You can't keep using your app to justify it, as it has not just featured on the calender, it is featured prominently in advertising slots ever since the site was created. People are likely buying your game to say thanks for the calender, as many did with Plushed at the end of the original appvent calender. Some other apps numbers would be helpful to developers thinking about this bait+switch
This thread has truly become epic in size. In reading through everyone's thoughts and opinions, it occurred to me that: 1) Intent doesn't matter, perception does. ICS Mobile didn't intend to scam anybody and feels that it's obvious they are an advertising platform. Unfortunately the perception, at least in this community, leans toward feeling like there was a bait and switch taking place. If ICS's intent was truly to be completely up-front and honest, then I believe they should have waited to open their site to the public until all of their information was properly presented and available in the open. AppVent was clearly widely perceived as a free service to both developers and end users with their revenue being generated by affiliate links and some promotional/advertising space on the site. This is a common and accepted business model in the whole "make money by giving your stuff away for free" arena. Google is a master at this, and it can be a very effective business model. But everyone knows Google includes paid search results and they make it clear which are the organic results and which are paid. FAAD.com, riding on the perceptions of AppVent, appears, due to it's methods, to have baited everyone with AppVent and then performed the monetization switch in a shady way by making it seem as if FAAD.com was the exact same thing as AppVent while putting what most indie devs would consider to be a high price-tag on the new FAAD endeavor. No amount of ranting in this forum that the info is clearly stated on the FAAD info page (which it really wasn't - there was no mention of costs on that page prior to the debate in this thread). We all know that no one reads the "fine print", that's why shady corporations tend to bury unsavory terms and conditions there. When was the last time you read a license agreement before accepting it? Hell, Facebook just recently conned a large percentage of it's user base into making a ton of their personal info PUBLIC by wrapping it all in the guise of "improving privacy", and they did it by presenting people with a big ole dialog box with lots of text talking about how much better privacy controls were now and asking them to either accept new settings en masse or do a detailed review of everything. The majority accepted Facebook's 'recommended' settings and thus effectively published many of their personal details and photos to the entire web. Even if they changed those settings later, it's too late. This is the Internet, once it's out there, you can't put the djinni back in the bottle. Those details are now indexed in Google and many other databases. The point is, no one reads the fine print, no one reads license agreements, and people rarely read info pages, or about us pages. ICS is so fond of quoting their site traffic stats. I'll bet dollars to donuts their info page (prior to this thread and probably even after it) was one of the LEAST trafficked pages on their site. 2. People don't like to be baited and switched. If the AppVent model was being more fully monetized, and there is NOTHING wrong with that, it should probably have been done in a more open, obvious and above board way. 3. The ROI for using this service simply cannot be "known" yet. The site's really only been pushing free Apps for a week or so. The short term trends don't look good right now. Long term ROI info won't be available until a "long term" has passed and the complete set of data can be interpreted. 4. The way in which ICS Mobile presented some of their "arguments" in this thread only served to reinforce the feeling of it being a "cash grab" and for a little while there, the desperation in ICS's posts was quite palpable (all caps, incoherent posts). I'm sorry, but that just emphasized the entire scammy feeling as those without valid arguments will often hide behind bluster and repetition. In the end, the original intent behind FAAD is irrelevant. It's either a coalition of indie developers attempting to help the community or it's a business. It was presented as one thing while actually being the other. IF it's a service to help the indie community it's all love and hugs, but once you slap a high price tag on it and don't alter the rhetoric behind it, it descends into bait-and-switch territory. And since it IS clearly (now) a business, in this to make as much money as possible (there is no proof yet that any Apps other than ICS's experienced beneficial long term financial results), it now appears to be one that wasn't quite "ready for prime-time" as ICS has stated a few times that it's a "new" site and that some things are "incomplete". Free services can get away with that as when you provide your users with something for free, they are often quite forgiving if things go a little awry, after all, it's free. But when you're charging high prices and passing yourself off as a premium service (however sly you're being about the actual charges), you'd better have a relatively flawless, polished and quite complete set of information and services in which your practices AND prices are clearly spelled out in prominent and easy to find ways. Otherwise you might as well be selling ice to Eskimos.
But that was for one day, after which sales returned to "normal". I can make my game free for one day and pretty much obtain the same results
FAAD GOALS and New Pricing Structure I want to sincerely apologize because I should have handle the issue in a more transparent manner . I was able to generate some income, because I was able to understand how to best utilize the traffic generated by the Appventcalendar event. The Appventcalendar event lasted only 3 weeks for one specific reason, because it costs money to run such a site and running a site on a yearly basis requires a different infrastructure and more staff which dramatically increase the cost to run the site. And this cost must be recuperated otherwise the site will simply not be sustainable over the long run and since it is a business we need to generate a return and portion of this return is also utilized to improve the site itself (web, servers, more staff etc.,,) I decided to create FAAD to help the small developer community by giving them pointers on how to best utilize a surge in traffic. These pointers were not laid out in a comprehensive manner, and yesterday's discussion allowed me to create a comprehensive template to help small developers utilize FAAD based on their respective goals:http://freeappaday.com/dev_blog.html With 120k apps and growing it is "impossible" for a small developer to survive in this environment if the business model is not adjusted to reflect the cheer volume of application entering the App Store on a weekly basis. To reflect the concerns related to the costs of advertising/promoting on the site, I have decided to lower the pricing structure! The new pricing is now divided into three category. 1.First Time Developer with compelling apps (see submission guidelines) will still have their Free waved 2.Developer with applications which never reached the top 100 in the game section will receive the special 50% discounted rate of $600 which will not be indexed to the site's traffic. Again make sure to have a clear understanding of your goals before contemplating a FAAD campaign. All other developers will receive the basic rate which will be subject to adjustment based on the sites daily traffic over time. I hope I was able to answer your concerns, feel free to contact me through the sites contact page if you need me to answer additional questions. Again I sincerely apologize for mishandling the issue, I was very green since it is a new concept and I will do my best to have a more transparent approach in the future. -Joe P.S:And to make it very clear I was not part of the Appventcalendar campaign, when I tried to get in, all spots were already taken, so I had to pay to be on as a featured App (check the site I am still there as a featured app), I did it because it made sense for me and I took the risk and it worked perfectly! So it simply needs to make sense for you and your business model
freeappaday is for a whole year????? well thats pointless then! the only reason i liked appventcalendar was because it was exclusive. after w while, freeappaday will stop being so exclusive and just end up being poitless advertisemnet
Sites usually PAY YOU to give them free apps for giveaways. Charging $1200 for this service will end up being a waste of money for 99.99% of developers. I am developing indie games on various platforms for the past 8 years. $1200 always got me a lot further than what this site is promising to offer. Hell ... get a 1 week exclusive on TouchArcade for that money. It will give you a bigger bang for the buck. The charts and data on which FAAD is advertising is useless. Try making your game free, and if you have a game with a decent volume of sales, you will get same boost ... for free.
P.S: What is the daily traffic FAAD gets? When we did a free PC game giveaway, I had to get a second server and mirror our site ... and we didn't even host any downloads or anything ... it was the residual traffic coming from a small link.
Yes, but I meant that these games are descending again in the ranking, right after the day they went free - no sudden raised sales for them.
So let me get this straight... You have to pay $600 to $1200 to make your game free and get this terribly designed website to feature it for one day? It's daylight robbery.
If your game is on the 1st it'll be on the site for the whole month... I think they're updating it to rotate or something so that each app will be visible for the same length of time.
Read the thread. Agreed with Randall. This is, in my opinion, swindling developers out of their money. It's somewhat despicable to me that ICS is charging $600, because advertising doesn't really help much... most people just go on iTunes and look in the top charts or recommendations, not on the web.
Just to give some hardworking devs a bit of perspective, here is our experience with making our 7 Cities game free for 3 days back in December 2009: Performance: 150,000 free downloads over 3 days, and top 13th free app overall in US, before we changed it back to paid. Sales Result: some small improvement on sales soon after, but back to it's previous levels after 3 days. Note that we did the free thing on our own, and we didn't use any other website to 'feature' it for us. But we did get a lot of sites posting blurbs about our free promotion without sending a single press release or email to them. Take that as you may. In my opinion, a Lite version with an upsell to the Paid could be a better route, or even one with ad support. But it is very dependent on the type of App. Don't throw out so much money without trying the easier/cheaper routes first. In fact, put that money towards another app or something.
If the app is still paid, then ya. If free, then I suppose no. In fact, I find it weird any small dev would want to buy advertisement for a free ap. :| $600 is quite expensive for a lot of people. I think buying ads all over the net using that amount, with a paid app will give you a better run.
However, the advertisements are for paid apps, not free ones. Advertising on a site like Free App A Day, by making an app free and PAYING for it to be seen, is BS to me. Plenty of people look for free apps anyways, so it doesn't really matter that it's on a site - if you make your app free but don't put it on Free App A Day, it'll still be noticed, and you save yourself $600.
Judging by the ads right now, most of them have been for paid apps. Plus, they actually know they have to pay... do you get what I'm trying to say?
No. This is a service to help get noticed in the app store. If that isn't worth $600 to developers then they shouldn't use it. So far a few different developers think it is worth it.
