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I noticed the paid app was sold at varying times for $2.99, $1.99, and $0.99. Anyone have more information about the physiology/performance/trade-offs of those

I noticed the paid app was sold at varying times for $2.99, $1.99, and $0.99. Anyone have more information about the physiology/performance/trade-offs of those different prices? Do $0.99 apps sell way more than other priced apps?

MattRix 16y ago
Trainyard was at $1.99 at launch and for a while after that. I figured it was a low introductory price, but not so low that I'd get careless users who wouldn't put any effort into the game and would just give it 1 star reviews, which was a bigger problem back a few months ago before Apple took out "rate-on-delete". These days, I feel like there are less tangible disadvantages to the 99c price point, other than the fact that you make less per sale. There's still the issue that users are willing to put more effort into a product they pay more for, and will even go to further lengths to defend it, because they want to justify their purchase and their taste. On the App Store, it all comes down to perceived risk. If a user is unsure about an app, they probably won't spend much more than 99c because they don't want to overspend on a dud. Once a user sees an app in Apple's "featured list" or has used the lite version of that app, they'll be much more willing to splurge on a higher price, because they know what they're getting. For Trainyard, I felt that there was no longer a big difference between the $1.99 and $2.99 price points, because by the time a user arrived at the purchasing page, they already knew they wanted it. All that being said, there is a large contingent of users that seem to only buy apps at $0.99, but most of the time, your apps won't be visible to those users. The moment I reached the top 50, I knew I would have tons of that sort of user looking at Trainyard, so I did the price drop.
- dpcan 16y ago
  I went the opposite route in the Android Market. When the lite version of my game hit the top 20 in its category, I made a few nice updates, and I felt the full version earned its higher price (~$4). After making the change, the number of sales barely went down, but revenue went up. But now you have me thinking. Are MORE people in the the $0.99-only crowd seeing my app, and are there enough of those people to make DROPPING the price more financially beneficial??? I suppose I could run a "sale", but once you start getting comfortable with a nice daily income, taking risks becomes harder and harder.
  - MattRix 16y ago
    Yep, that was exactly my dilemma. I was making a huge amount of income, so it was a pretty big risk to drop the price, but I knew I would only have the opportunity during the week I was featured. It very well could have dropped and failed. I'm not sure how the Android charts work, but in the App Store, it's ranked by units sold, not by profit. This is the KEY thing that is crucial to how the market works. Even if I make LESS money than I did the day before, I will be higher up in the charts, which will get me more exposure, and eventually more sales. Going high in the App Store is all about upward momentum. The volume of sales doesn't change linearly with rank either, it's quite exponential.
    - dpcan 16y ago
      So, if you get high up on the charts, do you plan to put the price back at $2.99 or stay/go back to $0.99 since everyday will be like you're featured?
      - MattRix 16y ago
        Well in my case, is kind of already happened, and I kept it at 99c. Tough decision, but I think it worked out pretty well.
      - sp4rki 16y ago
        I think his best plan would be to put the price back at 1.99 after he gets the publicity he needs and leave it there while he works on the next iteration or game. Then make a sale or 0.99 a few weeks before the new launch to create some media exposure and leave the game at 1.99 again close to the release of the new product and leave it there until it dies or new signups become so low that 0.99 becomes the new price for the old game (while focusing on the new iterations off course).
      - gbhn 16y ago
        Looking at Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_Apps_Trainyard_Cartoon_Wars_2_Debut_as_Big_Sellers.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_App...) it would appear that top-10 == $0.99. I'd guess this is because, as has been speculated here, there is an enormous number of people who are simply going to spend a maximum of $.99 on an iPhone game and that's that. Either you sell yours for $.99 or they'll find something else for that price. The evidence suggests to me that if you don't realize this, you'll simply be replaced in the top 10 by someone who does. Of course, next week when a $9.99 game is in the top 10 I'll have to revise this opinion. :-)
sp4rki 16y ago
You sell your app for 1.99 and get a bunch of customers, who speak to other people and in time sales in this particular market start to slow down considerably. At this point you increase the price to make up for lost revenue on new sales. Then after sales start going under a threshold of popularity, you come out with a free version to appease markets that have been untouched by your project yet, but it also happens to have the massive effect of a new type of consumer that's more concerned with the expected vale vs real money value is now interested in your app. Some of them will buy the 2.99 version, but most will probably not. Then you come out with a sale, and boom it's now in reach for all those people that though 3 dollars was too much. Now you have massive sales and publicity, and when it starts to slow down you're back to increasing the price. Then comes a time where there are no new markets to exploit, so you build a a new app or a continuation of the old one, a sequel. At this time you also lower the price to 0.99 just to make sure you have the most exposure possible. Only now you have the advantage of past and present publicity and if rightly timed, momentum... And then off course you repeat the formula depending on your market and the viability of your app.
- MattRix 16y ago
  Yep that's a great summary. "Then comes a time where there are no new markets to exploit" The crazy thing with iOS development is that there are 250k new users every day who are always looking for a few apps to put on their new phone, which is how a game like Angry Birds can stay high in the charts for months.
  - sp4rki 16y ago
    Oh yeah totally right, but there comes a time where no matter what you do, you're going to keep making less and less money out of the game because even though there are 250k new users ever day, the people that where interested in buying your app have already done so, and now only the passerby's and window-shoppers of the iOS world are looking at your app. The cool thing is that now that you've been the developer of Trainyard, when you do reach a point where you should be releasing a new game, you have gotten so much credibility it isn't even funny. And off course that translate to more immediate sales at the beginning and a big chunk of extra steady clash flow at the end.
happybuy 16y ago
My startup tracks pricing on iOS Apps (among other products) and its fascinating seeing how much pricing volatility occurs. For instance, we've found that that Apps generally fit into two camps: those that change their pricing consistently; such as: http://www.happybuy.com/product/Jog-Log---GPS-Run-Tracker/apple-app/354576183 http://www.happybuy.com/product/Jog-Log---GPS-Run-Tracker/ap... Versus those Apps which try to keep pricing stable and only have one-off promotions; such as bejewelled: http://www.happybuy.com/product/Bejeweled-2--Blitz/apple-app/284832142 http://www.happybuy.com/product/Bejeweled-2--Blitz/apple-app... The general notion and hope behind such price changes is to get an influx of people in to buy rapidly (to grab the limited time discount price). This in turn hopefully pushes the App up the sales chart where it will receive more visibility and in turn more sales from users who would not otherwise be aware of the product.

MattRix 16y ago

Trainyard was at $1.99 at launch and for a while after that. I figured it was a low introductory price, but not so low that I'd get careless users who wouldn't put any effort into the game and would just give it 1 star reviews, which was a bigger problem back a few months ago before Apple took out "rate-on-delete". These days, I feel like there are less tangible disadvantages to the 99c price point, other than the fact that you make less per sale. There's still the issue that users are willing to put more effort into a product they pay more for, and will even go to further lengths to defend it, because they want to justify their purchase and their taste. On the App Store, it all comes down to perceived risk. If a user is unsure about an app, they probably won't spend much more than 99c because they don't want to overspend on a dud. Once a user sees an app in Apple's "featured list" or has used the lite version of that app, they'll be much more willing to splurge on a higher price, because they know what they're getting. For Trainyard, I felt that there was no longer a big difference between the $1.99 and $2.99 price points, because by the time a user arrived at the purchasing page, they already knew they wanted it. All that being said, there is a large contingent of users that seem to only buy apps at $0.99, but most of the time, your apps won't be visible to those users. The moment I reached the top 50, I knew I would have tons of that sort of user looking at Trainyard, so I did the price drop.

dpcan 16y ago
I went the opposite route in the Android Market. When the lite version of my game hit the top 20 in its category, I made a few nice updates, and I felt the full version earned its higher price (~$4). After making the change, the number of sales barely went down, but revenue went up. But now you have me thinking. Are MORE people in the the $0.99-only crowd seeing my app, and are there enough of those people to make DROPPING the price more financially beneficial??? I suppose I could run a "sale", but once you start getting comfortable with a nice daily income, taking risks becomes harder and harder.
- MattRix 16y ago
  Yep, that was exactly my dilemma. I was making a huge amount of income, so it was a pretty big risk to drop the price, but I knew I would only have the opportunity during the week I was featured. It very well could have dropped and failed. I'm not sure how the Android charts work, but in the App Store, it's ranked by units sold, not by profit. This is the KEY thing that is crucial to how the market works. Even if I make LESS money than I did the day before, I will be higher up in the charts, which will get me more exposure, and eventually more sales. Going high in the App Store is all about upward momentum. The volume of sales doesn't change linearly with rank either, it's quite exponential.
  - dpcan 16y ago
    So, if you get high up on the charts, do you plan to put the price back at $2.99 or stay/go back to $0.99 since everyday will be like you're featured?
    - MattRix 16y ago
      Well in my case, is kind of already happened, and I kept it at 99c. Tough decision, but I think it worked out pretty well.
    - sp4rki 16y ago
      I think his best plan would be to put the price back at 1.99 after he gets the publicity he needs and leave it there while he works on the next iteration or game. Then make a sale or 0.99 a few weeks before the new launch to create some media exposure and leave the game at 1.99 again close to the release of the new product and leave it there until it dies or new signups become so low that 0.99 becomes the new price for the old game (while focusing on the new iterations off course).
    - gbhn 16y ago
      Looking at Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_Apps_Trainyard_Cartoon_Wars_2_Debut_as_Big_Sellers.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_App...) it would appear that top-10 == $0.99. I'd guess this is because, as has been speculated here, there is an enormous number of people who are simply going to spend a maximum of $.99 on an iPhone game and that's that. Either you sell yours for $.99 or they'll find something else for that price. The evidence suggests to me that if you don't realize this, you'll simply be replaced in the top 10 by someone who does. Of course, next week when a $9.99 game is in the top 10 I'll have to revise this opinion. :-)

sp4rki 16y ago

You sell your app for 1.99 and get a bunch of customers, who speak to other people and in time sales in this particular market start to slow down considerably. At this point you increase the price to make up for lost revenue on new sales. Then after sales start going under a threshold of popularity, you come out with a free version to appease markets that have been untouched by your project yet, but it also happens to have the massive effect of a new type of consumer that's more concerned with the expected vale vs real money value is now interested in your app. Some of them will buy the 2.99 version, but most will probably not. Then you come out with a sale, and boom it's now in reach for all those people that though 3 dollars was too much. Now you have massive sales and publicity, and when it starts to slow down you're back to increasing the price. Then comes a time where there are no new markets to exploit, so you build a a new app or a continuation of the old one, a sequel. At this time you also lower the price to 0.99 just to make sure you have the most exposure possible. Only now you have the advantage of past and present publicity and if rightly timed, momentum... And then off course you repeat the formula depending on your market and the viability of your app.

MattRix 16y ago
Yep that's a great summary. "Then comes a time where there are no new markets to exploit" The crazy thing with iOS development is that there are 250k new users every day who are always looking for a few apps to put on their new phone, which is how a game like Angry Birds can stay high in the charts for months.
- sp4rki 16y ago
  Oh yeah totally right, but there comes a time where no matter what you do, you're going to keep making less and less money out of the game because even though there are 250k new users ever day, the people that where interested in buying your app have already done so, and now only the passerby's and window-shoppers of the iOS world are looking at your app. The cool thing is that now that you've been the developer of Trainyard, when you do reach a point where you should be releasing a new game, you have gotten so much credibility it isn't even funny. And off course that translate to more immediate sales at the beginning and a big chunk of extra steady clash flow at the end.

happybuy 16y ago

My startup tracks pricing on iOS Apps (among other products) and its fascinating seeing how much pricing volatility occurs. For instance, we've found that that Apps generally fit into two camps: those that change their pricing consistently; such as: http://www.happybuy.com/product/Jog-Log---GPS-Run-Tracker/apple-app/354576183 http://www.happybuy.com/product/Jog-Log---GPS-Run-Tracker/ap... Versus those Apps which try to keep pricing stable and only have one-off promotions; such as bejewelled: http://www.happybuy.com/product/Bejeweled-2--Blitz/apple-app/284832142 http://www.happybuy.com/product/Bejeweled-2--Blitz/apple-app... The general notion and hope behind such price changes is to get an influx of people in to buy rapidly (to grab the limited time discount price). This in turn hopefully pushes the App up the sales chart where it will receive more visibility and in turn more sales from users who would not otherwise be aware of the product.