I originally planned to give Squared away for free. It wouldn’t include ads and nor would it include in-app purchases. These are the reasons why:

1. I only download free apps on my smartphone and I believe this is true for the majority of smartphone users. I’d like to get a high download count.
2. I don’t like ads inside of apps. They’re useful for putting food on the table as an app developer but I think they look tacky. I’m fond of Squared so I’ll put ads in a different app.
3. I’ve never used in-app purchases before. I’ve never purchased items within an app and I’ve never set up in-app purchases in my own apps.

In the middle of development decided to add in-app purchases to Squared for a couple of reasons:

1. I believe I can provide a premium experience without users requiring users to pay me anything and I can enhance the experience for those that choose to buy in-app purchases.
2. I spent a fair amount of time developing the app and as an experiment I’d like to see what sort of monetary ROI I can get. 🙂