Absolutely true. The other big reason to charge is you'll get dramatically more honest feedback from users about what to improve. Feedback on a free SaaS: "oh, that's nice". Feedback on a site costing $20/month: "I won't buy till you fix X,Y,Z".
I agree. The problem is that the things I would pay for -- no one else would. I'm the type of person who would rather pay extra for television with no commercials at all. (I actually don't watch TV, but that's just an example).
One thing I'm wondering is: what if Instagram had charged $0.99 for their app? Would it be where it is now? I would certainly pay, but I'm not sure everyone else would. Or even Youtube. Would Youtube have succeeded if they charged for access?
The problem is that the things I would pay for -- no one else would.
This is just not true. People value and will pay for lots of things that others think have no value and won't pay for. In most cases, you are not your audience.
I think the case you are making is a little exaggerated. It is not impossible to judge whether something you created is any good or not, without charging for it. The feedback that Joe is getting in the app store is not entirely worthless.
Additionally customers who are not willing to pay aren't necessarily "better" customers. For example in the case of Twitter verus App.net. I'm guessing the people who are willing to pay for App.net are a very selective group of geeky tech nerds. (I'm one of those people.) Listening to those people will lead you to develop a version of Twitter that appeals to them. If you want to develop a version of Twitter that appeals to normal people, charging money will attract the wrong crowd.
Agree wholeheartedly. As my first attempt at iOS I built an iPad app for Tumblr. It was an experiment, and fun, and of course I put it up for free since I played the "I just don't know if it's worth it" game, teamed with a "well, I don't want pissed off comments" dance.
Fast forward over a year. 120K downloads and 1.6m+ app-based reblogs later, I still have daily feature requests, hate/love mail, a horrible set of reviews and no inspiration to build it up to be worth a few dollars. Of course my situation is only mine and one can say "now's the perfect time", but that's another debate.
