Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcobrien | Hacker News Reader

Great idea! I signed up and will definitely use it for my next app.

A few initial thoughts:

* You refer to "games" throughout the site, but the site is (almost) just as good for non-game apps. A simple word change might make non-game developers like me feel a little more at home.

* It's a big leap from free to €99 + VAT. Indie iOS developers don't pay VAT (it's taken by Apple on top of our 30% cut), so a VAT-inclusive price is easier. I'm more likely to pay €9/month unlimited or, even better, €5 for up to three apps.

* How are average scores calculated? This sounds interesting but there isn't much detail on it at the moment.

One last thing, is the "- username" text in the top left a Google+ joke? I like it :)

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Thanks for your feedback!

There are some things about it that are games-specific, such as the festival calendar and the sites that Promoter is crawling for press mentions. It could be expanded to non-game apps in the future, but I wanted to start with the area I have most expertise in.

The VAT pricing is due to the tax rules we have in Europe, but I can see that it adds noise to the price point. Monthly payment is something I'd want to add, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible starting out.

For the average scores you enter the scores from the reviews to Promoter (e.g. 7 out of 10). Promoter will then calculate the average of all reviews.

Not sure what you mean with the Google+ joke? ;)

I guess the VAT situation must be different in other parts of Europe. I'm in Ireland and prices are usually advertised as ex-VAT if customers have a VAT bill they're paying themselves (because they charge VAT). That isn't the case for Irish devs which is why it's noisy for me.

One other thing I noticed: I suddenly got lots of emails from promoter because the search terms I used were too broad. I have a google alert "switch multi user browser ipad" which works well, but promoter emails me every time any of these terms appears. I couldn't find a way to correctly match articles containing all those terms (is that possible?), so I had to disable it by entering a random string in the search field.

I'm based in Sweden, so you'd only pay VAT if you're located within the EU and do not have a valid VAT number or if you're located in Sweden.

The syntax is different from Google Alerts (see the little grey text above the text field for the search terms). For your app I'd try "multi user browser" without commas.

+1 for a more generic 'App' (not just games) approach.

I suppose I could do this today (mostly) by curating my own app-specific RSS list in the app?

The RSS list is global for now, but give it a try to test Promoter with your app anyway. There is a big overlap between game and general iOS/Android sites, so it might still be useful to you.

Is it only for iOS, or will it work for Mac App Store too?

It's targeted towards games on all platforms really, so Mac App Store should work just fine. The only features that are iOS only are the promocodes and showing the average user rating.

> It's a big leap from free to €99 + VAT. Indie iOS developers don't pay VAT (it's taken by Apple on top of our 30% cut), so a VAT-inclusive price is easier.

I always thought that "VAT-inclusive" meant that the price included VAT. If so, doesn't charging VAT-inclusive mean that those developers are now paying VAT twice on this expense, once through Apple and a second time as part of this purchase. (Ordinarily they'd be able to take a credit for the latter, buf if it's bundled, they don't have the relevant information, or rather, receipt.)

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