Anyone try making their game free for a day or so??

goliath

Has anyone tried making their game free for say a day on order to stir some activity?? Just wondering if anyone had success with this tactic.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

quantumsheep

Scitunes tried it with freeappaday or something.

He had 250,000 free downloads over a few days, which I believe went back to normal figures after the promotion ended.

I'm sure he'll pop in with some details

QS

Chaser

I have Gumball Copter for free and put a more games option that shows some of my other games which only slightly helped sales.

JamesZeppelin

One huge factor is often overlooked in the free boost theory.
It only works when the game is awesome. And it works because it gets it in enough hands so that it creates a buzz. If it isn't fantastic it could get 20 million downloads and it would not matter. Once it goes back paid it relies on it's new popularity and buzz.
I have made games free and seen over 500k
in downloads. I also saw one with barely any change

Both resumed crappy sales after returning to paid since they weren't great games. I deleted most of my early releases later though lol

If there is no rank there is nothing to Lowe though.

expired_012

Try making it free for half the day and paid for the other half. This helped me alot one day. The day before I had my game paid for the whole day, made $7, the next day i tried making it free for half the day to let it go up the ranks and paid for the other half and I made $15 even though it was 0.99 for half the day. Not sure if this works for everyone but worked for me

Sparkyidr

We tried this with Doodle Galaxies this week.

Had been selling the odd 1 or 2 every day
Made it free for 1 day. It' did 7600 ish downloads. Started appearing in some charts (in hindsight, maybe should have left it free for a 2nd day as it was still climbing)

Did 36 the day it was set back to paid (at 59p/99c)
Then 12 the second day.
So not a massive bump...but a bump non the less.

I'm not sure I am a fan of this strategy though...as a punter, it would kind of annoy me if I bought an app, and then it was free the next day....and then you will get people who are put off buying your game, as they sit there waiting for the next time you have a sale, or make it free.

Plus, as others have pointed out, this is only really going to work if people are interested in your app/game in the first place.

bit of a tough one really.

iPhoneDevForMe

I think the best option is to make your game free from the start and then bump it up. Call it a "Launch Special"

This should give you a lot of coverage under "New Release" and if the game is good (I agree, that is what matters most), it will really help boost your rankings to help with the buzz.

Weswog

Or make a holiday special of 100% off.

Also to make it free for half a day do you just change it to free when you wake up then after 4 hours or so change it to $.99.

Cheers, Weswog

expired_012

I put it free at 12pm and set it back as paid at 6pm. When I said half the day I meant in the 12 hour period from 12 pm to 12 am because in my opinion that is the only active period in a 24 hour day (I wouldn't know since I am still young lol)

goliath

Cool. I made it free for the rest of the night.... I'll keep you guys updated.

(game is Spacescape if anyone wants it....of course I would provide promo codes if you guys wanted)

expired_012

Wait a second, that doesn't make sense. You had it paid and now you put it for free? Because it's supposed to be the opposite, you have it free first and then you make it paid.