Android Marketing: Using coupons to give away paid Android Apps | Hacker News Reader

Android Marketing: Using coupons to give away paid Android Apps

zemariamm.posterous.com

37 pointszemariamm13 comments

This looks like a neat idea. A nice extension would be to allow for a QR code entry that would invalidate itself over some criteria.

Using the free version + paid unlocker approach (http://www.marvinlabs.com/2011/01/sharing-code-full-lite-ver...), you can gift the paid version by sending just the unlocker APK to the user. Since all the functionality is in the free version from the market, they'll get updates normally. That said, this is really cool - I was thinking of building something like it for my applications.

I was actually just wondering the other day if this existed for either (Google or Amazon) Android market.

This seems like a good solution until they implement it into the market itself.

I didn't dive deep into the source code.

Does it invalidate a coupon after it's used?

What would happen if I get a new phone? Would I need to get a new coupon?

Currently you can't control the number of times a coupon has been used, but you can control its lifetime. If you get a new phone (and the coupon it's still valid) it will work, otherwise it won't.

We are working on a SaaS that solves exactly this problem combined with some additional things except you don t have to enter any coupons, its completely managed by the back end.

Looks cool though.

one of my interests is startups that are in the mobile SaaS space..do you feel comfortable giving out the firm's name?

If you're into that sort of thing take a look at how I handle SaaS billing in my GeeTasksLite iPhone app. Try to cheat your way around, too. :) If you need to get in touch with me, just contact GeeTasks support.

It's in my profile. We haven't released it yet; we'll be releasing it within a couple of weeks.

Sounds like a cool idea. Thumbs up!

Could the same thing be done for iPhone apps or would Apple not allow such things?

I think that the App Store has a feature that lets you give away apps to friends, reviewers, etc. (unlike the Android Market).

The Apple's Appstore has coupons for free installation (up to 50 coupons per release).

I have also designed my own billing system, which has server-backed "free trial", time-limited purchases, and of course "we want to thank you this much" free orders. You can see it in action in my GeeTasksLite iPhone app. I'm thinking about selling this billing system as a library and a service (the server side).

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