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

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

#141

Post by f3r3nc »

kevingibbon wrote: post #38

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 manne…

Happy AppGratis customer here. Note: we never paid for their services in cash but cross promotion.

A game of ours have been featured by AppGratis twice. They blow our charts what was then followed by a reasonable amount of paid players. That made a _huge_ difference for us. 2.5 months after the deal, there are still more downloads than was after 2 weeks of the release.

If you are a small team with very very limited resources. AppGratis is a really good way to get exposure this way. Would happily recommend them.

BTW, you can use other services to climb up the charts, like Chartboost or FB ads and I don't think any of them is any better or worst than the paid service of AppGratis.

Building great apps is hard. So is their marketing.

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

#142

Post by duncan_bayne »

Livven wrote: post #118
knes wrote: post #63

I have zero sympathy for Simon. AppGratis business model is dirty at its core because basically it's just a way for developers with cash to splash to have a big burst of downloads to help them climb the App Store Rank and get "organic download". An even dumber thing is to bet everything its iOS app when you saw that a far superior product from one of your competitor was banned from the App Store 4 months ago (App Sho…

Oh come on. It's certainly "dirty" to push your app up the charts with fake downloads from bots, but this is just advertising. There are much worse things happening in the world... and in the App Store. Plus however you might feel about apps like this, the much larger issue is that Apple is now pulling apps it doesn't like. While it's of course within their rights, this really shouldn't be just happening like this. W…

Regulation? Do you _really_ want to open the door for further Government regulation of tech? How about: if you're building something important (e.g. software that forms the basis of a 45-employee business), don't use iOS.

These days, there is zero excuse for being ignorant of the way the software 'market' for iOS works. Which means that companies that continue to depend upon iOS software sales are either taking an incredible gamble, or simply aren't performing any sort of risk analysis as part of their business process.

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

#143

Post by duncan_bayne »

DigitalSea wrote: post #132

This whole situation highlights another problem, you should never base a business around a third party API or service. Remember when Twitter changed their guidelines and API usage rules basically destroying companies that had built a product based around Twitter only for it to be deemed in violation of the new rules? This situation should be a warning to others thinking of putting their eggs in one basket, because if…

Never? There are many cases of highly successful businesses being based upon a 3rd party API. E.g.: every successful software company that sold CP/M, DOS, Windows or UNIX software.

Perhaps a better statement would be: understand that there are risks inherent to building for any given API, study those risks, and mitigate them.

CP/M seems to be dying off? Hope you've started your DOS port already :)

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

#144

Post by supercoder »

sanjkris wrote: post #30

AppGratis is a pay-to-play platform. About $20k per app. If you watch the performance of one such AppGratis recommended app, Recorder Pro. The $20k couldnt even keep them in the top-50 in the biz category for a month. Seems a waste of dev mkting $$$ imo. Simon should stop whining and just shift to Android. God knows it needs curation. The amount of filth in goog play is unbelievable.

There are a few ways you can work with AppGratis, but 20k per app is no where near close. They're good people to work with and as an advertising medium for a small shop are excellent value compared to running ads elsewhere.

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

#145

Post by rurounijones »

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…

Even if everything you say above is true.

None of these rules are brand new and AppGratis had been approved by Apple staff time and time again and worked with the company when there were problems.

The fact a new person can come along and totally pull the rug out should highlight just how wildly inconsistent the approval system is.

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

#146

Post by mbetter »

spontaneus wrote: post #60
pgrote wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does 5.6 apply to all apps? Is it a black and white issue? For instance, the Southwest Airline app, Ding, sends me push notifications when there are sales.

And, what about Groupon and Living Social? All they do is promote a different business every day... If Apple is going to make rules like this, they need to be consistant on how they enforce it.

Why do they need to be consistent?

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

#147

Post by kevingibbon »

gyardley wrote: post #126
kevingibbon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say you need 20k DLs to get top 5 in a notable category. Lets say you get another 20k of real DLs from the app store ranking. Incentivised DLs are $0.35 each, but they are Dls and not real users. So $7k for 20k DLs. You usually want a LTV of 3:1. So your LTV would need to be $2.10 per user. These users are way worse than acquiring them from other channels because they only briefly see your logo and a brief descr…

The "let's say they are only 25% as good" is a bad assumption. The real downloads you get from increased app store ranking are as good as any others you'll get. The ratio - 20K real downloads from 20K incentivized, or 1:1 - is also a bad assumption. Here the actual ratio varies wildly, depending on how much the incentivized installs actually influence your app ranking. It's a feast or famine situation - spend too lit…

Obviously on a case by case basis. I've seen app downloads that come from rankings to be lower quality than those that come through other channels.

If you are trying to build a real business a 3:1 LTV is very reasonable.

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

#148

Post by pgrote »

mbetter wrote: post #146
spontaneus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, what about Groupon and Living Social? All they do is promote a different business every day... If Apple is going to make rules like this, they need to be consistant on how they enforce it.

Why do they need to be consistent?

That is a very good question. Their rules, their interpretation. I could see that line of thought.

I guess it would help me as a consumer from the standpoint of any confusion. I don't develop IOS apps, so I can't speak to the fairness of the process. I am an IOS user and it would irritate me if an app I like, such as Southwest's, is pulled all of the sudden for a rule that wasn't enforced consistently.

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

#149

Post by chipotle_coyote »

untog wrote: post #86
ricardobeat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be aware that a hefty percentage of software developers use OSX, I'd say 70% around here. They are easier to use for everyone, not just "people who don't know computers", and one of the best unix environments for development. They are certainly (specially iOS) not aimed at people who like to spend hours messing with a thousand settings screens, buttons and checkboxes - self-proclaimed "power users".

He did say "OSX lately ", and I agree. Snow Leopard was probably the best version of OS X, it's just been downhill from there. I don't want/care for things like Launchpad being in my OS.

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 about FreeBSD and, to some degree, BeOS. And with every iteration of the OS it got easier for everybody to use.

But it's also gotten better for power users to use. Automator keeps seeing improvements. AppleScript, for both better and worse, doesn't seem to be going away. The Terminal app has gotten improvements with every release. And Mission Control -- whether you personally like it or not -- represents the latest in what's very clearly a quixotic quest on Apple's part to get everyone in the world to love virtual desktops. Mission Control may not be nerdy enough for you personally, but its very existence is pretty nerdy. (And I actually think power users should give it a chance; it's certainly not like anybody else's virtual desktop management system, but once I got used to it I found it struck a really nice balance between power and usability.)

Certainly, OS X is getting better at catering to neophytes and is bringing over ideas from iOS. But I don't see anything substantial that they're taking away from OS X in the process, and that should really be what concerns us, shouldn't it? If you start hearing credible rumors that they're taking away your shell prompt, then the sky may really be falling. But as long as you can still do everything you could before, complaining about the fact that you can also do swipey stuff on your trackpad and pull up a big iPhone grid of applications seems just a little silly.

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

#150

Post by ScottBurson »

mbetter wrote: post #146
spontaneus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, what about Groupon and Living Social? All they do is promote a different business every day... If Apple is going to make rules like this, they need to be consistant on how they enforce it.

Why do they need to be consistent?

They are competing against Android for developers.
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