Why do you think developers post here? To get people interested in their products, which hopefully will result in someone buying them. How is what ICS Mobile doing anything different from anyone else? Again, the App Store for a lot of people around here is how they pay their mortgage and put food on their table. Effective marketing strategies can involve all kinds of different advertising methods, everything from running promo code contests on TouchArcade, to paying to be listed on freeappaday.com. So I'd say the reason ICS Mobile post here is right in line with why a lot of other people post here.
Yeah I'm feelin' that. I went around promoting the appventcalendar quite a lot, and also a bit for freeappaday, but now I realize what I should have been doing is promoting each individual game by itself. Yeah but I enjoy supporting developers, to me ICS Mobile now seem like an outside agency... they're not the people I'm here for. If they release a great game then I'll promote that, but I'm not concerned about their other ventures at all. As I just said in response to Vovin I'd rather support the developers directly, this method just feels the same as handing money to record companies and screwing the artists.
FreeAppADay.com is Free for first time developers with compelling applications! We have a bunch of them lined up in the coming weeks! Some Developers are using FreeAppADay to get more visibility, others are using the site because they have a Freemium business model, others are using the site to push their newest game aka rope'n'fly to pushing rope'n'fly 2....But we always make room for first time developers with compelling apps to give them a chance to compete and several all them are already lined up!
As an end user, what difference does it make to you at all what agreement developers come to to be listed on the site? Judging by the games they've had on there so far, freeappaday.com is a good repository for one free app/game that's actually worth downloading on a daily basis. Your line of logic that anyone trying to make money off anything is somehow souring your experience is very strange, especially considering how much advertising dollars run pretty much the entire internet-- And likely quite a few things you enjoy, whether you realize it or not.
We are having a sliding calendar meaning once we reach the end of the month each dates slide backward so that every developers gets a full month of exposure! Additionally we're adding a voting feature, so that the top 5 games who gets the most votes will have a gold frame on the site and they will also be featured on a gold App column on the side...we're working on that...so that the best of the best will be able to achieve even more sale for being on the site!
I never attacked ICS Mobile, I only asked because I like to know what is this all about, just in response to the first post. I did not offend anyone, just told how I felt. It's just that I feel stange by comments like this: It's like running around with a wal-mart-shirt without knowing.
As an end user... no difference, but that doesn't mean I can't be concerned about devs potentially being screwed over. Yes it's all legal and totally optional, but there's a risk involved and I think there are better ways to get your game seen. I don't know how much it costs to place a banner here on TA but I'm sure you're getting a better deal than you would on freeappaday.com. I also don't want to be advertised to by ICS Mobile through forum posts... I don't see AdMob plastering their scheme all over the website. Even this sounds like an advertisement: This entire topic is questioning ICS Mobile's credibility, and that's all they have to say about it? They're starting to sound like bots!
Hm...ok, but is it free, or not? What are exactly your criteria? Quality? Being new to the market? Or the big names get it for free, and the small devs have to pay? And is the entry fee fixed for everyone, or it varies following quality/innovation/visibility criterias? Many questions here I admit i naively thought it was a free thing, from developers to developers. But for sure there's no room for such things Howewer, $600/1200 is not that steep if you consider it's a months of advertising, with almost 100.000 hits a day (following the rough download stats of TwoLivesLeft)...totalizing 3.000.000 views for your game. It's not that much. But the point is the target. $ 600 for one month would be really low here, on TouchArcade (btw how many hits does TA totalizes every day???) where the audience includes hardcore gamers, people who would happily pay 10$ for an AAA title. Here it would pay a lot. On freeappaday, instead, the targed is made of people who wants things for free. They don't care if the game is good or unpolished and boring: what's important is that it's free. And don't think that giving away your (complete) game for free is a good idea. For example, i read on Glennx's website (glenn is the dev of Ground Effect) that he was partecipating in the Appvent's calendar. It was just a discount, but i thought he would eventually give away his app for free. So i waited, and waited, and waited through december. And in the end i didn't buy it. That's pretty much what would happen to everyone: after being marked as a "freebier" you would risk achieving the opposite of what you're looking for: users that, waiting for you to drop the price to 0$ will not buy your app. And IMO that's not the service you are looking for. 600/1200$ is not a lot for the user base that FAAD provides. But are you looking for that kind of userbase? That is the big question. Fede p.s. sorry for my bad english ^_^ i'm not a native speaker, hopefully i made myself clear and didn't offend anyone.
True... but now there are 3,000,000 people who don't need to buy your game since they just got it for nothing.
You beat me, I just thought about something I've read in the other thread. Look at posts like these: For sure we have to give 4-5 star ratings. But not because anyone cares for the devs, instead other devs should notice the high ratings and the advertising fees keep flowing? That's what I meant to feel manipulated. Get the game, rate it high, other devs will promote at FAAD when noticing and we will earn money from advertising. edit: and I think: 600$ - 1200$ is a huge amount of money for indie devs. Chances are not equal. Not everyone can afford it to participate the FAAD.
Every developer has its own reason behind a FreeAppADay promotion, we are offering a service, we are delivering tones of download and generating a maximum of traffic in a minimum of time! If I were you guys I would think Freemium! That's how we are able to best monetize our applications, at we have been running at an average of $350/day and peaking at $700/day by using a combination of freemium and Premium apps. Before that once our game cycle ended we were barely making $60/day So here is a good App Store play: 1. Freemium done right generates more revenue than premium 2. Freemium combined with FreeAppAday generates a lot more revenue 3. Exposure with more than 120,000 apps out there is essential: People are now downloading the games that have switched to paid because they know that we screen them! Additionally since our traffic is constantly increasing the likelyhood for newbies to pick up previously promoted games is very high! And again since gamers know that we screen game, they have more confidence with their purchase! 4. FreeAppADay generates anywhere between 30k and 100k+ downloads per app, we pushed Reign Of Sword all the way to the 60th spot of the entire App Store in a single day..Now thing about what it means: A huge user base than they can reach though game updates to inform them about their upcoming apps...it essentially amounts to having your own broadcasting channer! which means cheaper ad spend down the road!!!! 5. If you have an old good game and want to promote your newest app follow the Rope'n'fly Example! That's really what FreeAppAday provides, if you think that it's not valuable wait until the appstore reaches 300,000 apps! Feel to ask me any questions!
Exactly what i stated at the end of my answer. The 3.000.000 people are on the wrong site: a site were you get apps for free will hardly bring $1200 worth of customers Well, Eli (mr. Hodapp is better???), i don't get that either...this is not an AD service, is not going to bring potential paying customers, but potential free customers, that are going to ignore your app as soon as it isn't free anymore. That's why i think $1200 is quite a lot ^_^
Eli and I haven't really talked about this situation, but I'd say it does make me look at FreeAppAday differently. I didn't really look into it closely, but I had assumed it was just a collective of developers promoting their apps. Otherwise, it may fall into "don't post links to your site" rules that we have here. The exception in the past has been for developers peddling their own wares, but does not cover services/businesses like this. arn
Part of my problem is I haven't heard from any of the developers who participated about whether or not they thought it was worthwhile. I said in my first post it'd help if they'd lend us their views on the whole thing. If they say it was a positive experience then I've got no problems with it at all, if they do actually end up earning money then I'll happily promote it myself. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't think it's reliable enough. There's a risk with all advertising but this risk seems bigger than most.
Exactly: that's what FAAD is good at: 1) pushing the titles on the official charts while they're free, and let them there when they're sold for money. But does the app store work that way? I think it doesn't: i don't think that a free app reaching the top 25 will stay there once you put it back again for pay. Or not? So that's not the point: free apps have their own charts, and they don't keep their ranking once they switch to the paid charts. Correct me if i'm wrong 2) the freemium approach. Do you really think that a user who stumbled upon your free app will dowload the DLC content? Also, the DLC way is hard to implement for an existing app-so, the question once again is: is that worth the effort??? I think it's up to the dev: as nattylux said, i would simply made my app free and promote it independently-more than ever since you charge such a steep price for a service that provides a huge, albeit mostly uninterested, user base. Fede
I will restate what I already wrote above below, There is too many apps out there, there is no way you can fight unless you have a 50k to 100k budget! You are going to spend I dont know anywhere betwen 35k and 50k to make your app and maybe 2k for marketing?...that will lead you nowhere now a days you might as well go to Vegas and gamble! With so many apps out there the small developer will always loose! Now you have the exception like for instance coast defense...but now it's simple math how many coast defense out there?....no many that many right! The App Store is kind of a gold rush now with very few winners. The game has evolved what you could achieve with 20k apps is impossible to achieve at 120k apps, the 99cents app will get you nowhere nowadays with tones of new application coming out every second! To play and win you need one of the following or a combo of them: 1. Maximum Exposure 2. Maximum Marketing Budget 3. A Freemium business Model 4. Brand Recognition (EA, NGMOCO etc...) FreeAppADay provides developers with Maximum exposure, how do you think it would cost a company to reach the top 60 free apps to push other games! Top dollars a huge marketing efforts..we are providing the same results at the fraction of the cost and we are offering a massive new user base. Again I've been in a tough situation in the App Store in the past (October), our apps was featured we made we made a good chunck while we were featured but once we got out of the what's hot...our sales plummeted...and we made maybe 15k out of 70K total effort which included wasting a tone of cash on AdMob! ICS was on the brink of collapse until we switch to the freemium model and we adapted to the fact that there are 120k apps out there! Because of this experience any new developer with a compelling application does not have to pay a dime! and we're having a really good one coming up next week! I am just trying to help here....because ICS was on the verge of collapse and we are now striving because we adapted to a tough and highly competitive market!
