<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Axel Grude wrote on 02.05.2017 00:58:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:232aab58-8aee-7d33-d047-c9cada75ec34@gmail.com">
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:ac5f0003-45bb-9d2f-76e8-4c79c02e0912@beonex.com"
id="mid_ac5f0003_45bb_9d2f_76e8_4c79c02e0912_beonex_com" class="
cite"> 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>
</blockquote>
<br>
I like that.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:232aab58-8aee-7d33-d047-c9cada75ec34@gmail.com">
<p> </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>
</blockquote>
<br>
I didn't think that would work. I'm happy it does.<br>
<br>
Thanks for your ideas and sharing your experiences.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:232aab58-8aee-7d33-d047-c9cada75ec34@gmail.com">
<p> </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>
</blockquote>
<br>
Setting price points is a "science" all by itself. Even if you let
the user enter an arbitrary amount, the suggestions you make
influence them. Ideally, you test all that with concrete A/B tests
and measure results.<br>
<br>
Ben<br>
</body>
</html>