Okay, I have a simple question. If you put your PAID app for free for 1 day as a promotion, will you get more paid sales after that? Obviously for the 1 day when its free you will get many more downloads, but will it also benefit PAID sales once your app is back up to regular price? I know Shark's Treasure did this yesterday, and the developer got something like 12,000 sales in 1 day! Please provide any insight/stats you have! Thanks! All of this is for lets say a $0.99 app.
That was true a long time ago, but Apple has long since changed it so that your chart position gets reset when you go from paid->free or back. --Eric
My game [app]GumDrops[/app] went to #1 free game in Japan (over severa days) while it was free. Now that it costs money it is back down to 0 or 1 downloads a day. Adding open feint also did nothing for sales. Dropping down to free just seems to get all the freeloaders who watch the feeds for games that drop to free. It will also earn your game a bunch of 1 star reviews from people who download it any play it for 10 seconds.
Ok. I'm no dev and can't answer your question. Why I'm posting here is coz I have some thoughts about devs making their games free for a limited time. I fail to understand the benefit of making the game free like this(except that there'll be a lot people trying it out as it's free). Anyone who's even slightly interested in your app will download it while it's free and those who miss out won't shell out for your app hoping it'll go free again sometime. Now unless your game is something really unique and great, I doubt I'll be able to convince myself to buy it coz everyone else got it for free, so why should I pay for it. With thousands of great games available in AppStore and 100s already in my iPhone, I won't be in a hurry to get your game. It might still help boost your paid sales by word of mouth but I seriously doubt that considering the sheer number of games available here. What would be a better option IMO is that devs make a free, ad-supported full version of the game. You can keep it in the AppStore for as long as you wish. You can keep it forever or you can just make it available for a few days and after that just remove it from the AppStore. That way you'd make atleast a little bit of money thanx to the ads. And those who really like your game will be buying the paid version as that's the one which will be getting regular updates. You can also add a small browser page to your website which notifies them once the paid version is updated tempting them to buy the full version if they want to try out the updated version. Also you'd be safe from all those ignorant people who just get a free game, play it a couple of times and then delete it leaving a low rating for it for whatever reason. Who'd be willing to pick up a game with 100s of 1 or 2 star rating? Now again, I'm not a dev and have zero experience here. Also now that I've typed it out, it doesn't sound as good as it did in my mind earlier. Just wanted to let you know how felt about games which go free for limited time. Edit: I was typing this all out then left out for a few minutes before finishing it off and now I see Shen's post above. Looks like I was pretty much right about such limited time free games.
Thanks for your thoughts! Im starting to think that you are right about not making it free, but instead making a "lite" version with ads. Thanks for the suggestion.
Hey guys, I'm working on my 4th app now. I'll chime in on the whole "Lite" version idea... http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=324616043&mt=8 I produced a Lite version for my game Prairie Chute and launched it about 4 weeks after the release of the full version. Maybe I made a mistake by not releasing both at the same time to take advantage of release momentum... but the Lite is actually getting less downloads per day than the paid right now! Maybe that is a good problem to have (even though the paid volumes are low), but it really doesn't justify the time/cost for developing the lite version or the potential for a customer to be satisfied with lite and not buy full. The purpose of lite is to be a driver for full... and it suffers from the exact same problem as full... visability. Its a big risk to take IMO to have people make false judgements about the limited gameplay or features as being common to the full version. Which makes me think that Superman's idea is somewhere along the right track. 6 months ago, I think there were good arguments to be made for lite... and I have seen them make a significant impact on my other games. I think there are several factors at play here (genre, brand, cross-promotion) that may up the cause for a lite. I'm speaking purely from a independent perspective who developed a casual "pick up and play" game. I think the right model for independents is what Pocket God has done, 1 or 2 incremental features every week while building a loyal consumer base and giving you something "new" to talk about all the time from a marketing perspective. Anyways... just my 2c Matt
Another note with going free with GumDrops, I went from having around 50 - 100 people playing it, to having around 50,000 people having played it, which is good for the ego, even if it didn't do anything for the wallet. Once you embrace the fact that your game is a commercial failure, you can drop the price to free for a while and get crap loads of downloads.
How long did it take to get 50, 000 plays? Months, weeks, days? Did you suffer from getting tons of 1/2 star reviews?
After going free for 5 days.. Fling is still in the Top 100 Paid Games. #87 now. http://appshopper.com/games/fling Sep 18 Free -> $.99 Sep 13 $.99 -> Free http://www.148apps.com/148-top-paid-games/ #76 Fling! This page last updated :: September 28, 2009 12:42 PDT
geoFighter was free for some 36 hours last week (thursday-friday, after we graduated university ), so I can give you some useful data I guess it sells around 50 pieces a day currently, but received some 10.000 downloads in those 36 hours. when it went back to paid - bah, the sales were also down to 50 or so have to mention that it got A LOT of good reviews in just 2 days, but that didn't help with the sales either... basically - making it free did nothing for the sales but on the other hand - people on the forum like us more I know it's not all that important in the sales, but feels nice to hear positive opinions. making games is not just about money after all, satisfaction is just as important
yes,I did this because I only got 2 downloads a day before that,so,what to lose? and I haven't dream about 11688 downloads in less than 20 hours. game top free 55 ， adventure top free 7， family top free 6 this has nothing to do with money, but sure make me happy and when today's report out,I will let you guys know,if shark's treasure can sales more than 2 oh, before set it free ,the price is 1.99,and now it's 0.99
This is a timely thread - I was thinking of doing a free day (or maybe weekend) for Pinch 'n Pop! this Friday. I'll report back when it's over...
Assuming the game you are making is actually good and creative, the most important thing is awareness in the community. Getting previews out on major iPhone game sites like this, slide to play, touchgen, is really important. If people see a video of how cool the game looks before it comes out, they'll remember it even if the game takes a few weeks to hit the app store. Having sales and free-for-a-day events is really nice for consumers, such as myself, but it is as others have stated. If I see that a game was on sale, even more so if it was free, I tend to wait and see if another price drop is coming around. Thanks to sites like appshopper, I can tell how often a game goes on sale, for how much, and for how long on average. Lite versions are equally troublesome. Part of the problem with this community right now is that it moves WAY too fast. A game will be released, have noticeable activity in its thread for a few days, and then it is gone with the wind. A new game has drawn all the attention before people even had a chance to truly play through the first game. People seem to be hooked on getting in on the new experience, not necessarily getting a new game. If a lite version is floating around, it may be more than enough for me to understand what everyone is talking about. I doubt that the number of conversions from lite to full is very high. Contests and other little things like that are good for awareness. Devs being involved in the forums is one of the things that make this platform great. If I have a problem or an idea to make the game better, there's a chance that the dev will read it and actually implement it. Finally, updates with new content, not just bug fixes, can help push a game up after it has faded from the collective mind. Posting about an update will get the thread bumped, or start a new thread, which picks up people who didn't notice it before. Whew, I'm done
It does appear that there's relatively little immediate gain from 'freeing' a game for a day, but I do think there are possible benefits that are being overlooked, and it's something I rarely see devs talking about or even considering – the idea of your game as a franchise. If you can get your product in front of 20,000 eyeballs, it may not increase your revenue, but your brand recognition has now multiplied by X amount. If you now go out and create, say, a geoFighter 2 with updated graphics, new level designs, and online multiplayer, it won't just be another 'no-name' drop in a bucket of new releases on the App store, it'll be a title a lot of people will already recognize and trust, and gameplay people are already familiar with. In turn, this will lead your game to receiving more sales, but also, hopefully, more coverage among review sites, which may not have even mentioned your game first time around. It's not just sequels though… GumDrops could take the characters and spin-off into a platformer game similar to Rolando, or maybe even a Tower Defense game. There's also the added benefit of being able to include a menu option linking to the new game through an update to the original game, which a few percent of those 50,000 people are still hopefully playing. I would say the best time to make a game free, however, is at the same time its successor releases… that way you'll have optimum focus on the new game at the time when your audience is peaking.
hey guys today, shark's treasure been download at 0.99 price,37 times so, I guess this promotion is not bad to me, from 2 to 37 but not good enough,maybe will back to digital number in very short time anyway, that' what I got. hope will do some help to you guys
