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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

#201

Post by hboon »

simonholroyd wrote: post #200
hboon wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/ as well as http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentati... iTunes affiliates get a cut of 5% of all purchases within 72 hours, not just for the originating app (or media).

> For zero dollar sales of apps, you will not see any transactions reported. Aren't most of the apps that AppGratis links to discounted to free for the day. Apple doesn't pay commission on free downloads, right?

They don't. But let's say you click and buy another app or IAP within that 72 hour window, the affiliate gets a cut.

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

beedogs wrote: post #171
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this actually matter? This is an honest question. I don't use Launchpad, but its presence on the system doesn't affect me any more than the presence of Photo Booth does. I've been using OS X since version 10.2, I think (maybe even 10.1, looking at the timeline), and came to it in large part because it married things I liked about the Mac--but never quite enough to justify buying one--with the things I liked…

They're slowly locking down the ability to install what you want from the Internet. Sooner or later, it'll be App Store-only or jailbreak. The (not-quite-a-rumor) transition from x86 to ARM will only hasten this.

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by uxp »

sergiotapia wrote: post #25

My heart goes out to those 45 employees that suddenly had the carpet pulled from under them. Double so if they have a family to support.

Their company didn't go out of business. He even states so fairly clearly in the article.

He runs a marketing company. I'm fairly certain marketing can still operate successfully using "old" technologies like Email, Twitter and the Web.

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

#205

Post by unthunk »

derefr wrote: post #177
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…

> The app store ranking is almost entirely based on download velocity, so your ranking goes up. I wonder how much the App Store's rankings would change if Apple only counted a download "impression" once the app had had, say, 10 minutes of (non-contiguous) runtime on your device? These perversely-incentivized game users would be filtered out of the metrics, but all the drive-by "download, look around, oh this app isn'…

This wouldn't work well for all apps. For example, I went on a trip to the Rockies in November and wanted to check the elevation at the lodge I was staying at. I downloaded and ran elevation app to find out. Took only moments to find out and even with fiddling around the the app while hiking I probably spent no more than 5 minutes on it but it was completely useful for the purpose I had downloaded and used it for. Should limited use/one-time use apps not be counted simply because they weren't used for an arbitrary amount of time?

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

#206

Post by sergiotapia »

uxp wrote: post #204
sergiotapia wrote: post #25

My heart goes out to those 45 employees that suddenly had the carpet pulled from under them. Double so if they have a family to support.

Their company didn't go out of business. He even states so fairly clearly in the article. He runs a marketing company. I'm fairly certain marketing can still operate successfully using "old" technologies like Email, Twitter and the Web.

They're not out, but their main cashflow item is now removed. I'm 100% certain there's some cloud of doubt around the company morale. It can't be an easy thing to ride out.

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

#207

Post by jicea »

daemon13 wrote: post #188
jicea wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm one of the developer of Meon https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/meon/id400274934?mt=8 . We have been promoted twice by App Gratis, each time we've never paid anything. The App Gratis campaign generated more than 400K downloads and push us in the first place in the French App Store (for a few days). Of course App Gratis use iTunes affiliation to get revenues, but they didn't charge us for anything.

Re >> Of course App Gratis use iTunes affiliation to get revenues, but they didn't charge us for anything. Can you please elaborate on this? Do you mean that Apply is paying some kind of affiliate fee? And what happens if the app is free of charge (FOC)?

I'm always surprised that iTunes affiliation is not very well known. It's in fact the base of a lot of business model: Apps Gratis, Free App the Day etc... Assuming you're sending a customer to the App Store from your app or your website, by any means (link to a free app, link to a paid app etc...), you're becoming an App Store affiliate and get a percentage of everything that buys this customer for 72 hours. I think this percentage is something like 5%...

Affiliation is not limited to Apple App Store, affiliation exists also on Amazon for instance, but not on Google Play, for the moment.

It's important to note that you can becomes affiliate even if your send a customer to the App Store with a free app (for instance Angry Birds Lite), and that at any time there is only one affiliate by device: that's why any apps recommendation will send you push notification each day to remain the current affiliate. And affiliation is not directly managed by Apple but by LinkShare for US, and TradeDoubler for Europe.

A last thing, doing affiliation is really easy:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/meon/id400274934?mt=8 => a link to my app without any affiliation

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/meon/id400274934?mt=8&par... => a link to my app with Linkshare identifier (partnerId=30) and my company identifier (siteID=pPE4bVE6DtE)

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

#208

Post by jlakes »

jicea wrote: post #207
daemon13 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re >> Of course App Gratis use iTunes affiliation to get revenues, but they didn't charge us for anything. Can you please elaborate on this? Do you mean that Apply is paying some kind of affiliate fee? And what happens if the app is free of charge (FOC)?

I'm always surprised that iTunes affiliation is not very well known. It's in fact the base of a lot of business model: Apps Gratis, Free App the Day etc... Assuming you're sending a customer to the App Store from your app or your website, by any means (link to a free app, link to a paid app etc...), you're becoming an App Store affiliate and get a percentage of everything that buys this customer for 72 hours. I think…

Completely agree that any time you use an iTunes / App Store link you should be affiliating it. Not just for the 4-5% rev share but also for the ability to do some basic tracking.

The one additional piece I wanted to add is that LinkShare only manages the iTunes affiliate programs for US, CA and MX while TradeDoubler manages 29 programs in Europe and 10 more in Latin America. However, there is also DGM that manages the AU/NZ program and LinkShare Japan (similar name but different that LinkShare) that manages JP. (That turns out to 45 country-specific affiliate programs worldwide.)

It's important to note that using just LinkShare doesn't earn you commissions internationally. App Gratis was really smart about how they did their affiliation so that they used the right affiliate program/tracking parameters with the right country. Eg. Someone from Germany got a TD link, while someone from MX got a LinkShare link, etc.

Here is a breakdown of countries/affiliate programs/affiliate networks for the iTunes/App Store Affiliate Program (from our site)- http://www.georiot.com/using-georiot/itunes/affiliate-progra...

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

#210

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

the_ancient wrote: post #22

I have zero sympathy for them Anyone that basis their entire business on a single platform controlled by a draconian company like Apple should not be surprised when things like this happen

Specially since they are being a little shady, creating their app store inside the App Store. Apple can interpret their TOS however way they want and ban their app at any time.
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