Monetisation Advice

News & General Discussion
1

Hi

We have built a game and the feedback we have had has been very positive people love it and its original as well as of high quality.

The problem

We have had only 30 clean purchases (lots of free promos) from the app store. We have run facebook ads, youtube ads etc and spent good money for little return - the exposure has been great lots of likes and shares but still only 30 installs. The price we set was also the lowest you can set in the iOS store. I always hated IAP and ads so my plan was for people to buy it out right at a low price.

I decided to run an experiment. I set the price to free for < 24hours and we had close to 600 installs!!! Begrudgingly we are deciding on pivoting our approach.

The game has 25 levels and you must complete each level to unlock it. We were thinking of giving the game away and just doing a single in app purchase to unlock the levels all at once. This will work easily enough in the architecture of the game and would be seamless enough.

Some questions

What happens to the people who have already purchased it? I know there is only 30 but its not fair to charge them again for it. What can we do about this?

Does this strategy work? Should we continue with the full pay model or the IAP as described above?

Many thanks

2

As a fellow detester of ads in games I think you have a solid plan.
I’ve not released a game and have also not experienced low purchases on a game, but you might possibly be in luck. If you only have 30 full purchases - couldn’t you gift updated copies to the 30 people who originally purchased the game? I can’t remember the terminology for iphone gifting, redeem codes or something.

Good luck - and – why don’t I see a link to your game in the post above - or in your signature? :wink: