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App Store Developers Debate Pricing and Marketing

nagromme said:
It strikes me as insane when people hesitate to pay $5 for a game (likely worth $20-$30 for Mac, PC or PSP) waiting to see if it becomes $1.

That $4 you saved is a fraction of the cost of the meal you bought yesterday, maybe didn't even like, and have now forgotten.

There are reviews and screenshots--that's enough to make a few bucks an acceptable, even trivial risk for me. The higher the price, the more sure I have to be before I buy, but I certainly don't complain that the developers are making too much money!
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I personally feel that it's the very success of the app store that is creating this downward pricing pressure. There are so many great apps coming out that people are pacing their spending to buy "best-in-class" software. Intua's Beatmaker, deep green chess, these serve their niches very well and should be able to maintain their prices for some time to come. There's no way you'd find this kind of quality for free.

When an app spills over the tipping point of being simply a novelty (Classics) to being truly useful and/or brilliant, people will pay, i'm sure of it.
 
Spades said:
But then aren't you linking to the same place where the cheaper, crappier version of your program sits, right next to yours?

Of course the cheaper, better version may be there as well. But I can see how it's not a friendly system for the developer.
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You can hard link a hyperlink to open iTunes and take you right to your app. Arn links all the time in the iPhone section of MacRumors.

Best way to do it. Take every potential customer to the front of the line.
Not sure if you can link it the same way if you were using the iPhone browsing and app buying but still.
 
I somewhat agree with the second guy. Many developers of the iPhone are start-up companies or one guy coding the app. They don't have websites or any other way to advertise their apps.
 
This is what I find funny. 99% of app store apps are crap. So can you imagine what would have happened if apple didn't monitor what gets posted? It would be 10,000 flashlight apps. I agreed with both developers, I am a film maker and I see a lot of other filmmakers that finish a film put tons of effort into it (years worth) then do nothing with it. Where's the marketing. You have to market your own app and get it out there. For me 60% of the apps I like I find on a site, the rest are in the iTunes homepage or the featured list on the phone. Be proactive and market your product! Business Business!!
 
Top sales lists shouldn't be listed by download. They should be listed by earnings. That way a .99 cent app would have to be 10 times more popular than a 9.99 app to surpass it in the list... if I'm thinking correctly. :eek:

Seems fair and balances the playing field.
 
blackpond said:
Top sales lists shouldn't be listed by download. They should be listed by earnings. That way a .99 cent app would have to be 10 times more popular than a 9.99 app to surpass it in the list... if I'm thinking correctly. :eek:

Seems fair and balances the playing field.
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THats a really great idea!
 
Bubba Scruggs said:
Dollars grossed is the only fair way to rank these things, just like movies.
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Yeah but a good movie charges you just as much as a bad one does. There needs to be a system that weighs price, downloads and customer rating. Heck - make it like the BCS - just average all 3 of them and only list the top 2 because all the other apps must obviously suck!

(That's a college football joke ;) )
 
dwd3885 said:
Well there are demo versions of all those desktop apps. Gimme a demo version of a paid iPhone app and I bet the paid versions sell better after the demo version is out
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These desktop applications do not work because of the demos. The business "model" is that student are taught them, they pirate them, and when they move to the workplace, they make their employers buy them. That's how softwares like Photoshop or Office are nearing 100% market shares.

As for the iPhone, the problem with the demos is that you can't capitalize on them. I mean, you can have a $10 application and the free demo version. The free demo version might rank 5/5, as far as the Apple Store is concerned, it has no link whatsoever to the full application.

That's actually a major problem with the AppStore: it was thought to handle a few hundred applications at most, not thousands. The hierarchy is very poor, you have 90% of the applications in 2-3 categories. Moreover, it's completely flat - you have no way to group together applications (for instance, free, standard and "pro"), you have no way to issue time limited demo versions... Likewise, there is no meaningful ranking system or even a way to weight the meaningful comments more than the really useless ones.

The AppStore needs to have a system built to handle million of applications. Something where comments are weighted (like Amazon), where there is an horizontal navigation between applications (people who bought X also bought Y, people who bought X recommend Y instead...)...
 
I don't know what's worse...apps that are junk or whiny developers.

If you want to charge more make sure it's worth it so that consumers will actually pay for it, then get the app some exposure.

This is what is called competition people and a prime example of why competition is good for the consumer. Anyone who might/should know a thing about business should know that there's always a shakeout with something like this. Consumers will speak with their wallets as to what they're willing to pay for what. They first need to know about what you sell though and that's not really Apple's job.

Developers: Man up and get to work! No one ever said it would be a free ride.
 
Small White Car said:
See this article another poster listed earlier:

http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/how-to-prevent-the-app-store-from-becoming-the-crap-store/

Scroll down to the bar graph a bit down the page. That pretty much explains it.
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If you haven't read the link it is a good read. And I think the idea of ranking apps on how much $$ they gross, and not shear numbers would be a great idea. I personally have no problem paying for a great $3+ great app, at the same time, when looking for an app I go to the top 100 list like most people :(
 
blackpond said:
Top sales lists shouldn't be listed by download. They should be listed by earnings. That way a .99 cent app would have to be 10 times more popular than a 9.99 app to surpass it in the list... if I'm thinking correctly. :eek:

Seems fair and balances the playing field.
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There are a few technical problems here. What happens if I change the price of my app from $.99 to $9.99? Apple would have to keep track of the price everyone paid on each download and then aggregate that to present its top lists.

That's not the way iTunes was originally designed -- originally everything was supposed to have the same price ($0.99) and so Apple didn't have to build in this kind of stuff.

Besides, what this seems to me to be is a secondary sorting order, not a primary. I still think the "Top Paid" apps should be ranked by number of downloads, not the amount of revenue.
 
An opportunity for another commercial App Portal

The flood is making it extremely difficult to find anything other than impulse buys in the iTunes App store. This is great for the developers of popular impulse buy apps. And that's why they are flooding the store with even more.

For the other types of apps, this creates an opportunity for a (non-Apple, Arn?) App portal, providing a centralized marketing outlet for higher priced apps. Paid article content and expert reviews (why this app is worth $19.99, or more, to customers with discerning needs, etc.). Comparative reviews (buy every flashlight in the store and report how bad they all are). Well moderated user reviews. Reviews allowing developer replies. Lot's of quality high priced ads... after the site becomes popular. Maybe even a sister print publication. Links to Apple's App store for fulfillment (using the click statistics to sell even more targeted advertising, etc.).

Buyers with money will go to this site, or sites like it, when they can't find anything but impulse buys and cheap cr*p in Apple's store. Let Apple be Walmart. Someone else now has the opportunity to be the real, quality, iPhone app store.

.
 
Luke1robb said:
The app store on the iphone is becoming like the mobile itunes store, just for specific searches. If you really want to figure out which app is good or not, you have to use your computer, unfortunately.
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Aye, and I can't accept that the only apps that are any good are the ones that make it into the top 25. I suspect there are gems that aren't regarded as such due to not being free or not being 99 cents. I'm not sure how you find them otherwise though. If they aren't featured in some way, they are buried in 10,000 other apps.

Eventually we won't search for apps in the app store at all I guess. We'll google for them and follow links to the app store just to make our purchases.
 
First issue with the AppStore, the ability to recognize and trust a company that more than likely you have never heard of before, and that could be some kid at home or some large company that happens to be based outside of your home territory.

If we see Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, EA etc we know those names from seeing products in stores and so on. See an app from BoobyJohnSmithHAHA and you wonder what you are really buying.

Also, as you buy a software product the consumer has been taught (for better or worse) to expect that the product is not 100% perfect initially and it will require updates over time, so if you spend a few $$ on an app and then find that the functionality really isnt there, will it be supported? will updates be provided or did you just get screwed over and someone/people profit from an half assed appliction being sold to thousands of people with no intention to fix/support the application.

If the app is free then you can just delete it and not worry about it, the more you pay the more resentment you have to a vendor when you have no recourse for an app that does not realistically live up to expectations. The concern for Apple is that if a person has enough bad experiences with the Apps that they download through the iTunes Store they will eventually reach a point where the device & the store are no valued at all and they will move on to to something different. As much as Apple is not the creator of these apps it is their store and they are the only store, so their reputation is tarnished by bad experiences.
 
unfaded said:
I would say that the lack of easily playable demos are what keeps people at a 99 price-point: they don't want to buy something, play it for a few minutes, realize it blows and then feel ripped-off.
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Demos would really help make prices stable.

nagromme said:
It strikes me as insane when people hesitate to pay $5 for a game (likely worth $20-$30 for Mac, PC or PSP) waiting to see if it becomes $1.

That $4 you saved is a fraction of the cost of the meal you bought yesterday, maybe didn't even like, and have now forgotten.

There are reviews and screenshots--that's enough to make a few bucks an acceptable, even trivial risk for me. The higher the price, the more sure I have to be before I buy, but I certainly don't complain that the developers are making too much money!
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I care about how I spend my hard earned money. Maybe you don't. Paying money for a meal you've forgotten is better than paying it for an app you've already forgotten.

The first thing I do before I buy an app is check appshopper to see the history of the pricing. If it's been sold for cheap at some point then I will wait. Because there's nothing like buying an app for $5 and finding out two days later it costs $0.99. My advice to developers, choose a price and stick to it.
 
The Appstore made a good start but it suffers from two huge problems.

1) There is no way to try and buy. That leads to lower prices where people are willing to risk on an unseen app. If there were a way to use an app on a trial basis, people could later decide to purchase it or not.

2) Poor categorization and search. The Appstore provides remarkably few ways to find an application. There are few categories. There are no sub-categories. On the iPhone, there you cannot do much if any sorting of lists. The end result is that you end up with 10,000 apps on which only the top few sellers or "featured" or newest get any attention. Anything else regardless of how good it is gets lost in the noise.

These two problems need to be fixed for Apple's sake mostly but also for developers and consumers. Today the only viable way to sell on the Appstore is to give away a free version of an application as a way to sell either a pro-version or a desktop companion program or service.
 
nagromme said:
It strikes me as insane when people hesitate to pay $5 for a game (likely worth $20-$30 for Mac, PC or PSP) waiting to see if it becomes $1.

That $4 you saved is a fraction of the cost of the meal you bought yesterday, maybe didn't even like, and have now forgotten.

There are reviews and screenshots--that's enough to make a few bucks an acceptable, even trivial risk for me. The higher the price, the more sure I have to be before I buy, but I certainly don't complain that the developers are making too much money!
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$4 is also the cost of the 4@ $0.99 apps that I bought and used for about 5 minutes. I think the app store needs a better system for demos of programs.

Also I agree with Mr. Farmer when he says that marketing is different than distribution. I don't buy a car because it is in the showroom at the dealer, I buy a car because of reviews and advertisements that are often not paid for by the dealership. The same goes for Mac software. I don't buy Microsoft word because of the box at Best Buy.

Apple gets more money from higher priced apps, so they should certainly take part in helping these apps be seen.
 
irun5k said:
Aye, and I can't accept that the only apps that are any good are the ones that make it into the top 25.
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They're not. The top 25 is and will probably always be filled with impulse purchase apps. A good quality app is usually not an impulse purchase. Those apps will probably have to be found elsewhere.

Think of it this way. The candy counter by the cash register is for highest volume impulse purchases, and not the best nor highest profit items in the store. The iTunes App store lists have become candy counters.

.
 
What a bunch of hooey. The race to the bottom is called the market. I have a few paid apps on my iPhone, many of which cost more than .99, and all of which I discovered outside of iTunes. Bottom line is I think most people will pay what they think an app is worth, and sales will increase when it's priced correctly.

Fact is the majority of iPhone apps are crap, barely worth the .99 fee. Many were 3,4,5 time more expensive at launch only for developers to find they overpriced their wares. That is the real reason for the race to .99. Blame Apple for this? C'mon. I'm so sick of developers belly aching instead of realizing there creations are not that good or valuable.
 
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