Google recently concluded the promotion it was running on the Android Market. In honor of the Market's 10 billionth download, it was putting 10 apps on sale for almost free -- 10 cents -- every day for 10 days.
Giving away free samples is a staple of supermarket sales tactics. But what about for an app market like Google's, where the "samples" aren't store merchandise that's already bought and paid for, but new apps that are minted at will? Is it good for app developers to be paid only 7 cents (70 percent of the sale price) for each download? And what about developers participating in Amazon's "Free app of the day" promo, where the apps don't cost anything?
When high sales figures are a headache
To buy the apps people first have to visit their pages, on the Android Market website or the app on their Android smartphones (or the Amazon equivalent for both). And with developers' contact information easily accessible through their listings -- some developers even list their phone number with their apps -- that's a lot of people who can suddenly contact you. Especially if they have a problem with your app.
"Rotten to the core"
That's how indie developer ShiftyJelly, creators of the PocketCasts app for Android and iOS, described the Amazon Appstore after participating in its free app promotion. Amazon's terms said that developers would be paid 20 percent of the cost of the app for each download, but the email they received said that they'd be paid nothing, and an Amazon.com representative confirmed that that would be the case for them.
In exchange for the "highly valuable placements" of ShiftyJelly's app on the Amazon Appstore front page, the developers got "about 300 emails a day to answer over the space of a few weeks, that left us tired and burnt out." Moreover, they had to upgrade their hardware to handle the server load from people using their weather-forecasting app, and Amazon discounted it later on without their permission (and wouldn't let them remove it).
On the other hand
According to Liam Spradlin of Android Police, at least one developer said the Google promotion "went better than expected." They needed to sell 30 copies at 10 cents to beat their normal $2.99 price, but sales of their Android game, Fieldrunners, were about 70 times their normal rate. One of the developers behind another app, Paper Camera, told Android Police that "sales rates jumped nearly one thousand-fold" during the promo.
Neither set of developers mentioned an increased load of support emails, and Liam said it was "unclear" whether or not the temporary promotion would increase the apps' sales in the long run. Unlike with the Amazon promo, however, they did make money from Google's sale.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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