I am close to going to market with my app but, I am struggling a little with pricing. I think the best pricing scenario would be similar to the netflix model e.g. You get the first month free after you enter your credit card. You then have to unsubcribe to cancel the subscription.
However, I have been researching how to do this for an iPhone app being distributed through the appstore and it seems difficult to set up. You need to have your own server and the customer needs to sign up through your website. This sounds very complicated to set up and frankly I would rather get the product to market as soon as possible.
Does anyone know of an easier way to set up a netflix style payment model? I was going to use the appstore promo codes and give them out to my target market instead, but it seems like they are only available in the US. I am based in the EU.
How can I offer my app for free for a month or so to build up a user base before starting to charge for it?
Any help you could give me on this would be greatly appreciated.
Related
I am a member of a gliding club with 150 members, and we want to have our own iPhone app. Requiring a member login, the app would be usable only by members of the club, and it would be used by an estimated 20-30 people.
Is it even possible to disribute such an app to non-jailbroken iPhones? According to my research:
It wouldn't be accepted on the App Store due to "limited audience".
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
Ad hoc distribution would be fine for us except for the expiration time associated with apps distributed in the manner.
Are we at a dead end?
Thanks.
Edit: In case anyone is wondering why I didn't just ask Apple directly: I did, and their answer was, "We are unable to advise you with respect to the Apple Developer Program that best fits your needs."
I'm not 100% on your question.
But depending on your requirement, pretty much everything you need can be achieved as a web app, with the correct coding behind it i.e. CACHE MANIFEST you could make the app function similar to the a native app, available offline and can be saved to any iOS device through the browser.
Give me a shout if you need more information.
Hope it helps
Gary
You could always try to make the app a little more "global"? Perhaps offer some free stuff for Joe Bloggs to use, but tucked away you have your real motive... that way you can get it released legitimately.
I've seen some real disasters in the app store that shouldn't have made it, and I'm sure Apples screening isn't as intense as we might think. (example: that flash light application, when pressing a sequence of buttons it would enable free tethering).
Best of luck!
Yup. You seem to have all the options laid out pretty clearly, and there's no other way to do it. Except developing for android, and just distributing the application freely and without arbitrary restrictions.
Sorry.
Ad-hoc distribution would give you about 90 days expiration time, i think, whereas enterprise would give you a year. Though gaining enterprise status in the eyes of apple is easier said than done.
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
You don't have to be a company to apply for the enterprise account, you just need to be an organisation with a DUNS number.
Does anyone know if there are rules against rating your own app in the app store? I would assume that most people would give their own app a 5 star rating if there were no rules - but maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?
Sure you are a developer, but because Apple does not allow you to purchase free copies of your app and review, you are also a paying customer. And in Apple's customer user agreement, you are entitled to review anything you purchase.
It's probably not the most ethical thing, but just be aware that if you actually write a review, people can see what other reviews you have written and put two-and-two together to figure out that it's the developer writing reviews.
Most of the crApps out there do this using 50 different iTunes accounts and it's rather deceitful IMHO, at least on that scale.
Something like that would be covered in the User Agreement which is under NDA so it might be hard to get a definite answer.
I did read of a case where an App developer was banned for making fraudulent reviews and ratings which meant his 1600+ Apps were removed. Throughout the forums there were many accusations of other developers doing the exact same thing in a smaller scale that were never banned. So in a nut shell you can get banned for it, but it could be common practice amongst some App developers, just don't get caught.
Look at it this way: Either there's a lot of ratings, and a single rating by yourself won't make a big impact, or you're the only rating, and people will look at only a single rating and not think it's representative enough.
I don't think there's any advantages that outweigh the fact that it's bad form.
I am a complete novice and have no technical skills and little knowledge concerning iphone app development an in-app / itunes store purchases.
But I have been playing with some ideas for my coffeeshop / lunchbar and was wondering If any experts would like to give me some feedback on my ideas.
As I said I run a coffee and lunch(break) shop and allot of my customers are iphone (and blackberry) users. What also happens alot is that the customers ring to order their coffee and food so that they don't have to wait (and waist their precious lunch time).
I myself am an Iphone user and really like the way it works (most of the time).
So I was wondering I is possible or will it be possible to develop an iphone app for my customers and have them pay for the order "in-app". I get a bill of the order in my mailbox and they just chout their name and thats it !?
Might sound a bit low tech but if apple have someones creditcard details and a mobile ordering display then they could function as a cash register of bank ?
thanks,
Jonathan
You can't do this according to Apple's terms of use:
You must deliver your digital good or service within your app.
Do not use In App Purchase to sell real-world goods and services.
Even if allowed, you'd lose 30% of your revenue to Apple using in-app purchase.
There are point-of-sale apps for iPhone that allow you to swipe credit cards. One of the Twitter founders has a startup called Square that'll be doing this. If you wanted it to be an app that users could install themselves, though, you'd likely be best off doing a custom one and hitting a payment gateway in the backend (Chipotle's app is a good example of this).
The original asker is just asking if this is possible, which it is! If you don't take the term 'in-app purchasing' literally. Just use paypal or some other payment method through the app. Ebay does this and so can you.
As long as you aren't selling something that competes directly with Apple (like Sony's digital book store that got shut down) you should be fine using a payment method other than the built-in functionality called 'in app purchasing'.
You have a good idea on your hands and it should be possible to find a way to take customer's money through the app.
Though you could probably use In-App purchasing for this, you would have some interesting work to do to make it work smoothly. You would probably be better off developing your own shopping cart application that lets your customers order "online" and write a custom iPhone application for them - skipping Apple for the purchase of coffee and donuts...
-t
I'm strongly considering making a free version of my app that is ad-supported, but I don't exactly understand how it works. Do you get paid every time an ad is displayed or only when the user taps it? Can someone please explain how it works?
There's no single answer to your question - it really depends on how you choose to approach including ads, which isn't really a question for StackOverflow but rather for ad agencies.
It depends on the Ad Network you sign up with. Some pay you for the number of impressions some for the number of clicks.
Do a search for "IPhone Ad Network", you'll find a list of companies that handle these types of placements and you can contact them about rates.
I don't think you'll get a single answer to this, each agency does things differently.
There is a free ad rotating component AdWhirl that tries to abstract things for you, this would likely be a good place to start.
I finished building an app that allows beaming of photos, contacts and text clips over Wi-Fi
IPhone to IPhone and IPhone to desktop.
I want to decide on the feature set of the lite version of my IPhone app. I also want to come up with a pricing model. So the question is, which of these components should be free, and for which I should be charging for ?
For example, the lite version could have all features except the ability to interact with the desktop version - that is, it would work IPhone to IPhone, but not IPhone to desktop. The paid version would be able to beam to the desktop. In addition, the desktop version would be free, so you could share it with family and friends.
Alternatively, there would be a single free IPhone version and I would charge for the desktop app. The only thing here is that I would have to setup server side code for managing registration codes.
One reason to make your desktop app free and the iPhone app a paid product would be to take advantage of Apple's app store and their payment processing, hosting, etc. While I know 30% seems steep for what Apple provides, it is nice to have that part of the business be handled by someone else. For example, you will never have to deal with credit card processing or have to issue refunds - Apple does all that for you.
I like the mechanism that is more suited to viral distribution and giving people a good taste of all the features, before they are sort of convinced to go for the paid version. The marketing value of an app that can be freely tried out once one user recommends it to another, is invaluable. If someone recommends a product to me and I have to pay for it, then I probably would put off trying it till alter when I have learned more about it. However, if it is free, I can download and try it without feeling like I need to do more research prior. Once I like, and am hooked on it, then I will want locked functionality that I would have to pay to unlock.
I'd stay away from selling, payment processing, and reg code management, if your expertise is in coding - you'd make yourself more money writing more code than writing reg code management utilities...
Good luck.
I'm not sure charging for either is the best idea. If you keep both tools free, you get people trying (and liking) both apps. Viral distribution will ensure a decent user base. Once people use both tools, they're more likely to pay for the next part, which is the connector software.
I like your idea of three parts: a free iPhone app (Let people share photos on their iPhone), free PC app (There are hundreds of photo viewing apps, free... Don't try to charge for them, that way lies pain) and paid connection between 'em.
That way:
You get people using your iPhone app virally (To share with each other's phones & try out the application)
You get people using your PC app virally (Because the cost to try is nearly null)
The connection can be sold through Apple's iStore, so you don't need to do the money handling side
You could even make the connection component a subscription, but as an end user I hate that idea unless I get some additional functionality from it being a subscription (Like free hosting).