When I released Skeleton Key is was $1.99. I read a whole lot of stuff on toucharcade and other places about pricing apps, and so as soon as I got featured in iTunes I decided to start a 50% sale, so now it's 99 cents. I'm sure that's helped in getting me sales and pushing me up the top 100 puzzle games list. But I'm really not sure when to go off sale again. I'm planning a big update right now which will add a lot of extra features, and I was thinking maybe when it gets released? Maybe sooner? I still have a lot more going up the lists to do. I don't want to just be on sale forever, or just drop my price to 99 cents. I just have zero experience working with markets like this, or selling anything (I write code, I've had to try to sell it). What are your thoughts?
Now that it has dropped out of the Top 200 games it would be a good time to raise the price. When it gets back into the Top 200 then lower the price again. See how that effects your sales.
Makes sense. I'm gonna do some experimenting. I just announced that I'm ending my sale on Friday. Maybe I'll get some more $1 sales this week than usual, and we'll see what happens when it's $2.
pricing is a tricky thing. I think devs struggle with the same issue all the time. here's an old but interesting take on it http://majicjungle.com/blog/?p=66
I am wresting with that same issue now. What really scares me is ruining a record of mostly 5 star reviews with junk reviews.
I think you would have been better of raising the price when you got featured instead of lowering it.
Well you would think so but for those struggling on sales and finally being featured would want as much as people to try it, get it out there, and possibly get ranked pretty high so once the featurette is over you can still ride it by still being in the charts...which is why a sale would be in order. Though I wouldn't think this involves you, being able to create such wonderful titles as touchgrind and sway
Hmm, yeah this is really helpful. It seems like everyone says you have to price your app at $0.99 if you want it to sell, but that's quite obviously wrong. Looking at the top 25 puzzle games: $0.99 12 $1.99 4 $2.99 4 $3.99 2 $4.99 3 Just under half the games are $0.99. In the top 25 of all games, 8 of them cost $5 or more.
Hey, we struggle too! I personally think that "sales" hurt more than they help. Why? If I miss out on a sale, I feel that I don't want to make a bad purchase and will wait for the next sale. Since they had one already, they are likely to have more sales at some point, right? Which could mean I never ever will buy it in case they never drop the price. It's not the price itself, it's the price drop. All this price adjusting up and down is not very nice to your customers, especially lowering the price just a couple of weeks after launch. People who bought it early will be pissed, and people will notice this and think 'hey, they dropped the price last time, so I might just as well wait for the price drop that should come after two weeks'. Once again, Apple formed people to think and price this way because of how the old top lists worked. Especially now that they have added the new top list 'top grossing', you no longer "have" to price it $0.99 to be able to get on a top list, quite the contrary, and we are glad that Touchgrind is still on both lists since its release back in November. One line advice: don't mess with the price.
I have to agree with this based on personal experience with 7 Cities. I say don't drop to $.99 unless you are really desparate or you really want to get into the top 100 paid apps. The latter does not help much with sales unless you are in the top 50 I think.
when shark been featured,I drop the price to 0.99 when it's gone, I raise back to 1.99 don't know what will happen if I keep the price 1.99 always maybe you can try to raise it for one day?
I raised the price for Skeleton Key yesterday. My sales were getting lower and lower and my rank in top puzzle games was dropping anyway, but I raised the price from $.99 to $1.99 at midnight the night before last, and by midnight last night Skeleton Key had been pushed off the puzzle games chart altogether. It's still #78 in strategy games though. At $.99 I was getting about 75 downloads a day for the last couple days, then yesterday, at $1.99, I got 56 downloads (which, technically, equals more money just less rank). And my Skeleton Key Lite downloads doubled too. Interesting... I'm gonna stick it out at $1.99 for a good while now and see what it does. I submitted an update a couple days ago so maybe when it gets approved it can push Skeleton Key back up to its deserved spot in top puzzle games .
