How the premium member price were determined
Hello.
I'm the developer of this app, @_horotter.
This app manages RSS feeds and its core function is to read articles aloud, and premium members can also use it with third-party podcast players.
Determining the pricing was a tough decision.
While I wanted users to use the app with minimal burden, I also need money to continue developing the app.
Currently, it's my personal project, and I'm the only one involved, but I still want to avoid significant losses every month, including server costs and other expenses.
Where the money goes
Costs include application servers, databases, storage, and notably, expenses related to Text to Speech.
By the way, free users don't generate voice data; they use the Text to Speech functionality of Android and iOS respectively, so there are no costs for Text to Speech.
Estimated costs
Roughly speaking, if one user likes the app, becomes a premium member, and uses the app diligently every day, it would cost about $30 per month for that user.
That seems odd...
When I thought users would like the app and become premium members, with each increase in premium members, I'll end up with more losses.
This is a troubling issue.
I use OpenAI's API for Text to Speech, costing $15 per million characters.
https://openai.com/pricing
By the way, using Google's Text to Speech would cost roughly the same.
For example, if I play 30 articles per day, each with 2000 characters,
2000 * 30 / 1000000 * 15 = 0.9
So, it's about $1 per day.
This is a significant amount.
If I have 100 premium members, I might need to pay at least $3000 per month.
It's bankruptcy.
Improving revenue
In reality, as the number of premium members increases, the monthly cost per person should gradually decrease.
This is because once a voice is generated, multiple users can play the same voice, so there's no need to generate a voice for each user individually.
The more overlapping users subscribing to the same RSS feed, the greater the improvement.
Conversely, if each user subscribes to completely different RSS feeds, I will incur significant liabilities.
If 50% of the articles played by the 100th premium member are already generated by other users, the monthly cost for this user would be half of the cost for the first premium member.
What about the 1000th premium member?
Probably, most of the articles they play have already been generated by other users, and by this point, the monthly cost per person should have improved significantly.
Roughly speaking, I expect that the deficit will gradually decrease starting from around 200 premium members.
In conclusion
If anyone who likes the app becomes a premium member, I have a request.
Please share this app with people around you.
Of course, as a developer, it's very rewarding to know that people install and use the app, but for continuous operation, I would be grateful if you could help a little.
Feedback and opinions are always Ilcome.
