🤔 Deciding What Features are Paid and Which are Free

Part of what I want to do even as the app changes, is not Even then, I'm still building new free features.

I think I'm going to have a lot of quesitons about this in the future, so I wanted to be transparent with folks on how this decision gets made.

There's only one question that is currently asked right now:

Ongoing costs are costs that are continuing and do not have an end. They can be monthly or annual charges that we have to pay in order to keep things working. In other words, things that my monthly bills, not just keep them at the same baseline. A side note that if I am able to decrease the baseline, it means I can make more features free in the future.

come in three major categories:

Examples of things that , assuming that they do not get more complex. Depending on how well app monetization goes, I can also then have enough money to invest in things that are one time fees.

Hope this helps folks understand a little bit more about my thought process!

Well, this has become my weird little log of developer updates, so I figured I'd share this here.

As a side note, I really wish people would see the amount of effort I'm putting in to think about my users. I'm trying so hard to keep everyone happy, while also having the boot of capitalism on my neck.

In case you're wondering why I've started pushing premium, deck sales are no longer enough to finance the app. I think it's a mix of economic factors, the easy availability of counterfeit decks (including mine unfortunately), and on the positive side, a ton of new deck creators that are doing amazing work. With counterfeiting, I don't have the motivation to make new decks anymore. I've seen the writing on the wall for a while now, which means that this app is no longer sustainable as entirely free. For 7+ years (and more, if you include Golden Thread Tarot) I've offered it without needing to monetize at all - not even ads, but this is no longer the case. More and more people are coming into the app, using resources - sometimes to build their own businesses ontop of, and I'm here footing the bill.

People are not nice about this transition. I know it sucks when something you love has to monetize, but I'm human, and I deserve to pay my rent and eat too. Anyone telling me that I don't, only makes me feel like I be more greedy, and I be cynical, and I be charging up the wazoo for the work I'm doing, because it reinforces the idea that I have nobody looking out for me except myself. If you came here, and you found the app to be , but then also get angry at me when I'm trying to survive, just like you -- it means you're not just fine with exploiting my free labor, but you feel entitled to it. And maybe that means you're the kind of user that I don't want around. I'm happy to continue serving free users, but I'm not okay with this kind of attitude and verbal abuse.

Honestly, my mental health is in the shitter because of this. I have always gotten verbal abuse from strangers on the internet, for ridiculous reasons (they disliked a reading they got, they hated that I moved a button, they hated that I changed the UI), sometimes going as far is threatening to kill me, chop my legs off, hunt me down and rape me, but I have never gotten as much as I have now.

Why do I have to remind people that I am human too? Is it because people think that it's like a giant team making this with venture money? I don't get it. I get frustrated at companies sometimes, but I don't think I have ever told a customer service person that they were a "cunt with a broken brain" or any other vile thing people have said to me thus far.

It is not easy. I sometimes want to just pull everything I've built off the internet out of a mix of exhaustion and spite -- a digital suicide, if you will.

Have you guys ever heard of the Ruby programmer, _why?

He made a bunch of coding tutorials that were so whimsical, playful and downright weird. Then he mysteriously deleted everything he made off the internet one day.

I do not have the same talent as _why? Not even close. But I've thought a lot about him since I first started getting that kind of abuse. I've wanted to do something similar for years and years. I still do.

You would think that I would have grown some thick skin by now, but I think that will never happen. My personality isn't built that way. I absorb negative feedback like a sponge, and I automatically think that people who say nice things to me are just making platitudes. That is a me problem. I, like everyone, am a product of a very specific trauma, and I am a work in progress.

In the meantime, I still need to exist in this godforsaken hellscape of a planet while sustaining my meatbag body in meatbag space. So here I am, trying. Lately, my only coping mechanism has been responding to positive reviews, so at least I have to be forced to read them, to try and absorb some positive stuff to counteract the negative stuff. And no, there is no separation between me and "the business". I am "the business" because I make everything here.

You know, a long long long time ago, before Labyrinthos, and when there was only Golden Thread Tarot, I kept getting told from other folks in the tarot space to charge for it. But my stubborn, stupid self thought there was value in being able to offer a free resource out of misplaced idealism. I do not think that anymore. I think the cost is too much, and not just in a financial sense, I mean in a soul-sucking, spiritual sense. If I could go back in time, I would tell my past self to charge. There is no honor in giving away the things you make for free. Nobody values free things. If you give yourself away for free, you're just opening up space for folks who only want to use and exploit you.

If you're someone out there reading ths, please don't become me. Charge what you're worth.

This is like the 3rd time I've written out some form of this, after I told myself I'm just going to close this chapter and move on. But I keep getting retriggered, and I'm now starting to think that there's no way to move on, but only through.