I find these articles looking at the economics of the app store interesting.
I'm still learning mobile (iOS) development having got back to software development last year although I've been doing Rails contract work for much of the time. I released my first real experiment http://itunes.com/apps/fastlists (yes it's another lists app but it is currently free, with no ads and has a couple of useful features making it especially useful for reusable lists for shopping, packing etc. The design is functional rather than beautiful).
I'm currently adding some in-app purchase options to test the reactions of the users.
My current idea is to offer the following options:
1) No-ads (tier 1 price)
2) Privacy - No anonymous usage collection.(tier 1 price)
5) Everything including future in-app features (tier 5)
For me option 5 is important because like several other commenters I hate feeling I will need to keep paying bit by bit for something. It will include everything that doesn't need server side support and expense. I actually hope most customers choose this, the other items are there largely to justify the pricing of this item.
Ads and anonymous usage monitoring will come in releases after the purchases have become available and for ads I will probably make the first month of use add free to try and get the user stuck in. I may also add some alternate skins as in-app purchases too later although that is lower priority than using the iOS 6 social framework as a way to try to get users promoting the app for me by sharing lists.
There is currently no item limit so I will allow users with more than 50 current items to have their initial limit be 50 higher than the current level.
At the moment this is just a small scale test because I haven't done any promotion for the app yet so the current numbers of users is small although the reviews are currently very good (despite a usability issue leading someone not to work out how to reorder items - but I'll add some help in the release after next).
To become self sustaining as an independent developer I'm expecting to need to keep a small suite of apps ticking over. Some will be more ambitious than this although others may be even simpler with different unique features or niche target markets.
I'm still learning mobile (iOS) development having got back to software development last year although I've been doing Rails contract work for much of the time. I released my first real experiment http://itunes.com/apps/fastlists (yes it's another lists app but it is currently free, with no ads and has a couple of useful features making it especially useful for reusable lists for shopping, packing etc. The design is functional rather than beautiful).
I'm currently adding some in-app purchase options to test the reactions of the users.
My current idea is to offer the following options:
1) No-ads (tier 1 price)
2) Privacy - No anonymous usage collection.(tier 1 price)
3) Raise item limit (by 100 to 200 items) (tier 1 price)
4) Unlimited items (tier 3 price)
5) Everything including future in-app features (tier 5)
For me option 5 is important because like several other commenters I hate feeling I will need to keep paying bit by bit for something. It will include everything that doesn't need server side support and expense. I actually hope most customers choose this, the other items are there largely to justify the pricing of this item.
Ads and anonymous usage monitoring will come in releases after the purchases have become available and for ads I will probably make the first month of use add free to try and get the user stuck in. I may also add some alternate skins as in-app purchases too later although that is lower priority than using the iOS 6 social framework as a way to try to get users promoting the app for me by sharing lists.
There is currently no item limit so I will allow users with more than 50 current items to have their initial limit be 50 higher than the current level.
At the moment this is just a small scale test because I haven't done any promotion for the app yet so the current numbers of users is small although the reviews are currently very good (despite a usability issue leading someone not to work out how to reorder items - but I'll add some help in the release after next).
To become self sustaining as an independent developer I'm expecting to need to keep a small suite of apps ticking over. Some will be more ambitious than this although others may be even simpler with different unique features or niche target markets.
Any thoughts on the pricing model? Or the app?