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AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

appgratis.com

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Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#31

Post by gojomo »

credo wrote: post #16

Detailed post, but it doesn't seem to address two things. 1. The WSJ report noted that Apple was concerned that " AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure." Simon hasn't addressed this point. Do they make paid recommendations ? If they do make app-recommendations based on payments, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to ban them. As an iOS (an…

Re (1): Well-disclosed paid-promotion should be fine: Apple does it (iAds), Google does it (AdWords). If that's the issue it should be fixable.

Re (2) If a notification that "today's [no-additional-cost] deal has arrived!" counts as "advertising, promotion, or direct marketing", then it seems every other push that aims to improve app usage, by announcing new content or features, would also be verboten. Is that what Apple is saying? If so, a lot of other apps are going to have to go...

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#32

Post by muzzamike »

lleims wrote: post #28
credo wrote: post #16

Detailed post, but it doesn't seem to address two things. 1. The WSJ report noted that Apple was concerned that " AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure." Simon hasn't addressed this point. Do they make paid recommendations ? If they do make app-recommendations based on payments, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to ban them. As an iOS (an…

I've heard from one investor in Spain who was recently pitched by an AppGratis competitor that, depending on the client, AppGratis might charge big companies between $12/14K a day to promote their apps. Take it with a grain of salt as this information comes from one of their competitors. But I wouldn't be totally surprised if they charge that amount.

They have even higher rates for free apps with in-app purchases.n. We were told $3 per install or $100k flat rate for 1 day. This was roughly a month and a half ago.

Unfortunately that didn't fit out budget.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#33

Post by spontaneus »

espadagroup wrote: post #29
credo wrote: post #16

Detailed post, but it doesn't seem to address two things. 1. The WSJ report noted that Apple was concerned that " AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure." Simon hasn't addressed this point. Do they make paid recommendations ? If they do make app-recommendations based on payments, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to ban them. As an iOS (an…

Pay for exposure already exists within the app store. Large companies pay around $10-$20K a day depending on the category on crap ad networks (won't name them) that incentivize the users to download the companies app in order to "get to the next level" or something like that. The downloads are incredibly cheap and you get thousands and thousands of them. The app store ranking is almost entirely based on download velo…

Facebook just recently started doing this as well. You can now pay to get your app promoted in people's news feed.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#35

Post by jusben1369 »

It's all fun and games until an American technology company leverages their market share and business model to decimate a European technology company. A couple more of these and the EU will start dragging them in front of committees with little need to be concerned about a backlash.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#36

Post by sanjkris »

niklas_a wrote: post #19
recursive wrote: post #7

This is curation in action.

Yep, sucks to be a developer though. You can spend a year developing an app only to have it pulled from the store. Of course, the risk is low so you might try anyway but the situation sucks.

Heres why you should persevere though: I have 5 ios apps; together, they pay for my property tax and my mortgage. My house costs $1.1 mln btw. Prop tax in CA is ~1.25%. I am not deeply wedded to ios btw inspite of my revenue. I moved my client side code to Android. Took me ~3 weeks. Unlike Simon, I hedge my (appstore) bets.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#37

Post by tootie »

untog wrote: post #2

I will save HN the time: "I can't believe that it's 2013 and people are still basing their entire company around the App Store with it's murky rules" "But there's a lot of money to be made there, it's worth it!" "Apple needs to change their procedures" They're all true. Basing a business around an app is both risky and potentially very profitable. Apple should change their practises but have little incentive to. So,…

I wonder if investment will start to take a hit when they understand the enormous risk they are taking.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#38

Post by kevingibbon »

I hate the idea of AppGratis and I'm glad its been removed.

Who really benefits? The cheap user who will not normally pay for a high quality app? The app developer who spends $$ to get featured in AppGratis to then artificially climb the app store ranking?

Dls are one of the worst vanity metrics out there. Devs should focus on building high quality products, monetize, then acquire quality users in a sustainable manner.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#39

Post by espadagroup »

spontaneus wrote: post #33
espadagroup wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay for exposure already exists within the app store. Large companies pay around $10-$20K a day depending on the category on crap ad networks (won't name them) that incentivize the users to download the companies app in order to "get to the next level" or something like that. The downloads are incredibly cheap and you get thousands and thousands of them. The app store ranking is almost entirely based on download velo…

Facebook just recently started doing this as well. You can now pay to get your app promoted in people's news feed.

Yeah, though that's still controlled by Facebook, since you're actually paying them rather than some third party.

Re: AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

#40

Post by coderholic »

muzzamike wrote: post #32
lleims wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from one investor in Spain who was recently pitched by an AppGratis competitor that, depending on the client, AppGratis might charge big companies between $12/14K a day to promote their apps. Take it with a grain of salt as this information comes from one of their competitors. But I wouldn't be totally surprised if they charge that amount.

They have even higher rates for free apps with in-app purchases.n. We were told $3 per install or $100k flat rate for 1 day. This was roughly a month and a half ago. Unfortunately that didn't fit out budget.

Yeah I was also quoted a flat fee of $100k, around a couple of weeks ago.
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