I know many developers are using linkshare.com as an affiliate to track app conversions for paid apps. Does linkshare.com provide conversion data for free apps? All signs point to no but I thought I would ask.
We want to be able to track particular marketing campaigns with referrer codes and see how many downloads result from each campaign.
Unfortunately no. "Sales" of free apps are not returned in either LinkShare's or TradeDoubler's report. You will, of course, see all of the other items the user bought during that 72 hour period that your affiliate cookie was active but those again will only be paid apps, music, movies, etc.
Even if you were using the Signature Tracking provided by LinkShare to track specific campaigns you are still going to have a hard time determining if the sale that is reported in your Signature Orders report was specifically your app or a competitors app at a similar price as the reporting is only at category level.
Good luck!
Related
I have an English-only iOS app listed in App Store for all countries. However, it seems that customer reviews only get displayed to customers who are also in that country. For example, US users do not see reviews written by users in New Zealand or Ireland, etc. Is there any way that I as a developer can set up my app such that US users can see customer reviews written by people in other countries (perhaps at least if they're written in English) ??
Thanks.
Sorry but the answer is simple: it's not possible at all on the AppStore. There is no any connection between the countries, not in reviews, ratings and in any other parameters.
Actually the review system is very mysterious phenomenon with secrets and traps and Apple rules are very strict in this context. Even the suspicion of manipulation could lead to deletion of the app from the AppStore forever so avoid any kind of direct or indirect influence intentionally or not.
I have been stuck in a strange situation, according to my requirement, I need to track the resellers of my app, i.e. I will be publishing link of my app in the iTunes-Store on 3 or more different sites(The re seller's sites).
According to my promise which I made to these resellers, I will provide a share of my profit.
So here I have to track from which link did the user came to the APP-Store.
Any suggestions or solutions will be Thankful.
I think the only way to do it will be server-side. Links at your resellers should point to your server, where you log the source of link (resellers web page) and redirect request to AppStore. But you'll have no way of knowing, which of this requests ended up with a purchase.
The only way to do this for real is to get them to become iTunes affiliates and provide reports back to you. They should use the iTunes referral to make the sale (they will get a small cut from Apple) -- Apple will report that back to them, and then they can prove to you that they made a sale, and then you pay based on that.
Reserve the right to audit them -- meaning that they will have to show you the report directly from the iTunes affiliate site.
I assume that iTunes actually tells them what they sold, but you would need to check that.
Another idea (which may or may not make sense based on what your app does) is to make personalized versions of your app for each reseller. If there's some way to incorporate a very simple feature that is personalized (and makes sense), then you can upload the same app multiple times and assume all sales are coming from that reseller.
So, for example, if the app were an exercise tracker, and the resellers were gyms -- you could customize the app for each gym and add their schedule and contact info to it. Then, sell the app as an Excerise Tracker for XYZ Gym and let them promote it and get a cut of sales.
I have an application that we are building to be delivered to our users for free. However, the business wants to be able to sell this application to anyone else who might want it. Is there anyway we can do this?
The suggestions and concerns we've come up with are:
Submit app with price and deliver free download codes to users, but I believe that we only get something like 50 free download codes and we have more than 50 users.
Submit app for free, but make content an in-app purchase and have some mechanisim for allowing our users to validate and get the content free. We think that Apple will hate this since the application isn't functional without the content.
Submit application twice, one free and one paid and just direct our users to the free one. This means that our free version can be found and used by anyone cutting into the revenue stream.
Any suggestions/advice/hints/rants welcome.
Have you considered Software as a Service? The app is an extension of the service. Make the app free to anyone, but to get anything useful out of the app, require username/password or some other validation. You'd be hard pressed to find an app today that doesn't require some sort of signup process.
There are plenty of options you can go with.
In-App Purchase
Free/Lite version of App
Paid version of App
Just a matter of what you and your customers want. Good luck.
Why not have a very basic version of the app available for free (so that Apple is happy) and then have the rest of the app "unlocked" when the user either:
Registers their copy of the app back with your servers (covers giving it to some for free)
Makes an in-app purchase to unlock the rest of the functionality
This keeps Apple happy, gives you the functions you want, and is only minimal effort.
You can pay for and gift paid apps to iTunes account holders. Making the app appear to be "Free" to those recipients. If it's your own app, Apple will keep (only) 30% of the price you pay, so add that on to your cost of doing business.
I have an app which costs $5. I'd like to change this so that the app is free and that users must purchase an auto-renewing subscription to use it. I know how to implement the auto-renewing subscription, but the problem is dealing with users who have already bought the app for $5; I'd like to continue letting these users use my app without a subscription.
The rub is that for privacy reasons I can't store any identifying information on my server which link an account for my app to a specific person (not even UIDID). What I can do is maintain a separate database table which links UIDIDs to subscription purchase receipts which will allow me to know if a user has a subscription.
So my question is, how can I identify users who got my app when it cost $5? I know there's a way to restore in-app purchase receipts, but is there a way to to retrieve a receipt for the initial purchase of the $5 app which I could store on my server?
The poor man's solution is just to mark all current UIDIDs (i.e. the UIDIDs of people who have paid $5) in my server as paid, but then they would have to buy a subscription if they ever wanted to use my app from a different device.
The previously selected answer is outdated. The new answer is that it is possible today with the new receipts that were standardized this year (2013).
The receipt now has two additional fields: original_application_version and original_purchase_date which can be used to detect when a user purchased and therefore be used to guide logic around what users should get what features.
You can see more about 10 minutes in here: http://devstreaming.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2013/308xex4x6ybggtlw4ztv0sg5btp/308/308-SD.mov?dl=1
or if that link dies here: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/videos/ and search for Using Receipts to Protect Your Digital Sales.
Chaning your business model like this is not very well supported by the App Store.
Your "poor mans" solution is probably one of the best of a poor set of options.
Another one would be to switch to a new app entirely (just a different bundle ID in practice). Anyone using your old app would have paid, regardless of which device they use. Anyone using the "new" app would need a subscription. Obviously you'd lose any reviews and possibly external links that you currently have.
I am developing a simple Fund raising app which hold 4 batches (Keep 10$,20$,30$,40$). people who willing to donate will buy these batches through in app purchase.
My concern here is .... is it possible for iphone client to get statistical information from apple through code. I do agree that i can see statistical information if i login through ituneconnect. I just want to get through code so that i can display inside my app.
Note: I know that i can have my own server to store statistical info. i don't want to do that because its a small app
please suggest me regarding this.
Thanks in advance
jenie
Do you mean stats as in how many people have bought each tier?
You can't get that information programmatically for a couple reasons. First it isn't available until the next day, second it is only available via itunesconnect and apps are prohibited from scraping apple sites.
You would need to setup a server to host the statistics and update the server every morning with the new stats.
According to the Apple Guidelines your app probably wouldn't be accepted to the store
(link)
20. Contests, sweepstakes, lotteries, and raffles
20.1 Sweepstakes and contests must be sponsored by the developer/company of the app
20.2 Official rules for sweepstakes and contests, must be presented in the app and make it clear that Apple is not a sponsor or involved in the activity in any manner
20.3 It must be permissible by law for the developer to run a lottery app, and a lottery app must have all of the following characteristics: consideration, chance, and a prize
20.4 Apps that allow a user to directly purchase a lottery or raffle ticket in the app will be rejected
21. Charities and contributions
21.1 Apps that include the ability to make donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free
21.2 The collection of donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an SMS