So up until AWESOME Land, my apps have been total flops. The amount of time I spent on AWESOME Land, I couldn't afford to make a loss so I priced it up, and was convinced to drop it to $1.99. So I've made sort of just about enough to consider it payment for the time spent creating the game, but I can't help but wonder... If the game was 99c, would I have made the exact same number of sales and made half of the revenue I have now, or would it have sold to twice as many people? Does anybody know the kind of increase in sales I could expect if I were to lower AWESOME Land's price to 99c? It'd need to sell at least double in order to make up the same amount. So is it worth it? Underselling your hard work to try and get more? If I had priced my game at 99c I know I'd have sat thinking "man, I could have made double this"... So, to you more experienced developers, what kind of difference in success do you normally see between your apps priced at $1.99 and 99c? (Man, when I was a kid I saved up for months to get a new game... Now a fully interactive video game which costs less than a can of soda can be seen as overpriced... Crazy times)
Yes, crazy times... It all depends on the story of your app, the content, and if your game is actually good or bad. Our app went from 0.99 to 1.99$ and we make as much sells as before. But we have a lot of content and a lot more is coming out soon so players don't really complain about the price. Hope it helps! Dominic
It takes 5 seconds to lower your price on itunes connect: then do it for a couple of weeks, and compare the sales of the last week with the one before the price drop. So, you'll know exactly what to expect. Keep tweaking/testing until you find the right pricing. Personally, I keep my games at $1.99 for ios and $2.99 for ipad. This seems to get me the best income (with free promotion time to time: I have 2 free apps this week, but I am still earning more than before making these 2 games free). Lowering the price for a limited period of time can be a very good marketing technique. Play with it and see what is working, you can do A/B testing, you'll be fool not to try it by yourself. JC
It's true - some sites (/engines) can recognize a prise's drop and promote an App by site's functionality (listing this between... other Apps) As a good reference I suggest to read this blog (and all posts/replies below of it): Gamasutra - Bytes: The 0.99 Problem (by Adam Saltsman) BTW - I found this article thanks to TouchArcade's podcast, when guys were answering for listeners questions/e-mails and they mentioned about this blog ... couple of months ago -=Agnes=-
Honestly I think you would do better with a 99 cent game. Though seeing what other people would think is better then coming to the conclusion that you want to sell it for that much.
You won't double your sale by going from 1.99c to 99c. You will loose money most of the time (you can find plenty of blog from iphone dev that have done this experiment). There is some reasons to lower the price to 99c: - You don't double your sales to compensate the loss in revenu, but you still increase the number of sales. This will help to substain a better ranking and of course if your ranking is enough to give you a better visibility, you will increase your sales. That's why most best seller have a price of 99c. They want to stay on the top ranking and be visible by most user. If you are at the bottom of the ranking, price drop won't have much effect for you. - The price drop are picked up by most promotion app website(like AgnesDev said). You will have a temporary boost in sales. This works only if your game was at 1.99 for some months. - If you lower your price, sales will increase (but not your income). This will give you a bigger user base for your next game. You will be able to market your next game on this user (display a popup on the current game telling about your new game, having a "more game" button). My advice: - make a limited time price drop offer for any seasonal occasion (you can even send a little press release about that). And see what is the effect on your sales.
It's all pretty interesting stuff. My game started at $1.99, then dropped to 99c for a week, then went free for a day and returned at $1.99. In the 99c week I had a spike similar to the number of downloads on day 1, meaning I made quite a good amount of money I wouldn't have done if it hadn't been for the price drop, but then it declined quickly. On the free day I got over 30,000 downloads, and the day after when it returned to $1.99 I had a mini-spike for about a day but then it died off straight after. Put it back to 99c permanently after that and it's been steadyish. I've put up an update so it'll pop up in the new releases list again when Apple approve it; I'm looking forward to seeing how it behaves when in the new releases list at 99c.
Don't quote me on this but i've read several people (here and elsewhere) saying that updates no longer get posted in the new releases section.
