What's It Cost To Be A Top iPhone App? $1,875 A Day

If you plan to use advertising to promote your iPhone app, don't expect to break the top 100 without paying a pretty penny.

To do so, it will cost $1,875 a day, according to Adwhirl, which aggregates a handful of ad networks to help publishers monetize their apps on the iPhone. (If you remember, Adwhirl recently got attention for sparing with AdMob about its policies on aggregators).

Since paying that big sum is not practical, Adwhirl has another suggestion: develop a free iPhone app that will generate a large user base, and then leverage those users it to drive traffic to your paid app. The idea is not super original. Game companies commonly offer free versions to get people hooked in hopes of converting them over to paying customers. However, Adwhirl does a good job of explaining why. More on that after the jump....

Adwhirl writes in its blog that this approach works because it takes about only 2,500 downloads a day to become one of the most downloaded free apps for a particular category-which is more attainable than becoming a top paid app. "For us, the solution was simply to release a few free apps, which quickly gain many ?throwaway? users and offer an effective channel to advertise the apps that were important to us." But why are free apps easier to get users for? Because right now, only a quarter of all apps are free, even though they generate 95 percent of all downloads.

[via Washington Post]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!

What's It Cost To Be A Top iPhone App? $1,875 A Day

If you plan to use advertising to promote your iPhone app, don't expect to break the top 100 without paying a pretty penny.

To do so, it will cost $1,875 a day, according to Adwhirl, which aggregates a handful of ad networks to help publishers monetize their apps on the iPhone. (If you remember, Adwhirl recently got attention for sparing with AdMob about its policies on aggregators).

Since paying that big sum is not practical, Adwhirl has another suggestion: develop a free iPhone app that will generate a large user base, and then leverage those users it to drive traffic to your paid app. The idea is not super original. Game companies commonly offer free versions to get people hooked in hopes of converting them over to paying customers. However, Adwhirl does a good job of explaining why. More on that after the jump....

Adwhirl writes in its blog that this approach works because it takes about only 2,500 downloads a day to become one of the most downloaded free apps for a particular category-which is more attainable than becoming a top paid app. "For us, the solution was simply to release a few free apps, which quickly gain many ?throwaway? users and offer an effective channel to advertise the apps that were important to us." But why are free apps easier to get users for? Because right now, only a quarter of all apps are free, even though they generate 95 percent of all downloads.

[via Washington Post]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!

Sexy iGirl iPhone App Funds a Startup

The true story of how one goofball iPhone app saved a company and funded a new MMO game.

You can't really take iGirl seriously. It's a goofy (with an emphasis on sad and borderline creepy) iPhone app featuring a pasty-looking, scantily-clad virtual girlie that you can customize according to your...ahem...interests. "We get e-mail complaints from conservatives that think [iGirl] is too perverted while kids complain that there's no nudity," says Resistor Productions CEO, Toby Battan. But that 99-cent joke helped kick-start a company and fund a new MMO (massively multiplayer online) fighting game, Disciple.

In the past, I've spoken with a homebrew coder who built games on the side, but Battan's story is a little different. He's a serial entrepreneur who got tired of courting venture capitalists in pursuit of his browser-based fantasy fighter (and I'll get to that game in a few seconds, promise). "I loathed having to go around to VCs asking for money," says Battan.

Obviously the economy is hurting and people aren't as quick to part with piles of cash as they once were, but he paints a funny scenario: "It used to be that they'd invest if they saw a good plan on paper. Now VCs want to see a company that's profitable before they invest.... Why would I come back when I'm already profitable?" In the end, it's a painful six-month-plus process just to get money with a whole bunch of strings attached.

[via Washington Post]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!

Sexy iGirl iPhone App Funds a Startup

The true story of how one goofball iPhone app saved a company and funded a new MMO game.

You can't really take iGirl seriously. It's a goofy (with an emphasis on sad and borderline creepy) iPhone app featuring a pasty-looking, scantily-clad virtual girlie that you can customize according to your...ahem...interests. "We get e-mail complaints from conservatives that think [iGirl] is too perverted while kids complain that there's no nudity," says Resistor Productions CEO, Toby Battan. But that 99-cent joke helped kick-start a company and fund a new MMO (massively multiplayer online) fighting game, Disciple.

In the past, I've spoken with a homebrew coder who built games on the side, but Battan's story is a little different. He's a serial entrepreneur who got tired of courting venture capitalists in pursuit of his browser-based fantasy fighter (and I'll get to that game in a few seconds, promise). "I loathed having to go around to VCs asking for money," says Battan.

Obviously the economy is hurting and people aren't as quick to part with piles of cash as they once were, but he paints a funny scenario: "It used to be that they'd invest if they saw a good plan on paper. Now VCs want to see a company that's profitable before they invest.... Why would I come back when I'm already profitable?" In the end, it's a painful six-month-plus process just to get money with a whole bunch of strings attached.

[via Washington Post]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!