I am trying to figure out a pricing model for my application and I am left stuck wondering if I am doomed for failure because I force people to pay (at least $1) to play. The incentive is that you could win $100, so to me it kind of makes sense, but I know there are some people who still will find a reason to stop from throwing a buck up.<p>I was thinking I could potentially do a free system that allowed you to play and if you won, you would get N credits to use towards a paid puzzle (with a cash prize). It sounds like that may be better, but complicates my design.<p>So the quick question is this - Would you pay $1 for the chance to win $100 or would you put the work in to get free credits to potentially win $100?
I'm not a gambling person. In such cases there is one thing I know for sure: You won't throw away your personal money, so for every $ I win you will need to earn one $ (at least).<p>Another problem: How do I know, that your program is anything like playing fair? You could set up chances in program from anything like 1/100, 1/100,000 or no win at all. How do you want to built up a really great reputation for your customers to trust you on this?<p>The puzzle would even complicate matters. It would need to generate a new problem for every customer, otherwise you'll soon find the solution on the web and everybody will win. Or people will write bots to cheat about it.