Comments on: Should you give your iPhone app for free?

By: aboutblackboston

aboutblackboston — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:59:30 +0000

Don’t remember his name but the cool young man who invented the Ruby on Rails Web 2.0 platform lead a conference session where he was recorded as saying “..if you “know” you have a good product, don’t offer it for free!”

The Ruby on Rails organization is profitable and popular now. Still, Gadi and the Ruby on Rails founder are both right.

on my blog I published an article titled
“New Google G1 Cell Phone Offers Black Entrepreneurs Leverage”

url: http://aboutblackboston.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/new-google-g1-cell-phone-offers-black-entrepreneurs-leverage/

Of course, this is the case with everybody who knows some JAVA, not just black people.

Conversion is really what its all about, ain’t it?

By: Keith Forsythe

Keith Forsythe — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:45:57 +0000

Thanks, I’ll check this out and probably blog about this topic in the future.

By: Gadi Shamia

Gadi Shamia — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:16:11 +0000

I am not sure there is a publicly available analysis. In my humble opinion, by giving apps for free marketers are reducing huge friction in the sales process. if you imagine that the cost of sales and marketing are the sum of all frictions in the process (visibility, interest and all the to paying and usage), paying is most probably the biggest friction point once you have an interested customer. remove it and you can most probably win 10X more consumers(depends on which product)which makes your cost of sales and marketing much cheaper…

More thoughts on “free” can be found here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11274

By: skepticman

skepticman — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:25:55 +0000

Gadi, has anyone give much thought to what it costs to market a free app vs. a paid app? This applies to an iPhone app or any other platform application. Has anyone seen any analysis on the cost to market a free app vs a paid app? My hypothesis is that a free app would be cheaper because, possible along the same lines as the ratio of free to paid app downloads, 1 to 15.

By: painful salute

painful salute — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:07:53 +0000

I am currently learning how to write an iPhone application. I know literally nothing about objective C, but I’ve written programs before in many other languages so I don’t think it will be that difficult to learn.

The application I have in mind is a utility, the likes of which do not yet exist for the iPhone so I will be breaking new ground and actually adding functionality to the iPhone that does not yet exist.

Based on my expected program demand I am planning on selling my app on the app store for 99 cents. I feel that it’s the best price for a first-time programmer getting his first app out there and just a little money in the process. The money is really secondary to my desire to have this functionality on my iPhone, but it is the more motivating factor to get my application completed and published. Not only that, but if I make 100 bucks off this application it will pay for the cost of joining the iPhone developer program, and any other applications I develop in the future will have no cost to me.

You talk about monetizing through other means rather than charging for the app directly but as an iPhone user I don’t see how any of the free apps so far could be making money this way. Am I missing something or do you have some examples of free apps that monetize in some other way?

By: My iPhone went on a shopping spree « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia

My iPhone went on a shopping spree « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:19:09 +0000

[...] (sorry, iPhone), it wants more applications. This is free, isn’t it? Many developers did not take my advice and they actually charge for their iphone apps. A good to-do application, couple of games and a [...]

By: Should you build an iphone application? « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia

Should you build an iphone application? « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:17:27 +0000

[...] Should you give your iPhone app for free? Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)App StoreOfficial third-party apps before June [...]

By: Gadi Shamia

Gadi Shamia — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:13:52 +0000

Falkirk- you are making a great point. The iTunes 99 cents also paid for the feel good of buying legal music (although the many millions downloading illegal music never felt like criminals…)
To your question: my guess is that demos would not do very well in the app store environment (unless they are time limited versions of paid app – what will make people consume them as “paid”. With so many apps to chose from, people will vote for immediate gratification with an app they can start using today and not worry about in the future.

By: Falkirk

Falkirk — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:04:18 +0000

I enjoyed your analysis. But I believe that one of your premises is slightly off the mark.

You referred to buying music on iTunes for 99 cents and suggested that people were willing to pay the 99 cents even though they could get it for free because “it was easier to click buy now and pay 99 cents than going to your favorite file sharing site” and wasting time and effort to obtain the same results.

You then postulated that purchases at the App store were different because it was just as easy to obtain the free option as it was to obtain the paid option.

I wanted to point out one other difference between the two scenarios. With the App store both the paid and the free copy are legitimate purchases. In your music scenario, the paid for music was legitimate while the free option involved piracy. People are willing to pay a reasonable amount to remain honest. This strong incentive is absent in the App Store scenarios. Both the paid and the free options are perfectly moral.

Question: Have you explored the idea of simultaneously releasing a free demo version and a for pay premium version of an application?