I wasn't going to reply to this but I will just give some background on the app:
Year 0: I approached Daniel and said: "Hey, I think I can build you a cool app for this new Windows Phone 7 operating system we're all enjoying". Daniel eventually agreed but I took all the risk by developing at my own expense to sell the app later
Year 1: We had an amazing launch and agreed that the popular Trial/Free version as unlimited ad supported with payment to remove ads made the most sense. In app purchases did not exist in WP7 and still don't.
We then continued to tune and re-release the app, notable updates being v2.0 and the big Mango update, as well as v3.0 which brought about the forum functionality.
Year 2: Continued to tune and brought out a WP8 native version, but promising to continue supporting the WP7 app, which means listing both apps under one Marketplace identity as v4.0. That means we must continue to use the same model as we do for WP7, so we continue to be an unlimited ad supported trial with a paid premium version. We could look at switching that model to free with an in-app-purchase to remove ads but that would mean asking people to pay again for the app. And we can only look at that now that we've decided to stop developing new features for WP7.
We were the first high quality mobile nations app to come onto the scene. With the mango v2 update the other sites realised they'd have to step up their game and went off to pay contractors. The WPCentral app's model is how it is simply because that is how things played out. We took a big risk over 2 years ago starting the app and we're lucky that it paid off, but that's not to say we're now deaf to the voices of those who believe they should receive our content presented to them for free with absolutely no revenue going to the writers, community managers, development or support staff who work to make this site happen.
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