45bb_9d2f_76e8_4c79c02e0912_beonex_com" class="
cite">Axel Grude wrote on 01.05.2017 21:19:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" id="Cite_7417478" class=" cite">Postbox
has recently switched to a lifetime license (but only for
version 5) for less. While I think that there are quite a few
users who would accept this sort of payment I would bet you
would also find many more supporting Thunderbird with10$ or 5$ /
year.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Quite possible. The user would be able to choose how much to
donate. This is just a suggestion.
<br>
<br>
Which suggestions work best is something we need to find out, by
testing.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" id="Cite_7200617" class=" cite">As one of
the few Addon authors who monetises
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Which addon is that? And what are your personal experiences?
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>This is QuickFolders and the experience was overall very positive
(except for one nightmare user [*]). License adoption is good, and
I have a license renewal that is cheaper; even sold a few domain
licenses. I have to say this is on the back of a very generous
community of donators, so I knew that people were already
interested in supporting the value that the Addon gave them. I
have been selling licenses for about 2 years now</p>
<p>My ideas to make the idea of Addon specific monetization more
acceptable were these:</p>
<ul>
<li>I wanted to make sure that I kept developing the Addon,
keeping it in sync with the Thunderbird changes and pushing
functions forward</li>
<li>I kept releasing a free (as in beer) version and made sure it
wasn't seriously lacking in functionality</li>
<li>The licensed "premium" version has some added functions, and
keyboard shortcuts for some functions (such as quickjump)</li>
<li>I wanted to "give back" to those users who gave donations
anyway (and thus financed everyone else)<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I think (at least from a XPCOM-based Addons) these points are all
good and have to be communicated in some form in order to motivate
for some cash to change hands. Whether this can be applied to a
whole App that has been "free as in beer" for many years is
obviously debatable. Also, I do give free personal email support
to all users who reach out to me, so I have written hundreds of
often highly descriptive emails and made a fairly comprehensive
support site; without this ongoing effort I would not have
considered monetization. I think end-user <b>engagement </b>is
super important in Software - I think this should be discussed in
greater detail regarding Thunderbird as well as part of the
monetization debate. <br>
</p>
<p>The technical side was quite difficult as I wanted a
"client-only" verification without any server callbacks, all the
while staying 100% open source. Kent James gave me some ideas and
then I had to implement my own decryption algorithm - an
encryption library built into Thunderbird would be very helpful
for this purpose. The premium functions are all built into the
standard Addon and are merely activated, so no additional
downloads / installations are necessary.<br>
</p>
<p>I am currently planning to also monetize the next big version of
quickFilters in the same way; biggest problem as always is the
initial price point, definitely lower than QuickFolders as it has
a narrower, more focused approach. Picking the price is probably
the hardest decision, ideally you want this to be completely at
the consumer's digression, but that may not be wise with a limited
amount of users (27k QF / 15k qF) - the better strategy is to pick
a slightly higher price and then offer special sales for people
with limited budgets, but that's a lot of work.</p>
<p>That's all I can think of right now, I gladly answer any specific
questions!</p>
<p> Axel<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>[*]... who demanded that I change my licensing mechanism to
detect per computer instead of based on email; it's a long story -
he wanted to use the addon on the same Computer with his wife's
profile on a different program (Postbox) - I offered a second free
license and even put in a technical workaround to add a secondary
email address, but they were very adament that it should be
possible to check the global registry</p>
<p><br>
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