From a technical standpoint I am wondering about the implementation and scalability of such an approach. Are people sensitive to having to wait to download content for their kid's apps?
This app only has, as far as I can tell, ten items per subject. Download size is about 70 MB, which means all the content for the available subjects is contained in the one download waiting to be enabled. This is OK for a few subjects and a few items per subject. I can see a more substantial offering grow to hundreds of MB if a similar approach is used.
The next approach would be to serve new content off a server when purchased. I really don't have a clue as to whether or not that is seen as a negative when it comes to toddler or young child apps.
Yup. Especially if you're handing the app off to somebody who's just learning to read - even if the tablet is locked-down, the kid will be frustrated and need help if they get trapped in the "unlock" content while they were tapping around randomly and exploring the app. I'm disappointed so few app developers don't offer a "I just want to pay for this so you can stop marketing at me" option. Free/Freemium/pay-up-front…
We actually released a version of the app that was $2.99 upfront with no in-app purchases to test which model worked better for us. The $2.99 version netted us less than $20 in the lifetime of the application. It never was ranked anywhere in the app store and thus was virtually DOA. I agree it would be great to charge upfront - We didn't have a budget to market these applications to them to show them the value before…
That's surprising to me, as a user. On Android I often search for apps, find the "free" one, read all the reviews and (if it has positive reviews) I seek out the "pro" version and buy that without ever having installed the "free" version. That is, I know the "free" version will have the top placement and the good user-feedback info so that's the one I can quickly get info about, but I skip the middle-step of installing the "free" one and move straight to the pay-up-front thing.
I will start by saying that the sentiment of this is simple and true. The value added by the "Unlock All" button in it's simplicity is valid.
But they didn't "just add a button" they also added over 3x the content to give that button value.
If they had kept their original 3 books and added the button I'm guessing they would have seen next to no difference in the bottom line.
My point being that in order for an Unlock/Buy All button to work, you need to have enough content/product/etc to make the button worthwhile. Just adding a button may not be enough.
Yup. Especially if you're handing the app off to somebody who's just learning to read - even if the tablet is locked-down, the kid will be frustrated and need help if they get trapped in the "unlock" content while they were tapping around randomly and exploring the app. I'm disappointed so few app developers don't offer a "I just want to pay for this so you can stop marketing at me" option. Free/Freemium/pay-up-front…
We actually released a version of the app that was $2.99 upfront with no in-app purchases to test which model worked better for us. The $2.99 version netted us less than $20 in the lifetime of the application. It never was ranked anywhere in the app store and thus was virtually DOA. I agree it would be great to charge upfront - We didn't have a budget to market these applications to them to show them the value before…
We actually released a version of the app that was $2.99 upfront with no in-app purchases to test which model worked better for us. The $2.99 version netted us less than $20 in the lifetime of the application. It never was ranked anywhere in the app store and thus was virtually DOA. I agree it would be great to charge upfront - We didn't have a budget to market these applications to them to show them the value before…
That's surprising to me, as a user. On Android I often search for apps, find the "free" one, read all the reviews and (if it has positive reviews) I seek out the "pro" version and buy that without ever having installed the "free" version. That is, I know the "free" version will have the top placement and the good user-feedback info so that's the one I can quickly get info about, but I skip the middle-step of installi…
It's really because of Apple and their rules. Apple discourages Free and Pro versions of the same app (they may have loosened that up recently, but at one time, in an effort to combat app clutter and promote IAP, they would reject you). On iOS, there is no real way to try-and-buy without Freemium. At least in Android, and I think WP, you can get a refund within a certain time frame. Couple this with users generally seeking out free or super cheap apps and treating them as fairly disposable, just having a premium app for an upfront price, not being an established known brand, is basically a death wish.
We actually released a version of the app that was $2.99 upfront with no in-app purchases to test which model worked better for us. The $2.99 version netted us less than $20 in the lifetime of the application. It never was ranked anywhere in the app store and thus was virtually DOA. I agree it would be great to charge upfront - We didn't have a budget to market these applications to them to show them the value before…
That's surprising to me, as a user. On Android I often search for apps, find the "free" one, read all the reviews and (if it has positive reviews) I seek out the "pro" version and buy that without ever having installed the "free" version. That is, I know the "free" version will have the top placement and the good user-feedback info so that's the one I can quickly get info about, but I skip the middle-step of installi…
That's surprising to me, as a user. On Android I often search for apps, find the "free" one, read all the reviews and (if it has positive reviews) I seek out the "pro" version and buy that without ever having installed the "free" version. That is, I know the "free" version will have the top placement and the good user-feedback info so that's the one I can quickly get info about, but I skip the middle-step of installi…
It's really because of Apple and their rules. Apple discourages Free and Pro versions of the same app (they may have loosened that up recently, but at one time, in an effort to combat app clutter and promote IAP, they would reject you). On iOS, there is no real way to try-and-buy without Freemium. At least in Android, and I think WP, you can get a refund within a certain time frame. Couple this with users generally s…
Ah. Yes, WP actually has built-in support for offering both a "try" and "buy" version of each app, allowing two apps to coexist as the same entry... but in practice, most follow the "free" and "pro" naming-convention and offer two separate apps.
I hadn't realized that Apple's strict curating prevented these patterns.
My theory with content apps (I've seen this elsewhere) is that the majority of money comes from a small percentage of users (1-10%). These users are what typically is referred to as whales. The biggest obstacle to monetizing whales is new content. Also, whales tend to be less price-sensitive. That is, they will buy what content you have at a reasonable price, and that price should be based on what those (paying) user…
You're dead on - our "whales" were 3% of our users.
We never released 10 books w/ out the Buy All option so you're assumption is correct - we have no data on this. You could be correct in that it was solely content as a gating factor, had we tested incrementally we would have firmer data in this area.
Very true, especially for parents. If I find an author that I like and trust and my kids will read, I'll buy everything they write before going through trial and error again. Now we just need to see Bilingual Child in other languages and I'll be a buyer!
What languages are you looking for? We have a Mandarin version and we're working on a French and Portuguese version.
The latter two.
My observation of NY is that parents here don't have cars, so our conspicuous consumption is how many languages we force our kids to learn.
Does anyone know what software he's using to display those charts and graphs? Is that a 3rd party app or a custom in house dashboard? I've been looking for something like that for my SaaS business.