Things Real People Don't Say About Your App

Why would it suck? What's wrong in paying for the product?

It's an email address and a personal website. How expensive should it be to have a quality version of both?

A few years ago I'd have agreed with that, but recently I changed my mind: why not pay directly for things you like? Ads on the web a scourge, they really do make the whole experience of using a site worse for the customer. And they can't really be a good deal for advertisers either. I can't remember the last time I ever clicked on an ad, and I definitely never purchased anything after clicking on a banner. Ads are a scam business. Sure, Facebook and Google are basing their business on it, but how long until this house of cards finally collapses?

However, alternative models are scarce. Subscription-based sites mostly don't work. Donation-based models can be somewhat successful, but only with huge user bases and even then they'll never be as financially successful as the ad-based fantasy businesses of Facebook et al. I think a karma-based economy is worth exploring. For example, if everyone allocated an arbitrary sum each month to spend on services they like, then we would just need one or more payment services that distributed this sum among all the sites you gave "karma" to in a given month.

You know what would be totally awesome? Paying for Gmail and Facebook so I don't have to deal with any fricking ads, and so I can expect a commensurate amount of commitment from the companies that run them.

Yeah, that one is the best so far probably.

Hmm, I wonder what the solution to this could be.

But did that make you a returning customer, or did you still just abandon the site?