Comments on: Conversation with Mike Lee: iPhone Developer, Innovator, Rebel

By: Bored

Bored — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:57:26 +0000

i don’t get it why is his blog called motherfucker

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:55:06 +0000

Wunderkin, I agree with you. A demo model is a great model, at least until a company can establish itself as a known provider of quality software.

Design, thank you. I’m glad your daughter loves TTR.

By: design

design — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:16:21 +0000

Tap Tap is awesome. My daughter can’t get enough of it.

By: wunderkind

wunderkind — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:08:58 +0000

The best idea is a hybrid system. free for a trial — open to everybody — and then you pay.

no doubt with the recession we need to move past “free forever” business models.

no???

By: Tristan O'Tierney

Tristan O'Tierney — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:58:14 +0000

@John: Can you name a free service that doesn’t use ads? A lot of people (me included, and so is Mike if you didn’t guess) hate ads. They’re useless and annoying and they force you to compromise your site for the sake of the advertisers. Some people, like Apple, don’t compromise on quality and selling BETTER software for money than crap software for free is going to win over the quality segment which is clearly a profitable market.

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:31:01 +0000

Let’s hope! If I wasn’t able to learn from failure, I’d be half the douche bag I am today. ;^)

By: Another John

Another John — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:22:47 +0000

I gotta say… watching the Mike Lee meltdown as it happens is pretty entertaining. Hopefully this whole thing will be a humbling experience for him and he comes back with at least 10% less douchery for his next venture. Seeing how huge his ego currently is, that’s probably the most we can hope for.

Shipley taught the boy well. lol

By: Fred Krueger

Fred Krueger — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:19:27 +0000

I would tend to side with Mike on the free versus paid, at least for now. While free web services like Yahoo and Google have been able to survive off of advertising, they exist on a much larger scale than iPhone apps (today).

Let’s take a hypothetical example: take a free game (like Tap Tap Revenge). Assume that the installed base is 1 million (very few apps have such an installed base at this point, but lets go with it). Now, of the 1 million, lets assume that about 5% use it monthly — probably a high estimate, actually. That’s 50,000 people, say 10 visits per person — 500,000 visits per month.

Now at a 2$ ecpm (note the e in ecpm) we get a grand total of $1000 a month in ad revenue.

Now contrast that to the paid model. If 1Million people will download the free app, probably (although this is just a wild guess), 1% of those people would spend a few dollars for the app. Even at 1$, we get $10,000 in profits — which will trump the subscription model unless you are looking for a multi-year return horizon.

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:58:19 +0000

If I had an ego, I would think I was smart enough to make money by giving my work away for free. I think most people would do better — and this true of any industry — to stick to a simple, tit-for-tat monetization model.

As far what I know about, you’re conjecturing rather negatively on something you know nothing about. Should we consider your comment “dilusional”?

By: John

John — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:41:44 +0000

Free has worked in creating alot of great companies. Yahoo for example..On the new side, two billion dollar revenue businesses built off free include MySpace and Skype. I will leave aside the entire radio business and most of the TV business.

As usual, this guy is speaking about things he does not know anything about with a certainty that can only be created by having a big massive ego or being dilusional.

He has told us a number of times that he has no ego.