Freemium could potentially work here with better calibration. I suspect some of the things that might be important for you users:
1) Unlimited usage or unlimited usage per month -> Managing credits is an annoying experience for when I just want to share an article: I'll have faster ways if the actual transaction is a hassle. Paying once and forgetting about it adds a lot of value. This could work with your original paid model or with a freemium model that includes an unlimited tier.
2) Better analytics to calibrate the use cases: How many articles were people using. Did you have a way to detect how many of the articles were actually being read? I suspect that 1/day might be a very high free tier if people are switching to a mindset of: is this worth being my 1 article a day? Or converting the cost of a paid article and asking "do I want to pay X for sharing this to my kindle?"
Other have made the point that a key aspect of freemium is viral growth. Do you have any social sharing features that people would want to use -> Could you share an article to Kindle and/or Facebook + Twitter? Could you get shares of your app in exchange for additional article shares to kindle?
If freemium was the right model it might end up at something like:
10 Initial Free shares
1 share/week free
3 shares/week free to device if also shared to a social network
A Paid credits/usage tier
A Paid Unlimited/time tier (monthly or weekly unlimited use pricing?)
And Possibly a paid outright unlimited tier.
You'd want to measure and track analytics on how you get users. Something like web bounce links through your own analytics package on the way to the app store.
Here you actually have an interesting tradeoff: You get less money per user which you hope to balance out by driving down CAC through large amounts of organic growth.
The purpose of freemium is seldom a try before you buy value proposition that makes sense for the company, it's the ability to generate viral growth even out of users who never spend money. If the app won't get substantial viral growth then freemium is almost always wrong.
1) Unlimited usage or unlimited usage per month -> Managing credits is an annoying experience for when I just want to share an article: I'll have faster ways if the actual transaction is a hassle. Paying once and forgetting about it adds a lot of value. This could work with your original paid model or with a freemium model that includes an unlimited tier.
2) Better analytics to calibrate the use cases: How many articles were people using. Did you have a way to detect how many of the articles were actually being read? I suspect that 1/day might be a very high free tier if people are switching to a mindset of: is this worth being my 1 article a day? Or converting the cost of a paid article and asking "do I want to pay X for sharing this to my kindle?"
Other have made the point that a key aspect of freemium is viral growth. Do you have any social sharing features that people would want to use -> Could you share an article to Kindle and/or Facebook + Twitter? Could you get shares of your app in exchange for additional article shares to kindle?
If freemium was the right model it might end up at something like:
10 Initial Free shares 1 share/week free 3 shares/week free to device if also shared to a social network A Paid credits/usage tier A Paid Unlimited/time tier (monthly or weekly unlimited use pricing?) And Possibly a paid outright unlimited tier.
You'd want to measure and track analytics on how you get users. Something like web bounce links through your own analytics package on the way to the app store.
Here you actually have an interesting tradeoff: You get less money per user which you hope to balance out by driving down CAC through large amounts of organic growth.
The purpose of freemium is seldom a try before you buy value proposition that makes sense for the company, it's the ability to generate viral growth even out of users who never spend money. If the app won't get substantial viral growth then freemium is almost always wrong.