I've personally always thought that there'd be no point to Duolicious if it started being more heavy-handed about making money, because there's already plenty of dating apps which do that. I still believe that now, but maybe with less conviction. When I first made Duolicious, I was hoping that if users didn't feel like they were being nickeled-and-dimed, they'd like the app well enough to grow it by word-of-mouth. While that seems to have happened to some degree, the effect hasn't been strong enough to make the app usable for many people who don't want a long-distance relationship. Maybe the only way for Duolicious to achieve that is by monetizing only for as long as needed to become established, before gradually giving more away for free, in a kind of reverse-enshitification process.

Fun fact: I almost added in-app "purchases" in September 2024, though I was only going to allow donations:

https://github.com/duolicious/duolicious-frontend/pull/398/files#diff-7ae45ad102eab3b6d7e7896acd08c427a9b25b346470d7bc6507b6481575d519R49

I never followed-through on that largely because I lacked the motivation - Making money and doing more marketing are both boring to me, but I think they might be needed.

What are your opinions?

tl;dr should I monetize Duolicious? Vote:

https://strawpoll.com/ajnE1V2eonW

(2/2)