

Are you building your games/software company around the wrong model? - tadhgk
http://whatgamesare.com/2011/08/are-you-a-market-trader-business.html#more

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wccrawford
Just like Groupon, if you don't have a plan for how you will handle the sale,
you shouldn't have the sale.

I was under the impression that Amazon guaranteed a small amount of money,
even if they gave your app away free, but apparently you can sign that away,
too.

At any rate, if you don't have a plan for how you will get all those free
customers to buy something, giving your stuff away for free is idiocy.

And if your app is crap, people are not coming back. (Not saying this app was
crap, but I've seen plenty of free ones that were.)

A few years back, a pizza restaurant in town gave out coupons to everyone for
a free pizza. I had never tried them, but heard they were good. So when we got
the free pizza, we were excited to try them. It was one of the worst pizzas we
had ever had.

Now, this was probably because they were overloaded with free pizza orders and
couldn't get them out the door fast enough. People were stressed, there was
too much work, etc etc, and quality suffered.

But because of that, they not only lost that sale, but they lost every future
sale for my entire family. It would have been FAR better not to give us
anything than to give us bad pizza.

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tadhgk
Well said.

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robfitz
Are you talking specifically about app & social games, or would you make the
same argument for other distribution channels (console, downloadable,
board/card games)?

Anyway, excellent article. Looking forward to digging through your archives.

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tadhgk
Everything really, to a greater or lesser degree.

