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.
Related
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 am working on a application which has a more peculiar requirement. Basically it is something which is not targeted at end users but at a system integrator who will embed an iPad into a larger system and sell it to an end user as a whole.
However, the problem I'm facing is that the system integrators could simply purchase the app once and then keep cloning thousands of iPads from a single iTunes account, my company would not get any revenue from this.
Is there any way around this. I've looked at in app purchases but according to the guidelines I'm supposed to give in app purchase restore functionality so I guess if I don't the app won't get approved.
I could use external authentication servers I guess, but that may be viewed as circumventing the app store.
I've loked at the volume B2B stuff but I'm not quite clear on how that works or if it would help me in this case.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Last time I checked an application can only be installed on five devices, and then the other ones simply refuse to install the application.
If this system integrator managed to circumvent this, it's he who is breaking the App Store rules.
You can't use the App Store mechanisms as you described (you can't change iTunes). In-App purchases of non-consumable items must include a restore option so the user can restore it on all his devices even if it's thousands (this also for subscriptions etc). If you won't enable that you would be rejected.
You can think you can send the Device-ID for each device that purchase the item and have control over that(or any information) but apple would simply reject your app because it's forbidden to send device-ID.
If your service is online you can simply use some kind of tokens created on your servers which would be given to each client (from some kind of private key), This way you must be connected to each purchased item (only those would contact your servers and you would grant access).
Security wise you must consider leaving some of the functionality on your server side. This is not illegal same as you can't access Facebook without username& password.
And now for the easy way, Define your service as consumable item for in-App purchase(if you can). What does it mean? Lets say you are selling a special feature like "Ad-Free" you can sell credits that would be consumed with each app open or any other process you have in mind, You can even set this credit to 1 million for 0.99$ (so the user never gets to that) but still the consumer would have to buy it again and again for each device and it would be absolutely legal by Apple. Pay attention that the problem would be on the consumer side such as that if user have deleted his app you should find a way to help him or refund him on next buy. Also, If you can and would use this method pay attention to save those credits on the restored folder on the device, so if the user would upgrade or restore the device he would still have the credits he bought.
Pay attention that if you are going to use in-App there are lots of methods to steal this content on jailbroken devices and you must use your own server to check the buying process (according to Apple).
Another important thing is that the app without the in-App purchase must have some value to the user.
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'm working on an magazine app for iPad and i've been asked to build a system to allow users to subscribe for, say, a year. I have to say... I didn't quite get the concept of Subscription... Anyway, there's my point: should I implement a real Subscrition model of payment or can I go with a standard consumable one? I mean, if for 20euros I allow the app to download a secret code, say a boolean, which enable the download of all future issues of the year, why should I prefer the subscription model?
thanks to all,
Marcello
There's no need to "build a system to allow users to subscribe" since there is already a subscription billing service offered by Apple:
Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store
CUPERTINO, California—February 15, 2011—Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.’s “The Daily” app.
Security is the main reason you want to use the Subscription service. There are places out there where poorly made apps which have 'secret code' which just needs to be enabled have been pre-packaged which allows people to bypass buying.
Not doing things the right way and coming up with a half-arsed workaround because "you don't quite get it" is hardly a good attitude.
Doing things the right way means that the customer gets billed until they take action to cancel their subscription. It should be obvious why that is preferable to a one-time fee that expires.
Also, Apple may have a problem with you bypassing the method they've provided. There's an entire section on in-app purchases/subscriptions in the review guidelines that you are coming dangerously close to breaking.
The MAIN difference is Apple is responsible to auto-renew subscription every time it expired. So you should go for In-app purchase subscription type.
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