[dvsDave]

Originally Posted by AyeCapn

If you give away the server app you get more forum owners on board actively promoting the product. Once that happens they are marketing the iPhone app to a much wider audience who then buy it. If I pay $80 and get unlimited users you get $80. If I get it for free and promote it and get 100 of my 3500 members to use it you make $200-$300.

It becomes a simple marketing strategy - give away one part to get a larger return on the second part. The trouble you have now is you've got it backwards.

Disagree. I honestly think to make this a sustainable service (that's the key word here), an $80 yearly fee is not absurd at all.

Before you go and hit the quick reply button, hear me out. Let's say this see's some serious adoption by vB forum owners and YellowCoder/Winter has to add more servers to keep the service up and running smoothly. That's an expense that has to come out of the fee's for the software and we haven't even talked about hosting/bandwidth expenses (assuming a co-lo setup).

Also, when you talk about an iPhone app, keep in mind that Apple takes their cut off the top too! Those 100 installs at $2.99 doesn't exactly translate into $299 profit. More like $200. (apple takes 30%, + $100 a year for developers)

That's also assuming your top 2.8% of your 3500 members, 1) have an iPhone, 2) would by a $3 app for your site.

That's a big IF.