Studies show developers who ask for donations make more then having ADs in apps

I was reading a study called the donation vs ADs in app . In the study a doctor named Dr.Price said that users feel compelled to give big donations to games and apps that had no ADs or IAP. Dr.Price also explain it was a shock that end users would feel empathy towards developers almost a guilt that the developers were not getting money. Dr.Price then concluded developers should take advantage of people’s empathy towards them and ask for donations which is more efffective then shoving ADs in thier face. Dr.Price said in the future even console based companies will be following the donation method.
After reading the studies I realized developers were shooting themselves in the foot by annoying users with ADs when they could make more money with a donation based model. So make the pledge now and join the movement toward better apps and more money.

Studies show that studies are wrong.

Seriously, I completely disagree with this.

A long time ago I conducted my own (nonscientific) research to determine whether it would be possible to make a living through donationware games and apps.

I failed to find a single developer that was making a living from donations. Notice that I included developers from desktop applications, web apps, plugins for browsers, libraries and so on.

I’d loved to be wrong.

Please, share your own experience with us.

Regards.

Yeah Dr.Price and his delusions.

What is the opinion about apps which give away most of the features while leaving just a couple left over for paid.

Versus an app that hides most features behind paywall.

I suspect there is probably a balance very near the nearly-everything-is-free - because by offering more things for free you may make the app download 3x more. The last few features then may be something that is surely bought by the whales to achieve a sense of having full app free.

While those who were unlikely to pay would still not pay.

I say this because often users seem to like things that developers with their (more logical - since you have to be partly Mr. Spock to be a programmer anyway i.e. to have the mental discipline etc.) i.e. which developers may not have a real feel for.

For example “themes” and color variations - users seem to go crazy (from what I have sensed from comments on apps etc.) - i.e. users seem to value this a lot or this type of “shallow customization” a lot.

And this may be related to the demographics of users - the majority of users may not be people the programmer may necessarily have a meeting-of-minds with - in fact they may be very different people. Yet this large demographic may be the types who pay (or at least make up the bulk of the population of users).

I doubt this is true for Android users. Most Android users don’t want to pay for anything. I suspect donations would do a lot better with iPhone users.