It seems almost impossible to promote lower priced mac apps now

Off-Topic
1

Summary: $5 educational mac app for students and teachers is 10X better than 10 years ago but sells 100X less now… It use to sell in the thousands of units per year, but now it is down to 0-3 a day.

I have many apps and I use adwords for my more expensive one ($80), and that works out, but for my far cheaper $5 ed app there is no clear way to promote it. Adwords and other targeted advertising would just be too expensive.

Arguably, the $5 educational app is better in EVERY SINGLE WAY than the version I had ten years ago and the website is top-notch and very modern. I remember websites mentioning its release and I’d get a boost, etc. I created a facebook, twitter, emailed and tweeted at dozens of sites … and only one obscure site mentioned it. Ten years ago I could fix a bug and release a point update and I’d get mentioned on MacNN or MacObserver, etc. Macworld magazine use to feature it time to time (in print, too!) and now they dont even acknowledge me. :confused:

As it stands, I am making money on my more expensive business app, but for my lower priced app:

Facebook Page … no affect
Twitter … no affect
Promotions … no affect
Emailing press releases to dozens of sites … no one cared, but one
Top Notch and modern site … no affect
And of course, an extremely modern, slick app … almost no affect

I poured my passion into this app during the summer. It is a tool that has so much value for teachers and students. Perhaps everyone just expects such an app to be free and balk at $5 or even $1 …

2

Today, educational apps were substituted by educational websites and YouTube videos. Maybe that’s the case affecting your app. Not a price thing, but students interest and competitor’s options (sometimes free).

3

That is very true. Though I dont really know of any website that can emulate the breadth and responsiveness of my app.

4

Why does the app only cost 5$ then? Have you tried to contact schools?

5

You got to conduct a market study to analyze what is really going on. Search teachers sites to see what they want and which apps if any they use, search Amazon to see what sells, search the App Store to see which educational apps and what price are selling.

Go to teacherspayteachers.com and look at which apps are there.

Seems to me you probably need to decide between giving away your apps and selling them at the right price. A $5 app actually may seem suspicious, and could be perceived as poor quality. Mac users today have grown very demanding, and that includes support, phone support, and at $5 a user will probably look at you app as disposable.

To give you a comparison base, I sell a unique school font for $9.95, and most buyers will buy two. Or they will buy a pack for $39.95.

6

[quote=455870:@Michel Bujardet]You got to conduct a market study to analyze what is really going on. Search teachers sites to see what they want and which apps if any they use, search Amazon to see what sells, search the App Store to see which educational apps and what price are selling.

Go to teacherspayteachers.com and look at which apps are there.

Seems to me you probably need to decide between giving away your apps and selling them at the right price. A $5 app actually may seem suspicious, and could be perceived as poor quality. Mac users today have grown very demanding, and that includes support, phone support, and at $5 a user will probably look at you app as disposable.

To give you a comparison base, I sell a unique school font for $9.95, and most buyers will buy two. Or they will buy a pack for $39.95.[/quote]

True. It was $20 way back in the day and did 1/10th as much. The price went to $10 and I saw a 4X increase in sales and then further to $5 and another 4X in sales. Plus I wanted it to be financially accessible, but I may need to rethink this.

7

Maybe split into $5 Lite and $20 Pro version?

8

And target Educational markets (as Michel says earlier).

9

BTW, you may have a top notch web site, it will never have as much traction as the Mac App Store, the Windows Store, or Amazon.

If you have not already done what is necessary to be on these platforms, you are missing out big time. Since they take a 30% fee, you want to consider an increase in your price, let alone to absorb that fee. On Amazon you cannot sell Mac or Windows software by download, that requires a CD and a package. I usually do a $10 markup for that.

Right now, I sell about the same from my web sites as I do from the MAS. I am convinced they are not the same customers, and if I was not in the MAS, I would simply lose these sales.

10

[quote=455825:@Matthew Jacques]
Summary: $5 educational mac app for students and teachers[/quote]

What is the app? I‘d be curious to take a look at it.

11

How about marketing at $50.00 for non-students and $5.00 for students. You don’t actually need to verify whether they aren students or not

12

Don’t be surprised! You’ve once started the race to the bottom, now you’ve reached it. Welcome to the Lemon Market

By the way dark patterns do not help. Yes they may boost your sales and may save you a little bit of time but the regression will be harder than before. And I guess your customers are not stupid either when they see, there’s no non-students version.

13

@Tomas:
There is only one Windows 10 (actually 1903) unlike what Microsoft said: the license # make the difference (Familly / Pro)… when one license # is asked.

14

Same difference. People seeing the $5.00 for students will feel that the value of the product is $5.00, not $50.00.

Matthew has a serious image problem to deal with. He started himself the depreciation of his app by lowering the price below reasonable. Now he has to reevaluate his price, not based on attracting a bigger crowd, but on building his brand and perceived quality.

[quote=455820:@Matthew Jacques]Facebook Page … no affect
Twitter … no affect
Promotions … no affect
Emailing press releases to dozens of sites … no one cared, but one
Top Notch and modern site … no affect
And of course, an extremely modern, slick app … almost no affect[/quote]

Unless you heavily market it, a page on social media is irrelevant. You may consider Facebook advertisement, but to have any impact, you must offer some discount, and again start marketing cheap rather than good quality.

I quit sending press releases. They are a thing of the past, so are the numerous now defunct computer magazines who were more interested in machines than software anyway.

Top notch web site is fine, if people know about it, and if you have done your homework for SEO, so Google and Bing know about it.
Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide and make sure to submit it to search engines, for instance with https://www.freewebsubmission.com/

A good way to have people know about your app is to distribute a demo version and make sure it is in all software repositories. On PC especially, you need to add to your shareware a PAD file which will automate posting on shareware repositories. See http://appvisor.com/

Once again, you must price your app at what you feel it is worth. This $5 deal is a losing proposition.

15

I have never been very good at the business side of things; but this year it seem particularly difficult. Several long time indie developers are saying the same thing, at least on the Mac.

16

Over 50% of requests on Google are mobile. Same thing for sales on Amazon. Over 50% of buyers use mobile.

We are experiencing the shrinkage of Desktop market.

It is obvious in the MAS, but it is probably even worse elsewhere. I did not sell a single copy through Macupdate this year.

Pity Xojo iOS is so limited. Porting apps to mobile is becoming critical to the survival of our business.

17

Have you tried asking Apple to promote your App on the App Store?
https://developer.apple.com/contact/app-store/promote/

As an educational app this is a very good time for being promoted.

I did this 2 years ago and got 100k downloads (free app) but I’m sure it would still give you a revenue boost.

18

@Jeremy Leroy: how much do keywords cost in the MAS? My first tests with Google Ads gave me way to high prices for keywords there.

Oh, your link isn’t for buying real estate but for something different. Does Apple react to such requests? Or do I only have a chance if I do a dime-a-dozen note taking app or a game?

19

Most apps you see on the “Today” tab of the iOS App Store and Mac App Store have used the above link to ask Apple to promote their app.

With 3,942,086 Apps (source AppTopia) published on the AppStore, Apple’s creative team that publishes each day on the Today tab don’t have time to search and test every single app that is published. If they don’t know about your app, they certainly won’t talk about it.

Yes Apple reacts to such requests. They rarely reply, but one day you might receive an email that starts like this:

To improve your chances of being listed by Apple, you need beautiful screenshots, good keywords, an interesting description and a good looking app.

EDIT:
To answer your initial question, you can decide what’s the price of a keyword when you want to run ads on the iOS App Store: https://searchads.apple.com
I have successful ads running at 10-15 cents per keyword.

However it seems that searchAds don’t run on the MAS yet.

20

PPC though AdWords or Bing is only worthwhile if you have an expensive and very popular app. Otherwise your conversion will be terrible.

Having a demo on each download platform is way less expensive, and if the app is smooth, conversion will be much higher.