
Kids App Market - imartin2k
https://www.bjornjeffery.com/2019/05/31/the-kids-app-market-a-strategic-overview/
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cprayingmantis
The most frustrating thing to me is that I can't just find a good app for my
daughter without there being some sort of dependency on 1 or 2 of the
following: Ads, Links to other games/apps, microtransactions. I want to buy a
full app experience for her wether it's just for fun or education and I'm
willing to pay it just doesn't really exist. Even the best apps I can find
always have these and they interrupt her experience to sell her/me more.

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shimfish
I make the My PlayHome series of apps, in case you want to try them out.

Not enough people are willing to actually pay for apps. Piracy, especially on
Android, is extremely high. The few kids who don't pirate apps are constantly
emailing me asking for the app to be free because they have a device but their
parents don't let them buy anything.

Apple and Google are recently getting very tough and starting to regulate all
apps that have children as their target audience, which is obviously a good
thing. However, it seems they still haven't made much progress in actually
_promoting_ apps for kids.

To give you an idea of how few people are actually paying up front for kids
apps: My PlayHome is currently ranking at 20 in the USA Paid iPad kids
category. That means only 19 apps in the entire app store are selling
specifically to kids using the upfront paid model on iPad are more successful
than this. How many USA daily sales is My PlayHome getting on iPad? Around 50.

Until something changes, and it probably won't, even though the demand for
quality, non-exploitative kids apps is out there, the big money somehow isn't.

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sharkmerry
>> To give you an idea of how few people are actually paying up front for kids
apps: My PlayHome is currently ranking at 20 in the USA Paid iPad kids
category. That means only 19 apps in the entire app store are selling
specifically to kids using the upfront paid model on iPad are more successful
than this. How many USA daily sales is My PlayHome getting on iPad? Around 50.

Is this a "long tail" issue? Granted 20th isnt that long but perhaps sales are
concentrated at the top few spots?

50/day is still great. about $72k/year gross. THats not huge, but thats still
quite a bit

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thrower123
It's a bit of a shame that the shareware model has died out so badly. As a
child of the 90s, I had all kinds of shareware games and sampler discs that
got passed around; there was some great stuff like Carmen Sandiego, the
various X Trail games, Dr. Brain, Math/Word Rescue, Mixed Up Mother Goose,
Treasure Mountain, etc.

A nag screen showing the option to buy the additional episodes seems almost
quaintly non-invasive today.

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bjornjeffery
Article author here. Happy to answer questions, if you have any.

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huhtenberg
Fantastic article, thank you.

Separately thanks for Toca Boca games! We still occasionally use the radio
music from Toca Tea Party for real-life picnics :)

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bjornjeffery
Fun fact - that music was custom written for the app by a musician in
Stockholm! And the jazz track can be found here:
[https://soundcloud.com/tocaboca/tea-party-
jazz](https://soundcloud.com/tocaboca/tea-party-jazz)

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cfarm
The marketing aspects are particularly interesting. Kids don't really have the
power to buy or convince an adult to buy. Parents are also only subject to
things that are "learning" while users/kids only want things that are "fun".
The product intersection of those two areas with quality are likely very
small. Additionally, when kids and adults are generally excited about the same
thing, it becomes less cool.

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pcmaffey
This is a good overview of a complicated market. And it highlights what I’d
say is one of the biggest opportunities in the space: a trusted and highly
curated recommendation service for kids content. (I don’t want to build it,
but someone else should!)

I’m building a kids app (an interactive picture book series
-www.featherbubble.com) that intersects a 5th major industry: publishing. My
marketing toolkit/plans lack any obviously strong tactics for many of the
reasons outlined in the article. Instead, my strategy is to build a brand on
strong characters and content, as it seems like episodic tv has the closest
thing to a winning model for apps.

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roel_v
"(I don’t want to build it, but someone else should"

Me too! I'd pay for a weekly newsletter!

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wanghq
I used to work on a kids-friendly app and gave it up after 2 years. But I
still own kidsfriend.ly. If anyone feel it's a good name and is interested,
pls let me know.

