Hi, this is A Minute of Overpass.
My name is Eric and I make apps.
This week wanna talk about how much you should actually charge for your app.
So this week I wanna talk about price.
Now if you're an app developer, I'm actually really curious about price 'cause we're all
kind of cagey about this and not really talk about how much we charge or how many people
actually buy the paid version.
It's all well and good to talk about the the downloads and the free versions and all that
kind of stuff, but the paid version, we're all kinda cagey about so it's interesting.
So this week, what I thought I would do is talk to you a little bit about my experience
with the price of my apps and how that how things have actually turned out and hopefully
that helps and all that kind of stuff.
So basically when I released my first app called Ear Spy, we released a free version
which had like ads and like one in app purchase which i think was MP3 recording and we also
had a paid version.
So like the free version, I think we charged like $0.50 for each of the in-app purchases,
if I remember correctly.
It was like three years ago and the paid version was was like 99 cents or 69 p in the UK and
my logic at the time was how could anybody say no to that.
It's like the lowest price and if I can just get enough people then I can make a good amount
off of that.
And what I found was it didn't get all that many purchases.
I mean, I would get like maybe a few dozen a day.
Some days I would get a few dozen, some days I would get 5 or 6, some days I would get
none.
But I can't quite figure it out because the the actual free version was going up and
up in downloads and ad revenue was actually surpassing the purchases.
And then after a year of having this one price, you know, I was reading a lot of different
things and and I read something by somebody who said that the price difference between
0.99 and 299 is not that big a difference.
And so what I did was I raised the price to $1.99, and then I raised to $2.99.
So right now, if you were to buy the full version of Ear Spy, it actually costs $5.99.
It's actually one of the more expensive apps out there.
And what I found was each time I raised the price, I would notice that the number of purchases
each day would go down but the revenue would go up.
So it is actually called less support.
So if somebody wanted to say have all the extra features and they want to to have no
ads and they could pay a bit extra for that.
But they could also do in-app purchases through within the app and buy like, say they want
to just remove the ads ‘cause they're annoying, or they want to remove the, you know, they
wanted to add one new feature.
Now, if they go through the free version and buy everything individually, it costs just
slightly more than paying the full version.
I thought of it like if you buy tracks on iTunes versus buying the whole album, I thought
it should be a bit more.
And I found, you know, what I find in my whole philosophy on this is that the psychological
difference of paying zero, going from free to $0.01 is a bigger psychological difference
in going from $1 to $3 because once you decide that you guys gonna pay something, then that's
not a lot of money.
The hassle is going through and going through that dialog box, maybe you have to remember
your password for iTunes or whatever.
And even just something that comes up say "Hey, we're gonna charge your credit card.
Are you sure you want to do this?" and you think "Actually, I'm okay I don't want to
do that" or whatever.
So there's a whole bunch of things in play there that you know.
Everytime when I hear something, like I meet with a client and they'll say, "Well what
we'll do is we'll charge just like a small amount because then we'll get lots of people"
or they'll say we'll charge a lot and then not have a free version ‘cause we have a
free version that we're practically just giving it away.
And what I find is that strategy doesn't work at all.
One time I did release an app as a paid version only.
It was called Read Racer.
So we released the the the paid version and I thought, this time no ads, we're going to
market it really well, we're gonna have a video, all those kind of stuff.
And you know, it got some downloads but it was hardly any.
I think after a couple weeks maybe we got, maybe 10.
It was hardly a thing so we did release it as a free version.
I thought you know, there's no sense in having something out there that doesn't make any
money.
You release a free version and people can give it a try, maybe you can upsell them to
in-app purchases.
Or maybe make some money through the ad, maybe they'll click on some ads, all that kind of
stuff.
So that's the way I found it.
So don't fall for the whole "if it's cheap then people will buy it" because that's not
the case.
It's a bigger case.
If you're going to release an app and if you're gonna charge for it, charge a decent amount
it.
Don't ever charge $0.99 So that's my experience.
I'd love to know how it works out for you, you know, how things go.
It's such an uphill battle just to get people to notice your app, just to get them to download
itm that when you get them in there, then you've got to focus on how to get people to
pay.
The less successful app developers are not so much focused on getting people in.
They focus on how do they get them to pay and then nobody ever gets there.
So that's just my opinion.
That's it for this week I'll talk to you next week.
Goodbye!
Hey, I really hope you liked that video.
Now I do this once a week, so if you wanna hear more or you wanna hear more about our
experiences with the app store, either Google Play or iTunes, please go ahead and subscribe
to the channel and please like this video and leave a comment.
I love reading the comments, I love hearing what you have to say, even if it's just hello
or whatever.
And like I say before, If you're not sure what to say in a comment, like I never know
what to say in a comment, I'll make it easier for you.
Like if you liked it, just go ahead and say "Gnarley", which is an 80's term, or if you
didn't like it, just say "Bogus", and didn't think any of it, just say "Eh".
So that would be a big help.
And another thing you could do, which I'd really appreciate it, if you're on the app
store and you wanna try one of our apps, look up some of the Overpass Apps applications
either on iTunes or Google Play and leave a review and let us know what you think about
it, either good or bad.
We're all trying to build up in the market so that would be a big help.
So that's it, I'll talk to you next week.