Alternative store to MAS: MacAppsOnSale

Is anyone using MacAppsOnSale as an alternative store for MAS and Microsoft store?

I have been contacted by them. It seems legitimate, although recent.

Their ploy is to have the app promoted with a 72 hours free giveaway to generate traffic, followed by a seven days discount period (minimum 50% OFF and maximum 90% OFF). They take a 30% cut on the discount sale.

All that seems like a lot of discount, but if that effectively generate additional traffic, why not. Anyway, software being electrons and not nuts and bolts, whatever money racked in does not cost more.

I plan on trying it for a next version of my check apps.

Note that the free giveaway indeed will probably generate a ton of traffic. I tried making free my iOS app and ended up with 5000 downloads a day. We are talking 15,000 downloads in a 72 hours period ! Not a single review, good or bad, though. Not quite sure of the probable benefit on all these leeches. At any rate, that calls for some upgrade strategy.

I am using their service for my MAS Apps.

The best part about promoting MAS Apps via MacAppsOnSale.com is that they do not take the 30% cut. They use their own affiliate Link only. :slight_smile:

They have always been very helpful and the communication (support) is blazing fast.

Michel and Sascha sure have differing stories to tell. Now I’m curious to find out who’s correct.

I don’t think our stories are that different. :slight_smile:

By the way, are we not bound by Apple to sell only thru their store?

No, we are not.

I tried to do a promotion with them and they caused me nothing but headaches.
The traffic they drove was not close to what they claim. I did a Mac and Windows promotion, and Google Analytics has it pegged at only 461 sessions for the day.

Our agreement was to send all downloads through my download link which would count and sort users, preventing Windows users from downloading the Mac version and vice-versa. Shortly after it went live the numbers stopped moving. I went to investigate what happened, and they had mirrored the disk image and windows installer to their server and MediaFire. I sent a DMCA to MediaFire because I had not authorized this action and got a nasty letter from the guy at MacAppsOnSale threatening to sue me - claiming he had the right to host the files, even though it was a violation of our agreement.

For the next several emails, over the course of two days my heart continued to sink as he made more and more claims that I had no rights to the software I created. Threatening to drag me into lawsuits I cannot afford as a part time developer working two jobs to stay afloat; it made me feel like he thought he owned me.

In addition, getting the agreement set up was a bunch of bullshit. They continued to send me dumb forms that I needed to fill out, as if extracting any of it from my website was beyond their care. They tried to define and change my license terms when “it wasn’t suitable for businesses,” and even changed the license on their website without getting my approval to.

I have been part of giveaways before. MacHeist had nothing but respect for developers, and even paid them for the software they gave away. MacAppsOnSale has it totally backwards, and is just trying to scheme money by being a middleman.

My personal recommendation is to stay away. It’s just another website full of people who feel entitled to software for free, run by people who feel that developers are theirs to control. They made me feel just terrible after the promotion with their lawsuit antics - and I never want to hear from them again.

Hi Tim.
Thank you for your answer. I was very suspicious because the homepage has no details about the company and no contact data.

Quite honestly most of the infected and malware for iOS comes from stores other than MAS
Avoid them like the plague

They’ve contacted me several times, I even checked out their site, but there was something that set off alarm bells in my mind. Tim, I’m very sorry for the shit you’ve been through with them and it’s certainly made me feel better about trusting my gut.

The best (that I’ve tried) App Store promotion tool is two dollar tuesday, they can take a long time to respond to your first e-mail, but they’re easy to talk to and have helped us tremendously.

Two Dollar Tuesday (or Toonie Tuesday as it’s known here) is cheap movie night at the theaters

I also was contacted by them. But in the end it didn’t feel right. They didn’t answer some of questions (only trying to avoid them).
It just doesn’t feel right to me.
And as Tim already mentioned: the traffic they claim is way way way below the actually traffic. Not sure if you will sell extra bits via Maccappsonsale.

I can answer this one! You won’t! :smiley: