039 iPhreaks Show – Subscription APIs for Recurring Revenue with Manton Reece

Panel

Manton Reece (twitter github blog)
Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast)
Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog)
Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog)
Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software)
Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up)

Discussion
01:13 - Manton Reece Introduction

VitalSource
Riverfold Software

01:33 - Subscription APIs and Recurring Revenue
02:25 - How Subscriptions Work
12:10 - In-app Purchases

Non-renewing Subscriptions
Auto Renewing Subscriptions

16:11 - Verifying Receipts

Store Kit

19:32 - Subscription Levels

Changing Plans

25:14 - Payments

Stripe vs PayPal

Picks

Eric S. Raymond: The Lost Art of C Structure Packing (Jaim)
Torchlight II (Ben)
SC2Casts (Ben)
after_party (Ben)
thebennybox (Ben)
Using Receipts to Protect Your Digital Sales (Ben)
Using Store Kit for In-App Purchases (Ben)
2 Free (Technical Support Incidents) TSIs (Pete)
Bay Area Casual Carpool (Pete)
Bay Area Bike Share (Pete)
Lucky 13 (Pete)
Mike Ash: Friday Q&A 2014-01-10: Let's Break Cocoa (Andrew)
The official raywenderlich.com Objective-C style guide (Andrew)
Bacon Ipsum (Chuck)
David Brady: The Job Hunting Mindset (Chuck)
David Brady: The Job Replacement Guide: Why I Have To Write This Book (Chuck)
Stripe (Manton)
Helios (Manton)

Next Week
MGPCommandBus with Saul Mora
Transcript
CHUCK: We got this Man-ton on our show!

CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 39 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel we have Ben Scheirman.

BEN: Hello, from Bayou City.

CHUCK: Bayou City?

BEN: That’s Houston’s nickname. If we had a Ruby Conference, it would be Bayou City Ruby, and no one would know where it was.

CHUCK: Yeah, that’s true.

ANDREW: We’d all be in Louisiana.

[Chuckling]

CHUCK: Why are y’all in New Orleans?

JAIM: That would be dirty south [inaudible].

CHUCK: Hey, at least you can go [inaudible]. Anyway –.

JAIM: No offense to my New Orleans listeners.

CHUCK: [Chuckles] We also have Pete Hodgson.

PETE: Good morning from San Francisco! I don’t know what her nickname is; I should look that up.

JAIM: Golden Gate City, is that it?

PETE: I was tempted to go for Rainbow City, but –.

CHUCK: [Laughs] We’re batting two for two this morning. Alright, Andrew Madsen.

ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake City.

CHUCK: Jaim Zuber.

JAIM: Hello from the Twin Cities.

CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv and this week we have a special guest, and that is Manton Reece.

MANTON: Hello from Austin, Texas! Good to be here.

CHUCK: Hey, I managed to say that right! Do you wanna introduce yourself for those of us who don’t know who you are?

MANTON: Sure. My name is Manton Reece, and I work for a company called VitalSource doing e-book software with Mac iOS12 web development, and I have a little side business called Riverfold Software where I have a number of iOS and Mac apps, web apps.

CHUCK: Cool! So we brought you on today to talk about subscription APIs and recurring revenue – is that a thing for iOS?

MANTON: That’s a thing for iOS. It depends who you ask what kind of answer you're gonna get about the right way to do that, or whether you should do it. But it’s a thing, I would say.

CHUCK: I thought the thing was to write Angry Birds and make millions of dollars.

MANTON: That’s one way to do it. The problem with the app store – the great thing and the problem is that you do have these huge hits that make way too much money, but then most of us aren’t that lucky, and even the ones that are lucky have a big hit, you sell a bunch of copies, you quit your job, you say, “This is great” and you do really well. Eventually, your app’s gonna fall out of the top 10 and top 100 and sales are gonna drop off and so you have to do it all over again and get a big launch. So, the subscriptions, the hope is you get a little more recurring revenue,