Free app version advice wanted.

It's a personal choice. Many users won't install the paid version unless they can give a free version a good workout - which means more than 15 minutes. And many users will install the free version and never upgrade.

So you have to decide which way you prefer losing the sale.

 

What you've described is a typical, standard business and marketing question.

Realistically, if a business user base is not motivated to purchase an application, it's probably not full of features they require. You might think it's a great application, and it may be, but what really matters to a business like you're managing with this application is what the consumers want.

Ask them.

What you require is marketing research, and then allow the results of that research reshape your application design, so it provides enough of the features they demand that they'll pay for it.

At which point a free version is no longer required, but if you still use that approach, you would then expect sufficient user base to make advertising sufficient to produce income, or at least lead to paid users for whatever reason motivates them (fuller feature set, remove the advertising, etc.).

What will not succeed is to make an application without marketing research and then try to fashion a way to sell it as it is - unless it just HAPPENS to be something highly desired.

Put another way, you're contemplating if a free version would generate attention. It may, but it may not generate the attention you desire. It may give everyone a chance to discover they don't want it as it is, but would if it did something else. That could be marketing research - feedback, which then motivates new development - becomes a cycle of responsiveness business users require.

I read a blog about 8 months ago lamenting the development of an Android game. The fact it was a game is of no consequence, really - business is similar no matter what you're selling. The point here is that the author created a product, made perhaps $1,600 over several months and was seriously disappointed - it took 6 months to create the product, and the author earned pennies on the hour.

The problem was multifaceted. The product was typical, perhaps mediocre. It wasn't marketed - it was simply put on the store and left there to attract purchasers. There was no buzz, there was no awareness in the public, and it didn't do something which demanded attention of the consumer base, making it attractive enough to sell.

The author concluded that application development on Android was a loosing game. With that approach, it is. No matter what one thinks about selling applications on the store, it's a business. One must understand the basic concepts of business, of sales, of marketing, of advertising and of research in order to make money doing it.

 

i totally agree, at this point it seems the market is oversaturated with low quality work and people just throw apps/games out with the hope it'll strike gold. i was contemplating this very principle with a friend of mine, and it seems we both agreed on doing just basic market research for your app/game for the audience your program is directed towards.

btw, im new here hoping to learn and share my Android development experiences

 

With android I prefer using ads based app and provide a paid version of the app. If the user likes you app there are more chances that buy the non free app, meanwhile other users that won't buy you app will give you some incomes from the ads.

 

how much income% do you receive from ad based only apps? Does anyone know? or is that determined by what ad services you select to use?

 

Add service offer various rates and deals, some depend on the type of add you're incorporating - deals vary widely.

If a game has strong appeal, is downloaded around 1 million times, and users play the game for about 10 minutes on average before never playing it again, a publisher could make between 10,000 and 25,000 on such a product.

If, however, something like Angry Birds comes along - where people load that 10 million times, play it for about 90 minutes or so....that can earn half a million or more in a year.

On the other hand, games are typically published in competition with about 1 million other games doing the same thing. Over 95% of the games published don't get more than 25,000 downloads, are used for perhaps 60 seconds and dropped. Such publishers might not earn $500.

From the publisher's viewpoint, games may be consider vehicles for delivering advertising - the game itself is of limited importance to them. They'll release 1,000 pieces of junk to get you to see a few ads.

Something like Candy Crush, however, is a puzzling example. That game brings in nearly a million a day, all from IN APP purchases.

I see no appeal to the game play. I'm board in 10 seconds.

Angry Birds has "personality" - the Star Wars edition had me entertained for about 15 minutes.

The original had me for about 10 - 7 minutes of which I spent studying the game concept from a developer and designer's point of view - but still that's enough for a 10 million user base application to earn serious cash.

Those kinds of earners are literally 1 in about 250,000 apps in the game market.

The $3+ games, usually some port of a console game from the previous generation that was already big, is an entirely different story.

 

I dont understand candy crush either. Angry Birds has such an enormous audience appeal and such basic game mechanics that anyone, anywhere could play it.

But, that's the key isn't? to Worm your way to the top of the heap, (so to speak)

I Honestly don't know why there haven't been more of the console to mobile ports of popular game. I realize its a fair bit more expensive to do. But the pay off is also still achievable.