

Made our top 3 paid apps free--here's the massive spike in rank (charts) - jasonmcalacanis
https://plus.google.com/103716847685048716973/posts/gDhyfX7JPDd

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alexhektor
From the top of my head:

Gut feeling: Definitely In-App purchases. Don't collect upfront. Which portion
to make free and which paid? Just test it and ask other app-makers. Jamie
Oliver's on that model for example. Conversion against the higher ranking in
the store will be key measures. I'd be interested in the results :)

1) Sponsoring/Ads: I love what you're doing on the ThisWeekIn Network, but I
have no clue how that could apply to Mahalo, and what the economics behind
that are.

Since you're not focused on a particular niche or vertical or horizontal (I
don't know if horizontal exists, but I'll use it for let's say "very
sophisticated crowd" like TED), sponsoring probably isn't really a scalable
option, because it'll take a lot of work I'm guessing. Ads and multiple
channels is what you're doing right now? Video eCPM for less targeted ads
alone not high enough for the quality of content you produce I guess..?

2) Subscription: Again, subscription, I think, will only work if you get the
brand associated with: this is where I can get content on ANYTHING I want to
learn in high quality.., which then makes it convenient enough to pay for it -
just think of that value.., but it's difficult to achieve.

OR it will work if you're able to focus on certain verticals. OR

3) Become a reseller/bundler? maybe even think of doing biz-dev with existing
learning platforms already out there and combine them into a subscription
where for $15-29 you get "ALL" of them. Justify it with your (I assume huge?)
library. Then do biz-dev with books/dvds/universites so that they come with
free months. Universities are always great for selling education. When
something is REALLY good, it spreads like wildfire between students because
they just communicate a LOT more.. (think dropbox) - students want a high
degree of free in freemium though :P (dropbox leveraged that in their
marketing, btw)..

pretty mixed thoughts, but maybe it helps..

Greetings, Alex from JDownloader

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megablast
One of the many reasons the Android process is inferior to iOs, is that you
can not make an app free once its paid for, or the other way around.

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jasonmcalacanis
we did this via a multipart rush:

1\. social media links from 40 or so team members (including my social
footprint which is fairly large).

2\. an email to 10,000 of our users with links to free products

3\. a roadblock on Mahalo.com with a popup

4\. getting featured in some "formerly paid now free" apps/websites. Which we
didn't actually ask for... they just found the price drop and listed us.

What I can't figure out is how to make education free and pay for all this
content (we make our own videos, hire and pay folks, etc). Kahn has donations,
Lynda.com is $25 a month and DVDs and books are $35 each.

I'm banking on there being a model for $1.99 to $9.99 educational apps.

Thoughts? Are we doing it right?

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forrestthewoods
I have a failure of an app with 300 sales/$450 revenue in 8 months. I dropped
it to free last weekend. It got picked up by AppAdvice and had 50,000
downloads in a week. It would have been more but Apple has a horrific bug when
dropping from paid to free where some users are unable to download it.

My app is a Utility app that people seem to enjoy, but I don't think there is
a paid market for it. People simply aren't willing to pay for such things. I'm
in the middle of moving to a completely free setup with tips via IAP. No ads,
no pay walls. Totally free. I have no idea if it'll work but I can't make less
than I already am! It's currently waiting for review so hopefully in a couple
of weeks I can do a writeup on the experience.

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jasonmcalacanis
I wonder if you can ride the free push into solid reviews, feedback and a
better product that folks will pay .99 for?

Clearly "usage" plays some sort of role in rank, so i think it's good to get a
large base of users and then be paid. or something like that.

