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> The free version helped him sell the full version until it reached that "critical mass" that was required for the popularity of the full version to continue t
by awj 16y ago
> The free version helped him sell the full version until it reached that "critical mass" that was required for the popularity of the full version to continue to drive sales of itself.
From the investigating he did it didn't look like the free version drove the paid one. Evidently very few people signed up on the free app and later showed up on the paid one.
- rubergly 16y agoThis isn't the right conclusion to draw from his investigating. All he showed was that, as you said, few people upgraded from the free app to the paid one. This does not necessarily mean that the free app did not significantly help the paid app sell. Maybe it was fairly common for one geek to buy the app, show it to his friends, who would then try it because there was a free version and not ultimately ever buy the paid version, but still talk about the app and introduce it to people who did buy the app. There are uncountably many other situations like this that could have happened and caused the presence of a free app to have helped the paid app; this is very far from a controlled experiment.