Ask HN: Where should I advertise an iPhone App? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where should I advertise an iPhone App?

9 pointssambeau7 comments

Background:

We have just completed the code to our first non-game iPhone App and are looking to do the difficult bit: Marketing.

We have, for the first time, saved for an advertising budget and I am currently in the throws of writing a marketing plan.

We've got a small war-chest to start us off: not much, maybe a month-or-two's advertising budget with some of the smaller sites, but it represents a year's worth of contract work and hard-won savings.

I'd love to advertise with The Deck and Daring Fireball, but it we would blow our budget in a few weeks. Plus, our core customer is probably younger and a less design oriented than these sites.

The app itself is a revolutionarily simple take on a personal finance app that tracks your budget for you in a fun way without requiring a single receipt.It's aimed at the kind of person who throws their receipts in the trash.

Our tagline is "Money Management for Mere Mortals".

I'm mostly interested in hearing from people with experience, but obviously any useful tips would be gratefully received.

Who/what has worked for you and your app?

You might have already thought of the following, but here is a couple of ways:

1. Offer a lite version which is free, and try marketing that and leveraging on those users to upgrade to a paid app

2. Approach iPhone app review sites and pitch the app to them for a review. (you might also consider advertising in these app review sites to begin with and to gauge the initial response)

I agree with you that blowing away your hard earned money on a big marketing spree might not be a wise decision. So, starting off with a smaller site and watching the initial reactions would give you more confidence on what to do next.

All the best :)

Thanks for taking the time.

I'm slightly wary of a free lite version, at least at first, as people who get things for free tend to be more inclined to leave a bad review.

I also think that, having spent a year of my life on this that it deserves customers who want it and are willing to pay for it.

"I'm slightly wary of a free lite version, at least at first, as people who get things for free tend to be more inclined to leave a bad review."

If someone were to take his/her time to post a review - it has to be something very extreme - either should absolutely hate the app or really love it. From the reviews I have seen on the app store, it's actually people who paid for an app and didn't like it who make a fuss..

I guess at the end of the day, there is no easy way about this. If you want leads, you need to either have a free version which will allow more people to try it and hence convert, or else put in the advertising to go for the paid customers. It's a situation that's quite similar to what I am facing too, but there is no easy way out of it. The viral loop doesn't occur always :)

I've been trying to find the blog post (with figures) that showed that people who pay more for an app tend to rate it higher but I can't find it sadly, so take that with a pinch of salt.

I had thought it was on the taptaptap blog.

However, as an ex live comedy promoter I know from experience that if you let people in free they never laugh as much and are far likelier to be the ones that heckle. This seemed to be the case even if they were a fan.

Physical/monetary buy-in correlates very strongly with emotional buy-in.

I'm currently working on a non-traditional "pay for downloads" site specifically targeted at iPhone apps to begin with. I have taken the plunge, registered as an LLC, and the site is almost completely built (expected launch in < 2 weeks). I will post on HN when I do launch but if you want to know more about it or are interested in being part of the launch shoot me an email at matt dot sencenbaugh at gmail

Sorry for the plug.

As far as a lite version of apps I think its a dangerous path.... I think it can be a valuable tool but only if you find the right balance between what features to include and what to lockdown in the lite version. In the end I think it really depends on how the initial launch goes. If you find that you aren't getting much traction perhaps you should release a lite version for a few days. If after a few days you notice that the lite version hurts your sales... simply remove it.

Can you give a little more detail about what you mean when you say "pay for downloads".

Isn't that what Apple already do?

Here's the idea behind my company: iPhone developers want people to download their app. Generally they pay for ads through a service such as admob which has a terrible conversion rate. My company gives users paid apps for free and provides the developer with downloads.

Here's how it works from a developer standpoint: 1) You create a campaign. This campaign contains a multiple choice question that would be hard for someone to know that didn't actually buy the app. (aka whats the second persons name under the credits or something like that.... its partly honor system based although incorrect guesses are punished). 2) A user downloads your app, and answers the question you created. If they answer correctly they get paid the amount you specified (minimum of the price of the app).

In this way users get great apps and developers get their app out in the wild!

Does that clear things up?

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