You’ve got a great app. You’ve spent months planning, developing, programming, and testing. You want it to be worthwhile.
So how much should you sell your app for?
To be honest, that is a hard question to answer. Looking on the app store, prices are all over the place, from 99 cents up to $29.99.
Most seem to fall in the 99 cent to $4.99 range.
There are people however, who won’t pay more than 99 cents for an app.
Which is fine if you are Angry Birds and sell millions of apps..but I’m not Angry Birds, and most likely you aren’t either.
Again, this is where you need to do some research.
What are similar apps going for on the app store? Look especially close at the ones that are currently in the top downloads.
One of the issues with the app store is there is no way to know how popular an app really is or how many times it’s been downloaded.
So an app that has similar features priced at $9.99 may have no downloads, and one priced at 99 cents might have ten thousand. Or vice versa.
The top downloads don’t appear to be an overall total taken from since the app store has been live, but more of a recent sampling. So an older app won’t be in the top, so you don’t really know if it’s popular or not.
One area to research is reviews. An app that has a lot of reviews obviously has a lot of downloads (well, unless they are fake paid reviews…more on that later). Read the reviews to see if any mention of price is made…if a number complain about the price, obviously the price is NOT right! Or if they mention they would pay more for it…maybe your price should be higher…
You can’t be neutral on this, because you have put all this time and effort into this endeavor. You know your app is great, that it’s a great idea, that you would pay lots for it…it’s your baby and you love it…
Again, you will want to enlist the help of people you trust or those who would be neutral to snap you back to reality. Ask them what the range they would pay for it.
The last consideration is your market. WHO is going to download your app? HOW MANY people are we talking here? Is your target market broad-people who run, people who cook, kids who love Justin Beiber…or is it a very small and focused one -dentists, professors, fans of Walter Ostanek(click on the name if you don’t know who he is)
if you’ve got an app that most likely everyone with an iPhone will want to download, well, 1 million downloads at 99 cents sure looks better than 1,000 at $9.99. But if your market is small and focused, most likely those users will see value in your app and will be willing to pay the higher price for it. 1,000 downloads at $9.99 is much better than 1,000 downloads at 99 cents…
I wrestled with what to price my apps at for some time. There are millions of photographers in the world after all…but how many have iPhones? How many would want to really improve their photography or are they just looking for filters/effects? There are two markets for photography apps. Those shooting with SLRs, and those with iPhones/iPods.
After looking on the app store and consulting, I chose $2.99 for my full slr version, and 99 cents for the iPhoneographers version (which has less assignments as iPhone/iPod touch cameras don’t have the same features as an SLR or P/S).
So far, no one has complained about the price…but I’m not a millionaire yet either…
CHANGING YOUR PRICE
Once your app has been on a store for a while, and downloads have tailed off a bit (prepare for it, it will happen), one method of boosting sales is to lower your price.
Personally, I’m NEVER going to do this. (this statement is now online and will be cached by Google, so I can’t go back now!!!)
One of the things that annoys me to no end is when I’ve paid full price for anything and then it goes on sale. Or even worse…FREE. Apps don’t have a price-match guarantee like stores do, and there is no way to give your customers partial refunds. I know we are only talking one or a few dollars here…but I don’t feel that it’s right that my close friends, colleagues, and those who supported me in the beginning would be paying more than someone waiting for a sale.
Now I might be making this a bit too personal with this…but these are people I know and who have made my early success possible. And people who I will be calling upon for help again when I release new versions and updates. Do I really want to alienate them? I think not.
That’s just my take on it. There are lots of resources out there who tell you having a sale or going free is a good way to boost sales.
ONE YEAR LATER:
Yeah, still not a fan of screwing over your “early adopters”. I watched a $2 app fly to pretty much #1 in it’s first day of launch, all because of all the people posting, tweeting, and promoting the shit out of it. And barely a month later, it was on for free.
I saw tons of tweets saying “now that it’s free, I thought I’d try it out” “totally worth it now that it’s free.”
Even worse, seeing the same people who paid for the app promoting it being free now.
I saw another developer bragging about how they got over 200,000 downloads when they went to free…but now they have no way to monetize those followers. And while the app shot up the charts, once they move it back to paid, the rankings disappear.
So here’s my thought…maybe start at a lower price, then raise it. Assuming your app is any good, the buzz generated will make people want it, even though they might have to pay more since they didn’t grab it when it first launched.
Although it seems the only way to make money these days is the FREEMIUM model. App is free, but you have to pay if you want extra features. This way, you get tons of downloads and people trying out your app, and hopefully they will pay the extra few dollars for the upgrades.
So those are some things to think about on pricing. In the end, it’s up to you to do what you think will work best for you and your success.
And I hope it happens for you!
Noel Chenier
PS-One for you new and hip polka lovers!
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