How do I grow a paid app in a mostly free competitive landscape?
I used to work on a free personal finance app called Penny (https://www.pennyapp.io/). From my experience at Penny, I knew that people were willing to pay for certain premium features in a finance app.
I'm now working on a side project Honest Money, a paid-only finance app that is focused on a really good expense tracking experience. After getting ~10 beta testers (mostly friends/family) on board, I'm finding it difficult to convince strangers to even try a paid solution when most apps out there are free.
Does anyone here have experience on growing a paid solution in a free competitive landscape?
Is it a one-time purchase or a subscription?
For a subscription, you can offer a free 14 day trial. That's actually how I got hooked into the finance app that I currently use.
It's really about trust so if you want someone to give up their money for the app, I would ask the question: "How can I get a potential customer to trust me?" instead of asking "How can I get them to pay?"
Good advice! I can definitely experiment with both a free 14 day trial and some sort of free feature set to get people using the product first.