http://appshopper.com/games/snaptox Nov 03 '09 New App: Free Odasoft paid to promote Snaptox so people would buy other games. If you don't plan to sell other games then it is not worth it to promote a free game. Why do you think there are free full versions of games in the store?
What's the point of this thread now? The VALUE of putting a game on FreeAppADay? The WISDOM of it from a business standpoint?.. We all understand now that it's a paid service. Every developer that has put a game up on the site has done so with full knowledge of the cost. No one was swindled here. Using that site is their decision and their prerogative. All we're really doing now is second-guessing the business practices of individual, independant, grown-up developers. **Attention: FreeAppADay charges a fee to feature an app on their site! It may or may not be worth it!** - There... Thread complete. Now. Regarding banner ads...
The appstore model must have something wrong if we went all the way from developers getting paid for their games, to developers giving their games for free, to developers paying to give their games for free.
Hi, HelperMonkey, by your example, all threads would have three posts. "This is our game, buy it" "Looks nice, instant buy" "Does not look so good, no sale here" Thankfully these threads exist to allow all members a voice to express an opinion, just like yours. Davis
Its completely different. TA has content that generates traffic to the site. The free app site uses the FREE APPS to generate traffic. That said - they certainly can charge whatever they like and by adding a little more transparency to the nature of the site - it seems hard to complain. I think the shock factor caused most of this uproar. As ICS has been stating - you have to know how to use this. It seems to me that apps with DLC, ad revenues and other alternative revenues may benefit from this. Stand-alone apps that choose to do free updates and no ads may not.
That's been my line of thinking mainly. Besides the fact that there are sites and app trackers that will all pick up on price changes and freebies, there are also plenty of bargain hounds who are not only always on the hunt for a good freebie deal, but have essentially been trained to hunt for them by so many of them going free for brief periods of time. Freebies get noticed without needing spendy promotion. Spending the money on an app that costs something makes more sense to me.
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 $600(irony) 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 out perfectly! So it simply needs to make sense for you and your business model btw:An App is Free for 24H and then it stays advertise for a full month on the site.(sliding calendar)
i was checking charts for the games on the site, and it doesnt seem to have helped them as much as appvent calender did. first one is Rope n fly graph of the past 30 days, second is kryzer the spikes are the days they went free, notice rope n fly is actually selling less than before they went free
Wow - can't believe my eyes... look what has happened to Cocoto Kart online version 3 days after single player went free on FAAD: So you have to pay $600 to get it dropped out of the Top 200? Can somebody with more insight explain that? As I see it, the paid online version was stable before and now went downhill? edit: This is for the free Cocoto Kart version: Full link to Topappcharts: http://topappcharts.com/search.php?string=Cocoto+Kart&show=search&price=any
Crap I just bought the "free" game of the day befor my app store made it free! Maybe they get sales that way lmao oh well
He probably made a killer on the in-apps sales which generates more revenue overall...but I understand that it is a concept that is hard to understand! Volume is Key! Think Elimiate Pro! That's the main reason why they went free! The NGMOCO guys are pretty smart, they saw where the market is heading and adapted and that's what I am trying to tell you guys, if you don't adapt you are cooked! And they are tones of ways to adapt and FAAD may or may not be adequate for you! It all depends on your goals! You just need to think fast and adapt to your environment before it's too late...otherwise you might as well go to Vegas and gamble all the amount of time and efforts you are putting in an app and go all in with a pair of deuces (note that you might still win the hand, but the probability to win is very low) I will not mention his name out of respect, but a developer with a previously top rated app recently went down because he misjudged the market and failed to realized that success with 20k apps in the app store is a lot different that success with 120k apps. At this point it's the survival of the fittest and the strongest adapt if you believe in evolution of course! As I mentioned previously I did Pay to be in Appventcalendar, and the investment turned out to be minuscule compare to the rewards!
I did not critisize this time. I just was curious and am trying now to understand how things work on AppStore...
Did you see what was written in the description for Rope'n'fly ? It says you should consider Rope'n'fly 2 in the first line! The dev understood his goals and had a strategy plan. His goal was to push R'n'F 2! There are many ways that you can use traffic and that's one of them...It simply needs to make sense for you! and again I invested in Appventcalendar because it made sense to me and my business model but it might not make sense for someone else...
So maybe it was not appropriate for him! His game is a well known title, so maybe FAAD is not appropriate for big Premium titles! But again I personally did a combination of things, for instance I included the tapjoy sdk (AppFund company backed by Apple!)which helped my trends big time back then. More often that not, I realized that you need to combine various solutions to make things work And the funny thing is that the experience came from actually playing games like"warcraft, civilization", I used a strategy that I labeled "concentrated power" meaning I built a lot of resources and devoted them to one task, because the task was overall done faster, more efficiently! This is where I realized that combining various concepts to achieve a specific goal is very very powerful! For Navy Patrol for instance, I knew that Appventcalendar was bringing tones of traffic and I also understood that Tapjoy was very good at making you hold on to your position, it helps you gain a bit or a lot depending on your game type (zero losses) ! but what the tapjoy sdk (again an AppFund Company) did best for me is that it really help me hold on to my position, so I combined both (concentrate power) and just like playing my strategy games it worked like a charm! and you also have to remember that games have life cycles and the idea really is to maximize you revenue at the peaks, but there are also ways to revive your life cycles....The trend for Navy Patrol both version goes up and down, then up again then back down...but I am fighting to keep it last and maximize the revenues at the peaks.... But what works for me will not necessarly work for someone else, but Navy Patrol is just a OK game not the greateast by far (my team I hope will finally remove the million bugs in it!) I was able to make a decent amount of revenue (~$60/day before and ~$350/day after Appventcalendar) before with an "ok" app...But the fact that it was a just a "ok" app forced me to find ways to make the app relevant in the App Store which will probably helped whenenever I release a great app ( note:I hope my devs are reading this)...Challenge is a good thing..and a lot folks here challenged me and it was great because I was able to refine more clearly what FAAD can do for you..
Conclusion: paying 1200 $ to give away your game for free won't help your personal revenue ...did we really have to dispute for 22 pages to understand it? Also, @ ICS mobile; you tried to sweep the dust under the rug; and you took advantage of the naivety of the users-making them believe that you were offering a free service, and forcing them to high-rate the apps and buying other affiliate products, relying on their good heart. I got your apologize e-mail, and read your replies on the forum. Howewer, there are still a lot of unaddressed questions on your businness model, that seems really flawed. Or, in other words: I hope i will see some more clarity from everyone in the future-and i hope you'll understand that mirrors and smoke does not make a successful businness for everyone-just for the magician doing the trick Best regards, Fede
How can I force someone to pay? I told developers the price (see previous post for updated price) for the service some accepted, some declined because it did not make sense to them from a business standpoint! I personally did PAY ($600) to advertize my Freemium app on Appventcalendar and it worked extremely well for me (~$60/day before ~$350/day after) I am just trying to make you understand that in a crowded environment you need to shift to another gear! DO NOT USE FAAD if it does not make sense to you, some will find it useful and others won't! I spent 3 weeks setting up the website and yes I should have had the developer blog (http://freeappaday.com/dev_blog.html) up and running as well, but I haven't been sleeping much....(4.am here and still up). If I had a conclusion Combining various Business Concepts is POWER And you must have a Good App otherwise it simply won't work! A Bad App on Steroids is still a Bad App! That's why we are selecting good apps to make sure that the solution will be beneficial for them, I declined developers who wanted to pay top dollars because there application did not meet the necessary criteria! Quality Only will get you in FreeAppADAy! The goal is for the developers to succeed but they must have a good application! The app will be advertised on the site for a month and we already had more than half-million visits and people are actually buying apps from the calendar and the fact that they are pre-screened for quality helped a lot! So the impact may not be immediate for some developers but these extra sales a day adds up in the long run especially over a month, you must remember that most games have life cycles and what comes up must come down and the idea here is to help small devs generate revenue over a long period of time, not just with a big spike! Having quality apps on the site attracts more visitors to the site who will check out previously promoted apps that they missed (visibility), Essentially the current Free app also increases the visibility for the other paid apps! They are millions of iPhone users out there and our analytics shows that ~45% of visitors at FAAD are new visitors!
