iPhone Users..help.

[Jumbie]

I have 2 ipod apps in development and wanted to get some feedback from iphone users (please and thanks)

- do you purchase apps or do you just go for the free ones
- are you attracted by "free".. I mean, would you ever pay for the same apps you got for free, now knowing what it can do? Or do you download and then remove?
-being free, does it signal to you that it may not be as good as something you paid for (perceived value)
- what do you look for in an app? (benefit,unction,ease of use)

What type of apps have you downloaded? were they free or paid?

And.. what would be a fair price to charge for an apps in your opinion? As soon as it's launched I'll give anyone wanting a copy. BTW.. if you'd like to be a tester, just PM me and I'll get you on the list.

Thanks again.

[TriniCana]

1. purchase the majority of my apps
2. tend to go for the free (beta) ones, only if there is an upgrade (purchase)
3. I have 5 slides/pages of apps. eg. 1 for communication/productivity, 1 for news, 1 for games/music, 1 for world/gps/hotel etc and 1 for graphics/photography.
4. ease of use and function

purchased from the top of my head
game who wants to be a millionaire
app box pro
wifi trax
ivideo camera
pdf reader
handdbase database manager


free apps
cnn
new york times
msnbc
flashlight
fedex mobile
ps mobile (cyah remember if that was free or paid)
timmy me
spg
ishoot (free but eventually paid for the full download)
deal of no deal (free but eventually paid for the full download)

Uhmm price is not really an option. I just want something that would help me while on the run.

Hope this helps

[Jumbie]

PB, much appreciated. One of the apps I'm working on is to display in real-time vacant jobs within a specific niche. The problem I'm facing is if to give it away for free, but if the perceived value would be nil since it's free. With free I have the possibility of it going viral.. but viral does not mean $$ in my pocket though.

Or should I price it within reach ..so users don't think twice about paying for it.

Unless I give it for free, but with limited access? Then upsell the full version.

BTW.. if you don't mind 1 more question. Have you ever received any sort of upsell from the companies that you purchased these apps from? (not upgrade) New or different product.

[dinho]

i'm not an iphone user but ive done fairly significant recent research on iphone app development for a business plan i worked on a couple months ago.

to your question.. it depends on your target market. For example, with your job search app, if its just going to be specific to a certain locale and not helpful to everyone on iTunes then it might not make sense to charge for it. On the other hand, if you truly feel that its something that will add value to the everyday user then you should definitely try to monetize it.. In any case if you give it away for free there's no guarantee it will go viral.

as an example, cana you could call an average users in that she's purchased some apps which bring value to her. But note the ones she's bought, they are top sellers. It would take a strongly involved iPhone customer to search hard enough to buy your app if its not up in the lights. That was one of my problems in figuring out how to generate revenue, just too unpredictable.

I think the best approach is to start with a free version of the app to gauge whether people feel it.. Then you can do a lite version (maybe a 1 week trial, or limit search count) with the option to pay for the full app to monetize it.

my 2 cents.

[lefty]

PB, much appreciated. One of the apps I'm working on is to display in real-time vacant jobs within a specific niche. The problem I'm facing is if to give it away for free, but if the perceived value would be nil since it's free. With free I have the possibility of it going viral.. but viral does not mean $$ in my pocket though.

Or should I price it within reach ..so users don't think twice about paying for it.

Unless I give it for free, but with limited access? Then upsell the full version.

BTW.. if you don't mind 1 more question. Have you ever received any sort of upsell from the companies that you purchased these apps from? (not upgrade) New or different product.

a functional but limited version is d route most indies go "I'm assuming u're an indipendent dev" then offer more functionality at a price or similarly the function could comparable toolwise but the tooling ing the paid version could be superior e.g. like limited vs unlimited image res in a graphics app, I heard of some apps using common MMO business models giving the "barebones" software and have users buy add on content.............u have many choices business model wise what it comes down to is whether u are confident that your app has money making potential....but that's where testing the market comes in.

I'm not an indie..........yet anyways, "3d java game dev hobbist" but giving it serious thought and spoke to a couple on programmer forums before

[JDB]

Jumbie I just had a look and I probably have about 40 downloaded apps and only 5 of them are paid. In addition I have probably deleted another 20-30.

Lite versions are the way to go if you want to get people to try before they buy. Unless your app a recognizable brand like a port of an existing video game franchise then you have to let people try it first.

Omar is also correct unless you expect the app to sell in the1000’s you might as well give it away. Make money on the back end by providing a portal to some paid product or web content. That is what the ebay, amazon and other corporate apps do. They are all free but they provide an interface to make more money or provide better customer service There are lots of app developers who selling apps in the 10’s and 100’s and waiting for their first $100 cheque from the app store.

Price will depend on your app. People buy 99 cent apps easily but these apps (and free ones) have the shortest life span. The average life for an app in terms of actual usage is a couple days at most.

But if you have useful content people will buy at 4.99 and 9.99 easily. The top grossing apps are all sports or videogame related and cost 4.99 – 14.99. The #4 grossing app right now is $899.00. Doh ask me how much people buying that.

[JDB]

PB, much appreciated. One of the apps I'm working on is to display in real-time vacant jobs within a specific niche. The problem I'm facing is if to give it away for free, but if the perceived value would be nil since it's free. With free I have the possibility of it going viral.. but viral does not mean $$ in my pocket though.

Or should I price it within reach ..so users don't think twice about paying for it.

Unless I give it for free, but with limited access? Then upsell the full version.

BTW.. if you don't mind 1 more question. Have you ever received any sort of upsell from the companies that you purchased these apps from? (not upgrade) New or different product.

Yes you do get upsells, lots. There is also lots of advertising in Apps. Typically users find this annoying if it is intrusive (pop ups) but if it is a constant rotating marginal banner it is fine. I don't know how much money this ad space sells for though.

That idea should be saleable because when you looking for a job you should pull out all the stops the problem might be that once a job is found the app is less useful to the buyer. Unless it is meant as a networking tool for HR or recruiters.

It sounds like you definitely need to offer a fee try and see what the uptake is like. You will also have to market it virally on the web and by email to get it cgoing.

[TriniCana]

PB, much appreciated. One of the apps I'm working on is to display in real-time vacant jobs within a specific niche. The problem I'm facing is if to give it away for free, but if the perceived value would be nil since it's free. With free I have the possibility of it going viral.. but viral does not mean $$ in my pocket though.

Or should I price it within reach ..so users don't think twice about paying for it.

Unless I give it for free, but with limited access? Then upsell the full version.

BTW.. if you don't mind 1 more question. Have you ever received any sort of upsell from the companies that you purchased these apps from? (not upgrade) New or different product.

That is exactly what companies or app creators are doing. First having their app as free/lite with a choice to upgrade for a price between .99 cent to 1.99. I think that's a win win situation. Meaning if you are creating a damn good product for free, I the consumer won't have a problem upgrading to get the full product. As dinho stated it depends on your target market. You should ask yourself who is your market; school graduates/leavers, the unemployed, welfare assisted, even those who want to change jobs etc. Do you think these people are financially able to even spend .99 cents? After tax and whatever else it comes up to a total of $1.55 or there abouts. Or would they want to spend money on an app that might be used once, twice or until they find a job? <my hands in the air> I dunno!  

Only one company I've seen doing the up selling. That is the iHandy Carpenter. I downloaded the iHandy Level for I think 1.99 (cyah remember) and the full app came with an up sell for surface level, protactor, plumb blo, ruler for a discounted price. I have no need for those....well as yet.


Take your idea to a college or university, school term is ending soon. Randomly pick students and see what they think. I'm guessing our thoughts are different to theirs.

[dinho]

remember to that yuh numbers is yuh marketing..

so if people see well real people downloading this thing, then they go want to download it too.. Then as popularity increase, you could start to charge a price. If the app good too, yuh need to push it in blogs and forums and wherever else you could get visual placement.

I met with the guy who developed the KenKen game and he said someone approached him to develop an app. An as soon as it was released, Apple put it on the top 100 just because his game had a name already and they thought it was good. And just for being on the top 100, he generate thousands of sales off the bat.

did you check to see if there are any other apps out there doing the same thing and what makes yours different/better? Also, are you a good developer? i might have ah small wuk for you thru a client im doing some consulting for, depending on what you calling. PM me and let me know.

[Jumbie]

Lost of info to digest and exactly the type of feedback/info I was hoping to get.

More on the niche.

It's a highly searched term globally. I took a look at 4 of the top key/phrases used and used some of the tools I have for finding profitable online niches and here are some numbers (note that this is only 4 keywords/phrases and only google)...

Daily global search is 176,559 and monthly (30 day) is 5,296,770 Now that doesn't include the hundreds of other possible search keywords terms. Remember I didn't factor in Yahoo, Bing etc.

Yes, you're probably saying well that's global. The niche does cater to anyone looking for work within that field globally. So this is why I included global.. but what I don't know is how used the iphone is globally.

Further. From experience I know it takes anywhere from 5-7 months to land a job within this niche, since competition is so stiff and it's a growing field/trend. So I know people will hang on to the app for a while.

here is what the app will do for users.
- it will stream current vacant jobs directly to your iphone, so you don't have to do any searching. the work is basically done for you, all you have to do is qualify and apply. The app will display the job title, description (what the employer is looking for) and contact email address. You then have an option to send this info to your email account so you can have a more user friendly method of seeing the info and applying.

Looking at all the comments the only way I can see a lite version working is to provide all the info I mentioned above to the user, but hold back on the contact info. Then with the paid version they get that contact email address. OR I can can give full access to 25% of the jobs and with the paid version give full access. With it being random for the lite, so maybe the job they're interested in is not free...basically to force people to pay?

Originally I wanted this to be free, with one trick.. force users back to my website that I can get traffic and shove some ads down their throats.

BTW, yes there are several other apps that displays jobs, but they're not targeted as the one I have. There is no need for keyword search etc.. my app will display jobs specific to the niche I have. The other good thing is that finding vacant jobs within that niche is difficult so find.. again, we do the work - all you do is apply.

The jobs are feed directly from my database of jobs so it's not dependent on anyone elses feed. I have full control.


I'll go through all the responses so far and add more info to give an even better picture.

[Jumbie]

BTW.. the apps will work off a current website I have that gets decent traffic and with a mailing list over 30k. I have no idea how many of those people uses the iphone though. A simple sruvey can help me determine that.

What I can do is give away the apps when first launched to these people I already have a relationship with, to get some gravity. This way it will hopefully catch on in itunes.

[triniairman]

I usuall get the free apps, I never paid for an app when I could get it free on Cydia or Rock (jailbreak) You should put out a beta version and charge for the full version, that is if your app is worth paying for. good luck!!