Some questions about making my app free

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Some questions about making my app free

(10 posts) (7 voices)

Started 1 year ago by Mitch Lindgren
Latest reply from mhussa

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Mitch Lindgren
Member

Hi everyone,
Several months ago I released my app, Puzzle Panel, on to the app store. Unfortunately, I've made no money from the app. I've had something like 50-60 sales now, but that's across multiple countries, so I'm nowhere near reaching Apple's "payment threshold" in any given country. Unfortunately, I no longer have any time to devote to the project, so I've essentially given up on ever making any money from it.

With that in mind, I'd like to make the app completely free. That would make it available to a wider audience, and provide me with some peace of mind in that I'd know my work was no longer bankrolling Apple's success. (Not to sound spiteful or melodramatic - I know they've made practically no money off of me specifically. I can't help but wonder, though, how much money they're making across the tens of thousands of developers who must be in similar situations. Anyway, I digress.)

I do have some concerns about making my app free, though. As everyone here is no doubt aware, the "race to the bottom" pricing style that the app store fosters is hurtful to developers. By making my app free, I worry that I would be worsening this problem in some small way. Again, my app is obviously no hit seller, so the impact would be miniscule. Even so, I can't help but feel somewhat divided. I thought I'd put it to you guys. What should I do?

Thanks.

tldr: I want to make my app free, but I'm worried that this might contribute to the the app store's rampant devaluation of apps. What to do?

Posted 1 year ago #
Techy
Member

One thing you could try is making it for free for a maybe a day or too, and youll get over 1000 downloads.. then change the price to 0.99 that way you will get reviews.. and if the game s good, that will make it good reviews...

Posted 1 year ago #
woebtz
Member

I wanted to suggest experimenting with a lite version of your game, but it looks like you've already tried that.

Well.. you're probably right that Puzzle Panel won't ever become a financial success, but it's simply too defeatist to just lay down and throw away your hard work.

If you can spare another afternoon, I would say, "Don't give up." Increase your prices instead of decreasing them. Rename Puzzle Panel to Puzzle Panel Premium and possibly change some text around in your lite version to really play that up.

-b

Posted 1 year ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

Thanks. I appreciate the suggestions. However, at this point I'm not really looking for ways to increase paid sales. I don't consider making the game free to be throwing away my work; on the contrary, if it exposes the game to a wider audience and provides that audience with enjoyment, then it will be well worth it. It's unfortunate that I didn't make any money, but I didn't REALLY expect to make much anyway, and if people enjoy my work, that's enough for me. (Rereading my first post, I can see why one might think otherwise; my wording there was
more negative than I had intended.)

That said, if making the game free increased downloads significantly, I would not rule out introducing paid in-app downloads at a later date, when I have more time. However, for the time being, I am more concerned with the feelings of developers such as yourselves on whether or not making my app free might be detrimental to our "cause," as it were.

Posted 1 year ago #
Techy
Member

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making the game free... In fact I like free games, because then im not paying any money... From the developer side, you would not be contributing to the the app store's rampant devaluation of apps.... The app store was made so iphone and ipod touch users could have games n the device.. not to make money, even though it is a great way to make money if you hit everything right(which includes more than just making the game perfect)... If your not going to make any money, why make people pay when it goes to apple

Posted 1 year ago #
Wayne
Member

I'm in kind of the same boat , and have tried a few different tests with making the apps free. I view setting my apps to free once in a while as a pure form of direct marketing. Why pay AdMob or Google when for no cost you can generate your own buzz. If it catches on, then put it back to paid or add an in app purchase.

Here are a few things I've noticed in my case.

1) When it's a free app, people will download it at about 800 a day and then starts to taper off after about 4K. But that's if it's the first time the app is set for free. So there seems to be a core group of websites and users that watch those sites for freebies. Also, this will probably vary depending on what category and app type it is.

2) Downside to the fast free downloads is that people who delete the app will generally give it 1 star rating. Encouraging users to rate a free app is Uber important. I have yet to do this well enough. For example, one app has 194 ratings, but many thousands of active users. Probably because I have the review link buried in the help pages, which everyone knows are never read :)

3) Toggling to free , then paid , then free , like fishing with a lure works. But I imagine the more paid purchases you get the more it will PO users who bought the app. I think of the apps given away as free advertising. Give a few thousand away and hopefully people will use it, like it, and talk about it.

4) Switching categories where your app is placed gives you a bump sometimes.

I have a lite version and a full version of the app I do this with , iTapster and iTapster Lite. I also have another free app that's along the same lines called WMD? . The 2 free apps do seem to help pull in sales for the 1 paid app. Without them there's a big drop in downloads.

Also , another thing is I tend to have more unit sales and more sales revenue when my app is priced higher than .99. Males no sense to me, but those are the stats I see. I guess it depends on the app, it's competition pricing, category, etc.

Posted 1 year ago #
alien_ken
Member

The answer to your question is, no, making it free won't hurt anyone.

I believe a big part of the reason the app store is such a huge success overall, is because they allow free apps. If you keep bringing people back to the app store, even if it's just to download free apps, eventually they get tempted to buy an app or twenty. Sure, some people may never buy an app, but most people will, and if you have them in the app store more often, the more "used to it" they get, and eventually the idea of splurging for $.99 or $2.99 becomes more acceptable, because of the value they've already gotten from the app store via free apps.

To take it to the other extreme, if Apple didn't allow free apps, people wouldn't go to the app store nearly as often as they do, and wouldn't therefore buy as much.

Posted 1 year ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

Alright! Thanks, guys. Your comments have set my mind at ease. I didn't expect anyone would really object, but I wanted to gauge the reaction of the community to be sure.

Posted 1 year ago #
MikeSz
Member

before you switch to free - Id recommend you to think about some way of promoting this move...

we made some experiments this weekend, among them - we changed our old old game Save Kitty to free for this weekend and it got 3.000 sales on the first day. we wanted to check how many free copies can be distributed without any kind of promotion whatsoever

few months back (to celebrate university graduations) we changed geoFighter to free for 36 hours and made a thread about it on Touch Arcade. we had some 50k free downloads over 36 hours. mind you - geoFighter is a much better game than Save Kitty ;)

and finally we had 2 Free App A Day campaigns for geoFighter and Tiki Totems, one had 95.000 downloads in 24 hours, other 130.000

so here you have it - going free ain't a bad move, but there's no point if you do that without letting people know about

Posted 1 year ago #
mhussa
Member

I'm not sure about the long term affects of making paid apps free for short bursts of promotion. If you build up a reputation for doing that then you may get more people just waiting for the next free PR campaign. Only the impatient will buy upfront.

It'll be interesting to see how free-mania plays out.

Posted 1 year ago #

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