

Don't make your Android app free for 1 day - dminor
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/32ed272012555f90

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ryanjmo
I had this exact problem. This is one of the reason I have found the Android
app market horrible when compare with the iPhone market. This rule is so
arbitrary and non-intuitive.

I actually made my app free for testing purposes and had to create an entirely
different app once I made it free.

In my experience with the Android app store, Google has no idea what they are
doing.

Edit: Independent of this weird issue, I say this mostly because we sold
literally 20x less of the exact same app on the Android market vs. the iPhone
market (the apps were marketed the exact same way). This is in spite of the
fact that the Android phone sales are apparently equal the number of iPhones
phone sales...

Another one of my biggest gripes, while people are listening, is that you can
not get a URL for your app for the Android store (or at least I don't know
how). How are you suppose to sell anything on the web without a web address.
We have a link to our iPhone app and for then Android app we need to give
people a search term to enter into the Android app store! This is crazy to me!

Finally, and this is the last thing I promise, when you submit and app to the
Android store you use a keystone to sign it. Well, I ended up losing my
keystone (cause I'm an idiot), so I could never push an update of my app. So,
I ended up needing to go through and literally refund 100 people's purchases
(by hand) and create an entirely different app. This was actually the same app
that I made free, so I literally have 3 versions of this app submitted to the
Android App Store (but two are no longer public).

~~~
stoney
_This is in spite of the fact that the Android phone sales are apparently
equal the number of iPhones phone sales._

From what I understand, Android sales are currently similar to iPhone sales
(in the US) in terms of phones being sold today, but there are a lot more
iPhones already out there than Android phones (because the iPhone has been
selling for longer I guess). Which means at the moment there are fewer people
to buy Android apps. This also varies considerably from country to country --
for example, apparently Android sales are tiny in Australia compared to the
iPhone.

~~~
mattmcknight
There are also a lot of iPod touches out there.

~~~
Legion
That's an important point. Android is a complete non-starter in the non-phone
MP3 device market, and the Android tablets are just starting out and have
little market penetration. When comparing all iOS devices to all Android
devices, instead of just phones to phones, iOS numbers definitely get a big
boost.

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ww520
I'm screwed. I've just done exactly that. There seriously should be a warning
in the Dev Console when marking an app free.

I'm moving to IPhone development.

Edit: Here's how I got screwed. I put my app up as paid app for beta testing
at first because testing the Google License Server required the app to be
published as a paid app (that's another insensible thing). Within a hour
someone made a purchase. I felt uncomfortable charging an app still under
testing so I emailed the guy to ask him to revert the transaction within 24
hours. He said it's ok since he liked the app anyway. Then another guy emailed
me asking why charging a beta app, which was a reasonable question since
people can't download paid app without credit card info. I made my app free
for beta testing, thinking that would make it easier for people to test.

Now, it looks like the app has to be withdrawn and republished as a new paid
app. I feel bad for the guy who has paid for the app already. This really
screws the developers and the customers.

~~~
eli
So eventually you publish the final app as a new package and update the beta
with a nag screen that points to the new package. Or am I missing something?

~~~
ww520
Customers who have paid for the beta app will get a crippled app, whether the
beta becomes a nag-ware or a lite version.

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jacquesm
I just got an android yesterday, first negative experience within 20 minutes
of opening the box, to play around with the turn-by-turn navigation you have
to download an app which is free, but which requires you to set up a gmail
account, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the task at hand.

Other than that amazing tech. The app download process was pretty painless
after the google account was created.

I can see why the 'free to paid' switch would require a new application ID,
after all people would feel tricked if they sent the name of the app to their
friends on recommendation only to find that the one your friend downloaded for
free is now suddenly a paid app.

~~~
vetinari
Actually, Gmail (Google Apps accounts work too) account has quite a lot to do
with the task at hand.

You will find out, when you will have a new phone and log in with the same
account - the market will know which apps you bought or downloaded in the past
and will set up them on your new phone.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but that does not hold true for a free app that just enables some
functionality that was supposedly present in the phone when I bought it. You
don't need a google email account for turn-by-turn navigation with voice
instruction.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
So go get a 3rd party gps app if you don't like it; You're not forced to
download the voice app. I've been using the Navigation app on my Nexus One for
a year now without downloading it. It just beeps instead of talking, and I
actually like it better that way, compared to my wife's phone where she did
download the voices, and it's just some crappy synthesized lady who's hard to
understand and talks _waaayyy_ too much.

~~~
vetinari
Actually, you did download it. Google Maps (includes Navigation, Lattitude,
Places, etc) was updated several times since you bought your N1. It was
updated using Google Market.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
But I wasn't forced to download the voice instructions. That's included as a
separate package, and although it bugs me every time I start navigation to
download or skip, I'm always free to choose "Skip" and use the turn-by-turn
navigation without the voice instructions.

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jsz0
Imagine the Internet riot that would break out if this was an App Store
policy? I don't think gaming the Market ranks is a good excuse here. Google is
a search company. They know how to make a good search/rank. They should be
able to figure this one out.

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dpcan
Yup, once it's free, it's free. Otherwise I think people would use this
technique to skew their ratings and stats. Make it free till it's got 100k
downloads, then put a price on it and people will think 100k people bought it.

I would LOVE just a few things in the Android Market:

1) To be able to give away a free license of a paid app to someone somehow. As
a gift.

2) More than 325 characters to describe an app.

3) More than 2 screenshots.

~~~
masklinn
> 1) To be able to give away a free license of a paid app to someone somehow.
> As a gift.

You... can't do that? Ever? Don't you get like 50 free licenses for each
AppStore update?

Can you at least gift applications on the Market?

~~~
dpcan
I know of no way at all to give away a free license to someone. Even partial
refunds are said to uninstall the app from the users device - tho I have not
tried this so I don't know if it's true.

~~~
alextgordon
_Even partial refunds are said to uninstall the app from the users device -
tho I have not tried this so I don't know if it's true._

I can't believe this. Customers would essentially be paying some percentage of
the app cost and getting nothing in return if they obtained a partial refund.
That's just wrong.

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kingsley_20
Another serious annoyance is that users can return your app in 24 hrs and get
a full refund. Wipes out an entire ecosystem of cheap games that go for under
$5. I understand that this is good for the consumer in a short-sighted way,
but really, return a 99c app?

~~~
dpcan
Today I looked, and if they buy the app a second time, they can't cancel a
second time.

My biggest frustration is definitely the huge amount of "Payment Declined"
orders that come through. Then I get emails a day or two later from someone
ticked that their app never downloaded AND they think they were charged.

Google emails them that the app didn't download and they need to update their
payment info in Google Checkout, but I think that most people just have Gmail
accounts setup so their phone will work but they never actually check those
gmail accounts where these non-payment notifications are sent. Then they're
left wondering why their purchased apps don't download.

A simple email to both the gmail account AND the user's primary email address
would at least help solve this problem.

EDIT: I'd like to add that in the few short hours I've been working this
evening and following this thread here and there, I've received 4 payment
declined orders for our apps. It's like watching money blow out the window.

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aresant
In iTunes it's a regular strategy to give an app away for free for a week or
two to promote a special, a launch, or otherwise, and then see residual sales
come in when you flip back to paid - particuarlly on social games etc.

Don't understand this policy in android.

~~~
arron61
IMO, Android is taking the right approach.

1) Developers will game the system. They give apps away for free to get good
reviews and higher ratings. I am more generous on a free app than a paid app.

2) You are baiting users to get your app for free initially and then making
them pay for the upgrades.

~~~
megablast
In the Apple app store, ratings given when an app is free do not carry over to
a paid for app, so any extra ratings you get are ignored. Reviews are carried
over.

There are a number of websites/apps with lots of users who look for free apps
to try out, and rely on this method to try out some really good stuff.

I see nothing wrong with this, you are giving users something for free that is
normally not, and a great way to get new people to try your app. A very valid
and welcome marketing technique.

~~~
aphexairlines
You can try out any paid Android Market app for 24 hours.

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doki_pen
I think the correct approach is to release an update that adds a link to buy
the paid version, and disables the app after a trial period. It should have
been done this way to begin with, usually there are two version in market
(free and pro or something). Now that he screwed up, users can just refuse to
update and keep it forever. Of course, they won't get updates.

~~~
jcl
Of course, the problem with that approach is that it punishes everyone who
paid for the app before it was free.

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annon
Wow. Delete the app and create a new package? I'm assuming that will also kill
updates for people that had the original package unless you deploy to both,
which may be impossible if you want the free version gone.

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Jun8
Just another tidbit that bolsters the (to me) obvious fact: Android Market
totally sucks and there's a _huge_ opportunity for startups here.

The 2-3 independent appstore websites also have ghastly designs.

~~~
callahad
Doubletwist's web interface to the Android Market seems well designed:
<http://www.doubletwist.com/apps/>

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jlgosse
The problem with doing this, which I have seen before on other app stores, is
that making something free and then charging for it makes your app look much
more valuable than it actually is.

For example, if you release a free iPhone application, and it gets downloaded
a million times, with 50000 reviews, and then you make it cost $0.99, won't
people think the app is some amazing app that millions of people have bought,
so then you're more likely to buy it? There's no true indication that the app
was free initially, so you don't really know.

~~~
ryandvm
True enough, but it's not rocket science to use separate counter/review tables
for each mode. If the app is free, show the free download counter and reviews;
and so on.

While we're requesting Android enhancements - how about we let the developer
select the return policy. 24 hour return works great for utilities and day-to-
day apps, but is really hurting the cheap game market.

~~~
jlgosse
I agree with this. Actually, I will agree with it once Google allows Canadians
to actually submit paid apps. What a joke!

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jrockway
Just make it one cent instead?

~~~
mahmud
It's never about the price, rather the difficulty of acquisition. When it's
free, user's don't have to do anything to get it; just click and download. If
it's fraction of a cent, they need to have credit cards or google checkout. If
you want people to _try_ your software, good luck.

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rfolstad
Good to know but about the free thing but the rest of your issues aren't
issues at all. The guides explain all this stuff. How did you ever get your
app uploaded and approved for the apple app store if you can't follow simple
instructions like the ones that explain how to publish your app to the android
market?

