
I was wrong - superchink
http://appcubby.com/blog/i-was-wrong/
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k-mcgrady
No offense to the OP but the customer reaction seems obvious. I've thought
about doing this with my apps before and then thought about how I would feel
as a paying customer if the developer suddenly thrust ads upon me and asked me
to pay to remove them again (or didn't give that option). If you want to put
ads in an app people have paid for the only real solution is to release a
separate "lite" version with ads. It might not seem like the best decision for
your business but it's better than pissing off the people that cared enough to
pay for your app in the first place.

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awolf
What if you're only going to potentially piss of a percentage of a percent of
your users? In the OP's case this seems to be the case.

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rhizome
What techniques would you suggest for determining that percentage ahead of
time?

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jconley
It seems like you're still making a lot of decisions without knowing why. You
know what they say about assumptions...

Without analytics data you really have no idea if this is a positive,
negative, or neutral change. The vocal minority of complainers are loud in the
consumer software world. They are one of many signals to help make product
decisions, but should not be considered authoritative.

Get real analytics data and trust it within the appropriate level of
significance.

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unreal37
Agree. OP is trying to be noble by not having analytics, but then you're
making decisions in the dark without data. Either code your own analytics, or
pick the best platform for you. "None" is not a viable option.

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mwetzler
We're here for you buddy! we started Keen IO specifically to address gaps in
analytics for mobile. it's easy to record those user interactions with our iOS
SDK. And it's free for small apps like yours. if you want to chat analytics,
let me know.

Thanks for sharing your story. I don't think failure stories get shared
enough!

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georgelawrence
I added AirPush to one of my free apps, and triggered a firestorm of one-star
reviews. After pushing an update that removed AirPush, several users actually
took the time to go back and revise their one-star review up to 5 stars.

Never underestimate the passion app users have about ads. I suppose a lot of
us devs have learned this lesson the hard way.

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awolf
>I don’t have analytics in Timer since I’ve had a hard time finding a good
analytics provider that doesn’t do shady things with the data they collect

Check out Parse. They aren't an analytics provider. They provide a generic
backend API that you can use with your apps to store and fetch whatever data
you desire. For the number of user's you're probably working with, and the
number of events you'll want to log, you will most likely stay under their
1,000,000 free requests per month (and if you don't, the $200/mo expense will
probably be acceptable to you given your app's monthly revenue).

>If Apple provided a reliable way to determine who had already paid, I would
have just automatically disabled ads for people who had paid.

Two things here: first, you should have only shown the adds to new users. That
would have been the safest play to avoid backlash from existing users. Second,
this is why it's a great idea to track "firstLaunchDate" in the NSUserDefaults
in 1.0 versions of your future apps. With that single piece of information you
would have been able to target exactly who sees the adds and who doesn't.

Edit: I wanted to add I think you _might_ be making a mistake backing down at
this point. It seems that all of the problems you mention in this post relate
to some small (yet vocal) percentage of your existing users being upset with
the recent changes. That's a temporary problem, and probably not that big of a
deal at this point since you've already absorbed the majority of the backlash
you're going to get. If you think the changes you made in your latest version
are the right direction for your product in the long run, then I'd stay the
course.

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k-mcgrady
> Edit: I wanted to add I think you might be making a mistake backing down at
> this point. It seems that all of the problems you mention in this post
> relate to some small (yet vocal) percentage of your existing users being
> upset with the recent changes. That's a temporary problem, and probably not
> that big of a deal at this point since you've already absorbed the majority
> of the backlash you're going to get. If you think the changes you made in
> your latest version are the right direction for your product in the long
> run, then I'd stay the course.

I completely disagree with this. It might work as a business decision but it
could cause problems in the future, especially if these early paying customers
are vocal or previously bought your other apps. I think if a more
popular/downloaded app did this (thrusting ads on paying customers) the
backlash would be huge and it would severely damage the companies reputation.
Just because you are a smaller business less likely to get press coverage for
a bad decision doesn't give you a free pass to make it anyway.

~~~
awolf
I understand your perspective, but: the OP stated that he only sold the app
for .99 cents before making it free during the summer. So 2 of 7 months before
becoming free. But apps usually get at least 10x more downloads when free. So
to calculate what percentage of his user base _might_ be affected by the
additions of ads when they have already paid: 2 / (2 + (10 * 5)) = _3.8% of
his user base_. That's his historical user base, not his retained user that is
still using the app. OP's estimate for user retention is 3%. The number of his
total users that will be affected is: 3% of 3.8%. 0.11%. If this app was
downloaded 10,000 times since launch we are talking about 11 people - half of
which have already posted their negative reviews to iTunes and the other
half... doesn't really care either way.

As an app developer myself, I _do_ care about my users. If a significant
number of people will be negatively affected by a change I'm considering, I
simply won't do it. It's just about where you draw the line. Is your stance
that if even one person is affected in this way then it is unacceptable to
make the business decision to shift to ads?

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lazugod
> Developers dream of that kind of tap through rate because it generally means
> more revenue, but I wasn’t charging for the ads, so the tap through rate
> didn’t impact my bottom line at all.

Why include advertising if you're not charging for it?

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R_Edward
Good on ya, mate. Not only issuing an apology, but taking positive steps to
make things right. If only more people had that strength of character.

Now if I could just get you to reconsider releasing GasCubby for Android... :)

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b1daly
I totally get the annoyance of previous paid users. But man, the irrational
nature of human psychology around price and paying for things beggars
disbelief. For anyone that owns an iPhone 99¢ is truly a pittance.

People's feelings about what is fair totally overwhelm any sense of proportion
or of what's at stake in a given situation.

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sarah2079
I have added ads to formerly ad-free apps, but I always, always make the ads
conditional on whether the user is a new downloader or an updater in these
cases. This is not that hard to do, and it is not worth upsetting existing
users to get those extra ad impressions.

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clarky07
I'm confused as to why he'd do this. It's trivial to set a flag saying if they
launched it or a date first installed. Why give ads to people who paid?

On the other hand, I feel for the dev, as the reviews are also absurd. The ad
took up 1 of 15 timer spots. It was hardly obtrusive. I know the feeling
though. I've had tons of 1 star reviews in a free app I put ads in (only to
new free users mind you) just because it has ads in it. IT'S FREE you entitled
jerk. Yet nobody pays the .99 to remove the ads.

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antr
as a user who paid for this app, I'm quite frustrated with the update. this
greedy decision takes up screen real estate which I used for one additional
timer and the grid layout was one of the main reasons why i paid for the app.

i just hope he reverses all this changes as i'm not paying for additional
sounds, themes or whatever other vanity ad-hoc app.

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eps
> _had a hard time finding a good analytics provider that doesn’t do shady
> things with the data they collect_

And where did his ethics go when he decided to stick ads in the app?

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clarky07
Really? Putting ads in an app is somehow unethical?

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huhtenberg
Of course it is.

It's not just "putting ads" it's linking with 3rd party ad libraries that can
do whatever the hell they want under the umbrella of this dev's app. How is
this even remotely better than letting some other 3rd party gather app's usage
data? It's absolutely the same shit, only sideways. If he had a problem with
latter, recognizing a problem with former should've been a no-brainer. Except
if there wasn't some money involved.

~~~
clarky07
Of course? Really? Maybe if you think there is a problem with the analytics
then it is a problem, but there are clearly lots of people who don't have a
problem with the analytics. I personally don't have a problem with either as
both a user and a dev. To say that ads are unethical without even any
discussion strikes me as absurd.

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chj
you can not please everyone. some users can give you a one star review simply
because of a minor bug or missing feature.

do what is good for your business.

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karatekidd32v
as a side note, appboy does some great analytics without using udid

