[ryanmerket]

Basic math? Let's do the math...

Let's say Apollo, Relay, or RIF charged $2/mo per user. Would that be enough to cover their expenses?

Looking at Reddit's now API pricing, 100 calls per day per average user would cost $0.72 / month.

Google/Apple App Stores take a 15% commission on subscriptions so a total per month per customer average cost would be $0.83 cents.

That means the devs would make $0.98 cents per month per user on a $2 subscription fee. (30 cents to Google, 73 cents to reddit, 98 cents left to pocket).

With this user base, even if only like 20,000 people subscribe the devs stand to make $20,000 every month in profit.

The Relay for Reddit dev breaks it down here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RelayForReddit/comments/147152b/upd...

Apollo has 1.5 MILLION monthly active users. With a 50% conversion rate (meaning half of the users decide to subscribe) and charging $2.00 a month, he would make $750,000 / PER MONTH. That's with the new Reddit fees.

More: https://www.reddit.com/r/RelayForReddit/comments/147152b/com...

[tyg13]

50% conversion is laughably high. The number of people in that Relay thread saying they wouldn't pay for the app was unsurprising to me. Not to mention that 3rd party apps would still not have access to NSFW content. I'd be surprised if the conversion rate was as high as 10%. The estimate I saw for current subscribers ($1/month) to Apollo was 50k which is a little over 3% of users.

[ryanmerket]

Even if it was 10% he's still printing cash for a lifestyle business.

That 1% is an optional $1.49/mo. If it's a mandatory $2.99/mo you're looking at 10-20% easy. And he's printing cash.

[tyg13]

Still way too high. Also, the actual figure I saw from the Apollo dev (different from the Relay dev's numbers) was 345 API calls per day per user, which changes your math significantly.

The other issue was that 30 days notice is not even close to enough time to pivot in terms of business model. He mentioned he has significant operating costs already, due to paying for caching servers as well as part-time help. Not only does he already have to refund users who paid for year-long subscriptions, but he'd also have to turn around and ask them for almost double the money for the same service.

The fact that he's shuttering his business entirely (thus foregoing all potential profit) rather than "printing money" as you put it, makes me think he has a good reason to think his financial situation is a lot more untenable than your rough analysis would indicate.