TLDR: Paced Breathing runs on a freemium model: most of the app is free to use, while some of the newer features require a subscription to the PacedBreathing+ subscription service. You can upgrade by clicking the “Upgrade” page from the side menu.
After hearing from many of you over the years, I truly believe Paced Breathing has a lot of potential. Either by adding missing features or offering mini “courses” based on the many interesting ways I’ve heard from you all over the years that you’ve come to use Paced Breathing:
- A firefighter said he uses Paced Breathing to train his breathing in case he runs out of oxygen in a burning building. He does this by using something called the Reilly Emergency Breathing Technique (R-EBT), where you slowly inhale then hum as you exhale. Apparently humming is a relatively low effort way to make your body conserve oxygen by exhaling slower, even as you’re rushing to get out of the building. A course teaching and helping to train this technique could help save firefighters lives.
- A woman recovering from pneumonia said her doctor recommended using Paced Breathing to train up her lung capacity to help her recovery. Many years later, she still uses Paced Breathing to help her with stress relief. A course could help many others dealing with respiratory issues like pneumonia.
- A psychologist recommends Paced Breathing to patients with gut issues because research is showing there is a mind-gut connection, where stress and anxiety can manifest as digestive issues (and vice versa). There is a lot of research to unpack here, and a course guiding users through this could help many people.
- A user that suffers from insomnia said he uses Paced Breathing at night to help him fall asleep. But there are some things that could be improved here to bring this feature to more users (instructions, more sounds, background/white noise, fading out the volume during the session, etc)
As I mentioned above, I think Paced Breathing has a lot of potential to both help people and bring me a lot of personal joy and fulfillment. Unfortunately, I just can’t justify giving it the attention it needs if it can’t also pay my bills. With ads and the $1-$2 one-time purchases, Paced Breathing only makes $3.3k/year, across 55k users. Definitely not enough to make a living. I hope you understand.
Of course, I am extremely grateful to everyone that has paid for Paced Breathing, especially those that have been using the app for many years, so I want to make sure you are all taken care of:
- If you bought the “ad-free” in-app purchase: I promised you that you would “never see an ad ever again”. I am honoring this, you will be ad-free for life.
- If you bought the “pro” in-app purchase: you’ll get 3 free months of PacedBreathing+ for every year it’s been since you made that purchase.
- If you made a “donate” in-app purchase: you’ll get 3 free months of PacedBreathing+ for every dollar you donated since that donation was made. For example: if you donated $3 two years ago, you’ll get 3*2*3 = 18 free months of PacedBreathing+.
- If you bought the “pro” app: you’ll get 2 free years of PacedBreathing+.
Note: I’ll be capping free PacedBreathing+ to a max of 4 years, if you think that’s unreasonable, just reach out!
You can see if you’re getting ad-free or free PacedBreathing+ by checking the ‘Upgrade’ page from the side menu.
Paced Breathing 