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firewood

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 29, 2003
8,149
1,400
Silicon Valley
After the initial sales burst, a lot of developers are scared by when their sales bubble starts to vanish, and maybe by comments on pricing from broke teenagers in the reviews. Many of the clueless-about-business-types get bluffed into lowering prices, and it's a race to the bottom. But business advice from broke teenagers is often less than worthless.

The initial sales burst will fill the channel of early adopters and new app addicts. Once that channel filled, it's very doubtful that a price reduction will get it back. By lowering prices, developers can actually saturate the rest of their market, quickly killing continued demand for their product.

What I tried instead for one of my apps, after the initial sales bubble drop-off, and as unit sales were sloping downward, was to start increasing that app's price, not decreasing it. The last few prices increases have actually been offsetting the app's declining unit sales, and the weekly revenue for this app has stayed fairly constant for the past couple months (ignoring a small Christmas boomlet). (and knock-on-wood... :)
 
I'm still far from getting an app into the App Store, but this is advice I'll keep in mind if I ever get there! Thanks for the insight.
 
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