'Free for a day'

I think a lot of it is to get people talking about their apps (or to be aware of their existence) - it works well if there's a twitter feature, plus new people that notice won't know they got it for free.

Just a thought.

 

Looks like a circular path to me:

need promotion for my app->make it free->people need to know about the app->need promotion

 

A vicious cycle more like it

Personally I've noticed that free apps are downloaded simply because they're free (then come the weird reviews)

 

Probably being featured on the appvent calendar solves the promotion issue in this specific case.
There's still another issue - will people buy it after knowing it has been free or will they wait for another free shot? Again, maybe the appvent calendar thing provides for the "once in a lifetime" perception

 

keep in mind that the review on delete system hurts. if they download it without wanting it, chances are they will leave a one star review and thats a nasty cycle to get into when you stop being free

 

Yup. I've only heard second-hand stories of free-for-a-day promos actually helping an app in the long run. In my experience it's a good way to lower your ratings, and that's about it!

 

Going free for a while helped Fling! become a fixture in the top 100 whereas prior to their free give away it couldnt crack it. It was free for more then a day, they gave away a *lot* of copies. Reviews were pushed down to 3 stars as per the normal effect, but it didnt seem to matter.

That may be hard to replicate though, because Fling! was so darned polished that it benefitted from word of mouth (i.e., here let me show you this puzzle game I got).

That is the only instance I'm aware of where going free for a while had such a noticeable effect.

Just my opinion but I dont see why anyone thinks that going free for just one day could possibly have much impact...seems to me that for it to work, you need to have a polished game, and give away a LOT of copies.

 

Wheeler's Treasure is featured today on the AppVent Calendar. While normally I would agree that going free, even for a day is a bad idea, the 1 free app per day til Christmas promo from the AppVent Calendar suggests that you either get it on the one day it's free or lose your chance for the freebie and have to pay for it. In essence it doesn't leave you feeling like it will be free again if you just wait long enough.

Just my $.02.

Q

 

This is what I mean about second-hand stories I've heard this several times but I haven't seen any real numbers or evidence that making it free is what actually made it popular. Not saying it can't happen that way but all I know is I pushed over 20,000 free copies of Pinch 'n Pop! over 2 days and literally saw no change in sales afterwards - those are numbers I can believe in

 

I've been considering going free with Oh, My Word! 2, but it's a massive gamble at present.

The people who've given it a chance love it and reviews have been very positive. But on the face of it the game is very bland, so it's getting people over that which is an issue. Going free might create a bit of buzz, but it's likely also to attract reviews from people who don't get it (we've already had some), which once we go payed might hurt sales.

We're going for an aggressive peggle in the new year though, coupled with an ad campaign, so we'll see how that goes.

My initial feeling is that a free for a day is dependent on the type of game - if you've got something interesting and no marketing budget it's a better option than releasing and quickly falling out the chart, but you probably need to have reached a critical mass before you can pull it off. If nobody's talking about it in the first place, making it free won't do anything for you.

 

yes, that is congruent: If something is known for being free, why that popularity will bring pay customers?

I think that the correct way of leverage the free apps is cross promotion with paid apps, 20,000 free copies will turn into 20,000 users possible looking to your other paid apps.

 

Flickitty had about 24,000 downloads during its free promotion, and hasn't yet recovered. We dropped some -90 in the rankings and we have never recovered nor risen.

 

I'd say that's some first hand evidence that going free can do much more harm than good! That sucks Flikkity.

Q

 

The review on delete is a complete pain, and I'm not sure why Apple implemented it. One of our lite games has a bunch of 1 star reviews but absolutely no written reviews. This means that we get no feedback on how to improve the game in the future. Potential customers also have no idea why the game was given one star by so many people as 90 percent of the written reviews for the game are 4-5 stars.

 

http://candycaneapps.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/how-to-reach-1-in-the-appstore/

...not second hand, thats the developer's account. Candycane pushed 500,000 free copies of Fling! over 4 days, and although the blog doesnt say so, they got into the top 100 paid apps for the first time immediately thereafter.

Giving away 20,000 copies is not going to cut it. If (pick a small %) of those people recommend the app to friends you have...an unnoticeable blip in sales. If by contrast, you have a polished app, and can give away several hundred thousand copies, then word of mouth may be enough to break into the top 100 paid. I dont think most apps will generate enough interest to do that, sadly.

"Pinch N' Pop" is a great example -- its a very cute game thats simple fun, the developer should be proud of the finished product. However, just being honest and giving my perception (I got it free), it is not quite good enough to be something that any meaningful % of folks given a free copy are going to rave to a friend about -- and was thus probably never going to be able to pull off this type of manuever. That doesnt mean it cant work for a small subset of apps.

 

I'm not sure how you could even get 500,000 people to download it. We were free for 4 days during Black Friday and were only able to achieve over 20,000. We certainly would have loved to hit 100,000 (our minimum goal), but 500,000 seems like a stretch.

When did that 500,000 take place? If it was 6+ months ago, the app store was very different then.

 

Very different, back then Fling!'s free sales gave it an increased rank when it was moved back into the paid category. Now the App Store starts the app from square 1 on a category change (correct me if I'm wrong, it happened to me). I made one my apps free for a day and it led to a tiny increase for about a week, then fell off completely.

Not worth it unless your app has some viral quality to it!

 

No, going free doesn't increase your Paid App rank at all. In fact, it drops.

 

I tried the free for a day with Mini Makruk and while I got a lot of downloads, I didn't see any financial benefit (as in, my other games' sales or when it returned to free).

To be honest, just giving away promo codes on twitter has done better for my less popular games. They've seen more sales since I've started doing that.