He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app. Now he's put into a position to support those customers at $2.50/month. (He estimates their server cost is $0.10 per month.) That's an instant $125,000 per month out of his own pocket that he can't recoup from existing customers for at least the next 6 months.
Over the course of 2023, he'll have to pay Reddit $1 million MORE than he has made from the app this year.
Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps. That's fine. That's their right. But it's certainly not the app developer's fault that he's forced to quit.
> Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps
This sentiment is obviously false. Reddit doesn't want to support third-party apps at Reddit's own expense. That is reasonable.
> He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app
And now we get to the issue. This was never a sustainable business model. It depended on Reddit API being free - even at the massive volume Apollo operates at. That is unreasonable.
> And now we get to the issue. This was never a sustainable business model. It depended on Reddit API being free - even at the massive volume Apollo operates at. That is unreasonable.
Christian has already shared his correspondence on Reddit with this. He pretty clearly sought and received regular assurances that when and if Reddit moved their API to a paid model that it would be at a reasonable cost and with a flexible timeline to accommodate third party apps.
After telling him no such big moves were happening in 2023 they changed their mind, set punitively high prices and gave barely a month's notice.
> a paid model that it would be at a reasonable cost
What does this even mean? "Reasonable" is subjective - and from Reddit's perspective, I'd bet they believe the fees are reasonable.
It's on the business operator to mitigate risk. Apollo didn't do that - and is now throwing in the towel instead of charging their customer's more.
> set punitively high prices and gave barely a month's notice.
Apollo has had since April to figure out a new billing model - but sat on their hands hoping whatever Reddit came up with could be afforded with their existing $10 per year per user model. Say it out loud - it's absurd.
> Apollo has had since April to figure out a new billing model - but sat on their hands hoping whatever Reddit came up with could be afforded with their existing $10 per year per user model. Say it out loud - it's absurd.
Just stop.
You’ve been told multiple times, by multiple people, that this was not the case.
You’ve been provided the timeline, which you refuse to acknowledge.
You very well know that he was not provided the pricing until 8 days ago.
At this point, you continuing to say this is just being disingenuous and talking in bad faith.
What, exactly, are you getting out of this? Is unreasonably placing the blame on a single developer your way of getting your rocks off?
Are we reading the same information? There is not one thing I've said that is not in the linked post, or any of the previous posts regarding this topic.
You may want to believe and be sympathetic toward Apollo - fine.
That doesn't change the circumstances nor realities. Apollo screwed up, and is now throwing in the towel. It's really hard to be sympathetic towards a business operator that's made a series of bad choices and now is playing the victim card and shutting down.
You have constantly pushed a reframed timeline that isn’t actually indicative of reality. You have been told multiple times why. You have ignored multiple different things that Reddit has done in an effort to shift the blame entirely onto the Apollo dev.
You’re the only one who is finding it hard, and your constant push to shift the blame off of a massive corporation and onto a developer is frankly weird.
Re-evaluate your life choices if you truly believe this, but it’s clear you are the extreme minority here.
Says the person who has been told multiple times to stop making things up and incorrectly reframing the facts by multiple different people. The projection is strong with this one.
> This may go down in history as a case-study in how not to operate an internet business.
It certainly will, but not Apollo’s handling as you so desperately want, for whatever reason.
Reddit fucked up, are probably going to lose a chunk of their most active users and volunteer moderators, and will probably materially damage their IPO as a result of this.
You seem to be one of very few people who refuse to even remotely consider this idea.
> He also had way more than 30 day's notice and chose not to do anything until the last moment.
> He has had several months to prepare for a new billing model - but chose to do nothing.
I like how you keep on refusing to read the article, but claiming things from it that are straight up untrue.
Reddit announced less than two months ago that there would be pricing changes. But not what those prices would be. Even the loosest possible interpretation of the words "notice" and "several" barely covers that.
Explicitly:
> On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls, however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks.
And at the time, there was absolutely no indication that the prices would be this high.
> The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed.
Literally the most cursory of reading of the first few paragraphs of the OP would have given you this information.
If you aren't going to bother to read it (that's your prerogative), then don't bother making easily provably false assertions as if they were facts, either.
> This is subjective. He's basically saying he's willing to pay an amount that fit into his old, not well thought out business model, and it's up to Reddit to pay for the rest.
That's not what he said. He said that it's not feasible to transfer from the current pricing with 30 days notice.
That choice is entirely on Reddit, the situation did not demand such a short notice period. They could have smoothed it out but chose not to.
I find it strange to push the blame onto someone who was assured by Reddit of their intention to charge a reasonable price, and to work with 3rd parties on a flexible timeline for the introduction of the charges.
The worst I can say about the Apollo developer is that he believed Reddit were acting in good faith. Reddit on the other hand look like incompetent arseholes.
But like.. He asked if they had any plans to change it. And they said no. I can't imagine the hoop you're expecting him to jump through - get a seat on their board covertly?
He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app. Now he's put into a position to support those customers at $2.50/month. (He estimates their server cost is $0.10 per month.) That's an instant $125,000 per month out of his own pocket that he can't recoup from existing customers for at least the next 6 months.
Over the course of 2023, he'll have to pay Reddit $1 million MORE than he has made from the app this year.
Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps. That's fine. That's their right. But it's certainly not the app developer's fault that he's forced to quit.