The reviews in the app store for Flower Garden tell another side to this story. For example:
"It costs 2.99 just for the base app. It costs 99 cents for more pots. 99 cents for fertilizer (to get your flowers to grow faster, since some flowers take as long as a week) and now, for the new seeds of winter, you have to pay another 99 cents."
That seems like a legitimate complaint. But his numbers do suggest the IAP helped a lot. I wonder if he could have found an even better balance and eaked out a bit more money.
This is Noel, the author of the post and of Flower Garden.
I was planning on leaving a detailed analysis of the effect of IAP for a later post, but you're right that some people didn't like it. Especially in the Facebook group at one point there was almost a small-scale riot from people feeding off each other's negative comments. But as usual, that's just a vocal minority.
I had to intervene by explaining why I was charging for extra content (http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=10677&uid=748971...) and I think that once people realized it was just me and not some faceless corporation, they were much cooler about it.
So my comment about "people loved it" referred to the fact that I got tons of positive feedback and the fact that IAP sold very well.
Frankly, I knew some people wouldn't like me moving in that direction (especially if you're used to the model of free updates for life), but I'm surprised that I didn't ruffle more feathers and most people took it really well.
Also interestingly, I think this has gotten people who had cracked versions of Flower Garden to purchase in-game items, so that probably helped too. But unfortunately I don't have a really accurate way of measuring that (I'll try for my next post).
If you recruit most of your customers from a population which steals most of their software, then aggressively socialize them to think the software which isn't convenient to steal yet is fairly priced at $1 and expensive at $3, and then ask their opinions about your business model, what were you expecting their opinions to sound like?
This is the culture of the iPhone, 99 cents rules the day. The fact that the iPhone arrived at this is far more Apple's fault than the customer's.
In the current iPhone world, 2.99 + a lot of 99 cent charges to essentially just use the app is outrageously expensive. Especially when you consider the app is a rather simple "toy." Just off the top of my head, Train Conductor is a full fledged (and beautiful) game, and it's entirely playable with no additional fees at 1.99. In comparison, Flower Garden really does come out looking ridiculously overpriced. My question is if he had priced his app more in line with what iPhone customers expect, would he have made more money? Or maybe he really did make more money by more "realistically" pricing his app to what he feels it is worth.
The bargain basement iPhone app pricing is a huge problem, for sure, but it's not going away anytime soon. Is it better to just go along with it, or can you make more money by standing firm?
The three top grossing apps in the UK are priced at £49.99, £59.99 and £26.99, and the rest of the top 25 average around £2-3 each. Looks like there is some scope for more expensive applications.
But the most expensive apps, like tomtom, are iPhone versions of expensive products, so even though the iPhone app version is high for an app, it's less than the alternative. That doesn't really work for iPhone only apps.
"It costs 2.99 just for the base app. It costs 99 cents for more pots. 99 cents for fertilizer (to get your flowers to grow faster, since some flowers take as long as a week) and now, for the new seeds of winter, you have to pay another 99 cents."
That seems like a legitimate complaint. But his numbers do suggest the IAP helped a lot. I wonder if he could have found an even better balance and eaked out a bit more money.