As you said, it had nothing to do with comparing ICS to the Haiti tragedy. Simply pointing out that efforts that seems good and noble on the surface may not always be so, and that people have a right to know and make a judgement for themselves. There are lines that most people feel should not be crossed, and clearly I am not alone in feeling that ICS has crossed that line. Again, it has never been my main point that the price is just too high. My main point was that they are hiding the fact that they are raking in money from developers and presenting it to the world as more of a noble cause. You can find my responses to the same questions above. Then you are not looking closely enough. It is quite clear that the general population is totally unaware that the developers making their game free have to pay for it or that users are being coerced into leaving 5 star reviews. For advertisements, sure, I 100% agree, but again, the faad site is not presented to the public as an advertising site, but more like a public service. Please do not attribute the word "defrauded" to me. I very clearly articulated that I feel what they are doing is morally and ethically wrong. I NEVER said it was tantamount to fraud or illegal.
Sooooooo...anyway, I think I have said quite enough for now. Some good points have been brought up about business models, etc. on both sides. Everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing and everyone is free to have their own opinion about it. I hope though that ICS does update their site to be more honest and open. That is all.
Thanks your comment which is very helpful, I will address this very shortly in the info section of our site! I thought it was clear but it's not, so this is on me and will correct it! It's the beginning and a lot pieces are missing and we're working on that!
This is the new disclaimer available on the site: FreeAppADay.com assesses a Promotional/Advertisement Fee for developers interested in promoting their application. The Fee is waved for first time developers meeting our submission criteria
To be fair I do not think this is a scam, I just think that, being so young a service, their mouth is writing cheques their ass can't cash, to use a crude phrase -- not yet anyway. I think ICS is overvaluing such a young service, and when you do that you run the risk of overvaluing yourself out of the existence, especially if word of mouth gets around that people aren't getting an acceptable ROI out of the bargain. This isn't really about site metrics or App Store rankings during its free period though, not directly. Ultimately, developers invest in an FAAD spot for the long-term benefits the exposure you provide is supposed to give them, which in turn is supposed to translate into more sales after the free period. That is where the ROI is supposed to kick in for the developer. The posting and freebie day are only the means to get it. That is the metric developers want to see, and that is the metric you can't provide yet because it hasn't been going on long enough to provide any sort of useful sales curves. What's more is the question of just how effective their $600 posting to FAAD was versus just making it free on their own terms and saving their money, instead hoping to see other sites and app trackers pick up on it. That's the harder question to answer, and you alone can't answer it. It will take time to suss out, but being that this is the beginning of your endeavour, it is the most critical time to make the right decisions to ensure its future success. You need developers to pay for your service, and you need those developers' apps to have long term success and provide a substantial enough ROI that you can show other developers those numbers to bolster their confidence in the efficacy of the service you are offering them. You don't have that right now, and your service is priced high enough that getting a proper ROI could take a substantially longer period of time if they even see one at all. All I'm saying is this: Lower barrier to entry = faster and better ROI for the developers = better numbers for them = better numbers for you = more success for the site = larger cachet you can then use to command more money for your services. This is quite literally doubly important since $600 is apparently an introductory price which will go up to twice that amount soon, and if you can't prove the efficacy of your service by then and developers are complaining of a poor ROI now, it's only going to be worse when the price goes up.
"All I'm saying is this: Lower barrier to entry = faster ROI for the developers = better numbers for them = better numbers for you = more success for the site = larger cachet you can then use to command more money for your services. This is quite literally doubly important since $600 is apparently an introductory price which will go up to twice that amount soon, and if you can't prove the efficacy of your service by then and developers are complaining of a poor ROI now, it's only going to be worse when the price goes up." Got it! Developers are not necessarily looking for an instant cash play some are using the traffic to promote future apps (ability to connect to a new user base through game upates), when they have a freemium business model (Cocoto Kart), when they want to promote a sequel app ( Rope'n'Fly) or a pure discovery play (kryser), or rediscovery play ( Reign of Swords)! Again thank you for helping me better define what FAAD does! FAAD provides a lot of Traffi2.There several ways to utilize the traffic efficiently ( promotion of future apps, Freemium business model, pure discovery) 1. No it is no it's not guaranteed that they will make more sales at the end of the process it's up to the developer to discover what is more adequate for his own application 4. Yes Tapjoy provides a risk free guaranteed install solution
Last Post! Developers are not necessarily looking for an instant cash play some are using the traffic: 1.to promote future apps (ability to connect to a new user base through game upates) 2.when they have a freemium business model (Cocoto Kart), 3.when they want to promote a sequel app ( Rope'n'Fly) 4.pure discovery play (kryser) 5.rediscovery play (Reign of Swords)!
Sure, there are other ways to use the service, or other reasons to do so anyway, and for some developers exposure alone (and thus requiring only proof of site metrics) may be all they were looking to get for their money's worth. But ultimately it still comes down to sales, whether it be sales of another app their freebie is trying to promote, promotion of their brand to generate sales across all of their apps, or indeed promotion of that specific app. Nobody spends $600 on a service they don't plan on seeing returns on, so in the end, you still need their long-term sales figures pre- and post-promotion in order to prove the efficacy of your service and help developers justify the investment. Site metrics, download counts and rankings for the freebie day are only part of the picture, and in most cases, not the most important part.
Understood but developers came to me with specific motives, and I deliver the traffic and some are already interested in running new campaign. As I said I will provide the full download count on Monday, I already have the counts for the first 3 devs, and I will reveal the final tally on Monday if the devs are ok with it! But just by looking at their respective App Store ranking you should already assume that they all did very well. Again it's up to the developer to use the traffic efficiently, I did it and it worked well for me, I also explain to my devs how to best utilize this traffic and afterwards it's up to them! Freemium business case study: Navy Patrol Coastal Defense Premium + Zero (in-apps) Before Appventcalendar $60/day after Appventcalendar +Tapjoy: $350 ($700 weekend)
someone with the knowledge please answer me one question: did the appventcalendar cost money to enter?
You will find all your answers in the developer blog we just created! http://freeappaday.com/dev_blog.html
You have to admit that its a little funny to take your advice on app store success when you are making nearly 4x the revenue by selling that little box on your website
Just want to get some clarification and adding my own thoughts into this. From earlier announcement, it looked like FAAD.com is a collaboration effort between Tapjoy, ICS Mobile, AppventCalendar (BlackSmith Games) and OpenFeint. We put smackBOTS up for AppventCalendar and have gotten more than 100k downloads. Did it helped our sales of our other game - KatchUp? No, not really. So what did it do for us? We decided to make smackBOTS free for the number of reasons: 1) We're a young game studio. No one knows us, so smackBOTS helped get our name out there. 2) It was a way to help populate our multiplayer lobby and get some real user testing. 3) We could explore in app purchase in future, although there's no telling how well that will work out. So when we took part in AppventCalendar, I felt that the whole thing was an indie developer trying to get some marketing efforts going for his own game but was a joint effort by all developers taking part in promoting the site. I can't say that everyone did their part, but I personally put in quite a bit of effort in getting my personal contacts like Mashable.com. They wrote about AppventCalendar and that helped everyone out putting their own investment by offering their game for free. AppventCalendar wasn't entirely free for developers, there was featured apps that cost $200 per day. So AppventCalendar moved on and I'm guessing efforts were made by TapJoy, BlackSmith Games and ICS Mobile to get FAAD.com going. ICS Mobile seem to be talking a lot about Tapjoy in this whole thread but I thinks it's appropriate to disclose the relationship between FAAD.com and Tapjoy. Obviously, FAAD.com is positioned as a marketing tool and they're selling a service to us the developers. Everything has a price, and value is subjective. If you think $600 is too expensive, then it's not worth it for you to pay them for a spot. Again I get the same mixed feeling where the AppventCalendar developers put in their effort in making the event a success but ultimately now if we wanted to get our app into FAAD.com it would have cost me $600. So a pure goodwill marketing event where indie developers banded together is now turning into a money making machine just doesn't sit well with the initial intentions of AppventCalendar. I know ICS mobile is not doing any illegal here, and they have every right to charge however and whatever amount they think their service is worth. Ok. So here's my initial thoughts on this whole thing.
ICS, there is one last thing I'll ask you for: don't try to convince people in giving 4-star / 5-star-ratings because otherwise, as you stated yourself, the apps will cease to come. Knowing the background now, many of my friends on TA that I discussed with yesterday per pm don't like the feeling of being manipulated, especially not because there is money involved. Most of us "customers" don't like lying. If an app is only 3-star (- simply said; mostly I write reviews instead of just clicking on that simple star-rating-thing) I will only rate it 3-star. I am sure, the most users I know who are actually writing reviews and rate games are knowing exactly what they are doing. Just trust them. Things like these tend to backfire. I am signing the reviews on AppStore with my name. And I'd like my name to stay clean and trustworthy, when I write a review. I don't feel the need to mislead other customers with a palliated review. Even it will cost you some money. And that is not ungratefulness, that is called honesty.
Last time I offered one of our PC games for free for one day to a similar site, they actually paid me a nice amount to do it.
Btw.: Reign of Swords: http://topappcharts.com/290813546/app-details-reign-of-swords.php Kryzer: http://topappcharts.com/315649970/app-details-kryzer.php Seems as if these are already descending after a quick rise.
