no demand · 1 month

Subscription billing for a $10 upgrade

A one-time $10 account upgrade sold steadily and had done for a long time, so the company decided to try the same thing as a subscription. A month of engineering to get the subscription code ready, then a deploy to a percentage of users, and the answer came back immediately: nobody wanted it.

Nobody said what it cost. Our estimate is ≈ $18,000 — 160 hours at about $110 an hour, 2009.

Told by jmathes on Hacker News, 22 Oct 2009. Retold here in our words, with some of theirs kept; the original is linked above.

Written by them, summarised by us, and linked back. Ask us to take it down and we will, no questions.