The problem with paying for digital content.

I would have used tons of apps , come across many streaming services, digital news subscriptions and the likes over the last 1 year. Most of the content today is usually available as free and premium. As the name suggests premium is where you pay to get access to exclusive content, remove ads and the likes.

Till date i have paid for digital content but only when i found the service to be unique and integral to my daily life. I paid for the pro version of a popular podcasts app called Pocket casts and i purchased a monthly subscription for Hotstar(online video streaming service).

I paid for pocket casts since i never found a feature rich podcast player and i paid for Hotstar since it had all the shows i view regularly and the monthly subscription was cheap at Rs 200.

Monetising from an app is a tough deal for developers since people generally don't pay for premium digital content as the free version is "good enough". This is the reason why i just look for an alternative app if an app i am using currently is constantly coaxing me to upgrade to premium.

Also there are plenty of apps out there and once an app becomes popular you can be sure that someone will just replicate the same. This is extremely prevalent on the google play store compared to the app store.

So i think the way to get people to pay for apps and digital content is to make sure they become a crucial part of people's lives. People must find it so useful that they would be willing to pay for it in order to enjoy greater access to it. Also people are extremely short on attention span since they will install and uninstall apps at a rapid rate.

Getting them to form a habit with a digital content is extremely crucial i think to get them to pay for the same. If i like an app so much then yeah i will pay to upgrade and get a better experience.