Pricing for Apps
I’ve received a few emails, most simply inquiring about the prices for apps, though I should clear up what’s happening. My two public apps, ParkMark and Geodroid, are going to be priced when the Market opens this week. I believe that fact has been fairly implied by the expire dates posted with Geodroid, for which I’ve had solid plans for a while now. ParkMark on the other hand had no expire date until after the new year. The date was posted a time or two, but largely absent from the description in the market. This has been a bit of an oversight in some cases (hurried releases made at very late hours of the night), intentional at times since I knew an update would come long before the expire date would hit, but for the most part absent because I was still debating how I would handle ParkMark. As of the past few weeks, I’ve decided that just like Geodroid, a one time price for ParkMark is the best way to go. I am sorry for confusing anyone about expire dates and the plans for ParkMark or Geodroid.
A few weeks ago I started pulling together statistics on my apps and trying to figure out what it would really take to make them sustainable. I enjoy working on them and it’s all I do at the moment at around 60 hours per week. I have many features and improvements planned, not to mention a few other applications in the works or that I’m considering. The prices I came up with to keep the apps going are $1.99 for ParkMark and $9.99 for Geodroid with all future updates included. Depending on how the applications do over time, prices could certainly change. My goal with pricing is to make it possible to continue development, which includes me and my wife not becoming a vagrants 
and keeping them from becoming abandonware.
Update
I did a poor job communicating to users about ParkMark. After thinking about it, I decided to offer it for free until April 1st 2009. The paid version at $1.99 will be available soon that will include additional features and receive updates.