Voted (Spend some time adding features). Now, for the "Next week I’ll tabulate the results and implement your recommendation." - please, post the results here, I'm sure no one will consider the post off-topic ;)
I see disturbing 60% on dropping the price (though the actual participants number is quite low): # Just reduce the price to $0.99 and see what happens. (40%) # Remove the free version and reduce the price of the paid version to $0.99. (20%) Dropping the price IMHO is the worse decision. Here's how it goes - if you drop the price: 1) you'll definitely piss all of your existing customers (now that might be just 1 or 2, but imagine he's an influential blogger - good luck then :) 2) many will see the price dropped, and you'll be probably tempted to even put that in the description of your app - *very* bad idea - if I'm one of those potential customers and see you price drop, I'll wait for you to drop it again (unless it's like $0.99 or I need the app very badly, in which case I'd already be a customer...) 3) you're dumping the rest of the developers with similar applications - it's not good because they might need to drop their prices as well and that's bad 1) and bad 2) Now, there are apps for $0.99 and nobody needs them. There are stupid games (like mine), which cost $5 and again no one needs them, but at least games are an impulse buy. I've had quite a few customers enjoying themselves for ~2 days (I already said the 24 hour period is a myth) and cancelling - that's fine, I put a bit more effort and designed 40 more levels and a level editor (ok, a bit more than a bit more effort ;) - this got my rating a bit up. There are games like mine, which cost even more than $5 and although developed by *very* wellknown professional game companies (and I'm *the* absolute newbie in games) and absolute killers on iphone have fewer downloads and sales. Bottom line is there are passengers for every train -- I'm not dropping the price - there are games *very* similar to mine which cost a fraction of it, but I know I can't sell mine for < $5 - here's why - T-Mobile gets 30%, then ~40% taxes, then what's left is something like ~$2. Given the ratio between the downloads of my free version (5K+ for 1 week) and sales (< 100) I don't think $5 is that high price. But then again, games are purely an impulse buy. There will always be customers thinking along the lines of "not worth $5" - these don't buy <insert you favorite magazine> here either, which is also an impulse buy. These guys are so lucky with the 24-our refund period they even say that in their ratings (luckily not on my game) saying "played, kind of fun, refund - thanks Google". I'm counting on the the other guys, who are like me and buy the magazine - they *know* they'll enjoy it just for a couple of days but that's fine. Cheers, Stoyan On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Ed Burnette <ed.burne...@gmail.com> wrote: > > What do you do when you put an application on the Android Market and > nobody buys it? That’s the subject of today’s installation of Market > Moves (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=816). At the end there is a > poll asking for your input on what to try next. Should I get rid of > the free version? Reduce the price on the paid one? Add some more > features? These are questions that every Android developer will face. > Please have a look, add your vote for the best approach, and share > your experiences in marketing your own apps in the talkback section. > > Thanks, > -- Ed Burnette > Author, "Hello, Android", http://www.pragprog.com/titles/eband > Webmaster, Planet Android blog aggregator, http://www.planetandroid.com > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
