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The Easiest Way to Drive Downloads & Revenue for a Paid App

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App Masters11:30Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Making a paid app free for one day, with press coverage, drives tens of thousands of downloads at no cost. Putting the price back the next day still earns revenue, so one client gained 37,000 downloads and $1,000 for free.

Key takeaways

  • Press coverage is what turns a free day into thousands of downloads. 3:03
    • App Advice and BGR are the two biggest sites for this, and App Advice drives more downloads. Pitch Tyler there, who covers it seven days a week.
    • Some sites pick up price drops automatically with bots. A free app can run the same play by making an in-app purchase free.
  • Making the app free for just one day is enough. 4:32
    • The free day on August 30, 2017 brought a little over 30,000 downloads.
    • The next day, mostly paid again, still brought about 5,000 downloads.
  • Restoring the price on day two lets the press buzz earn real money. 6:31
    • Keeping it free for two days might have meant close to 50,000 downloads. That earns nothing, which is a poor trade for indie developers.
    • For a cheap app, raising the price to about $5 before the campaign is a way to earn more per sale.
  • The campaign costs nothing, unlike paid ads. 8:15
    • Facebook ads might need $500 of spend to bring in $1,000. This campaign brought $1,000 with no acquisition cost.
  • Gains for the developer's other apps are real but hard to predict. 6:56
    • Two other free apps rose about 11% and about 200% with no cross-promotion. A third app and the paid apps did not rise this time.
    • The strategy works only on iOS, because Google Play does not allow it yet.

It's just one of these campaigns where you can drive a tremendous amounts of downloads and really not have to pay out anything.

Steve P. Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 The paid to free campaign

Paid to free is the simplest way to drive downloads, and it works for both paid and free apps.

  • The campaign is a temporary price drop that press picks up. 1:00
    • It works better for paid apps, as the name says.
    • Free apps get the same result with a free in-app purchase.
    • The name is Young's own label, and he says he may rename it.
    • His agency has started using it for clients as its simplest download driver.
  • Two sites cover this kind of campaign. 1:59
    • BGR stands for Boy Genius Report.
    • Both sites are worth pitching even if bots catch the price drop.
    • The sites are appadvice.com and bgr.com.

2:51 The client case study

One featured post can bring a paid app tens of thousands of downloads, and a high price turns far fewer downloads into real money.

  • A single App Advice post can scale far past 30,000 downloads. 3:26
    • The reach runs from thousands to tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands.
    • The client allowed the numbers to be shared.
    • Young says his agency has already hit the hundreds of thousands a couple of times.
    • App names and details were removed from the four apps shown, to protect the client's privacy.
  • A high price means fewer downloads are needed to earn $1,000. 4:55
    • This app sells for $12.
    • Young's hack is to raise a $1 or $2 app to about $5 before the campaign.
    • After the free day, the price can return to $5, or drop to $2 or $3.
    • The new price depends on your comfort level, and Young jokes about "gaming the system" with a high price.

5:45 Run it for one day only

The first two days of a launch are the biggest download days, so the second day should go back to paid.

  • A one-day free run keeps the press boost and still earns money. 6:02
    • The app was priced at $2.00.
    • The first day is the big spike, so the second day still carries leftover buzz.
    • Staying free on day two might have added 15,000 to 20,000 downloads, by his own estimate.
    • Even a $1 price would still bring downloads, so a low price does not kill the campaign.

6:50 Side effects and why it costs nothing

Other apps may gain, but that is a bonus, and the campaign pays off at any budget.

  • Gains for other apps are a bonus, not a promise. 6:50
    • The chart compares the same days week over week, with no cross-promotion.
    • He hoped for a bigger lift.
    • On his own portfolio, paid apps have risen after this campaign. He can't say why they didn't here.
  • Rising acquisition costs make a free campaign more valuable. 8:49
    • He also runs it for bigger clients with larger budgets.
    • A past free-app case drove 15,000 downloads and lifted in-app purchases too.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and podcast host. A paid-to-free campaign makes a paid app (or one in-app purchase) free for a short window and gets press coverage to drive downloads at no ad cost. A client's $12 iOS app got over 30,000 free downloads in one day, about 37,000 in total, and roughly $1,000 in revenue.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript294 lines
0:00

coming up I'm going to show you the easiest way to drive downloads and revenue for a paid app it's a case study for a client where we drove over 37,000 downloads and one thousand dollars in revenue stay tuned that's where your thumbs up what is up app nation is stupid own back and better than ever this is the YouTube channel the video the podcast the blog where you will where you go when you want action-packed content with things strategies tactics and hacks that are working today and today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite all-time favorite campaigns to run I've talked about this a ton but I wanted to share this case study with you for a client where we ran this campaign for a paid app so if you're not familiar with this strategy it is called a paid to free strategy now I probably reorganize or rename this but it's a strategy that we've started deploying for our clients and it's the simplest way to drive

1:18

downloads so there are two ways to run this okay if you've gotten two paid app you can make it free for a couple of days get press for it you definitely need press for it and drive thousands of downloads we're going to share the case study that we did for a client or I'm going to reveal all the numbers that will happen for paid app now the other way to run this if you've got a free app then you can make one of your in-app purchases for free get press for it and get thousands of downloads for that app as well this campaign generally works better for paid abs because obviously it's called a paid app paid on free or paid a free campaign but if you do have a free app it works just the same now a couple of different things that I'll also tell you is if you've got a paid app and you make it free most some of these sites will automatically pick it up for you because they have bots that trigger this so you may not have to

2:14

pitch these sites for press but I would recommend still pitching app advice and BGR those are the two biggest sites that cover this type of campaign app advice calm and B as in boy genius report B G are calm okay the other thing is unfortunately Android just is starting to unreal on or make this available and allow Android developers to run this strategy on Google Play unfortunately right now it's only for iOS ok so let's get into the case study so here is a Padres and this is the apps con free so this is part of the campaign this is where you need to get pressed for now when I've done a few case studies with app advice and BGR and notice that app advice tends to be the bigger driver of downloads so I would really reach out to Tyler at app advice he's the one that covers this particular campaign for the site and he does it seven days a week so the guys of BC never gets any rest but this is a site

3:21

that I want to just point this out to be like hey where should I go this is the website then you need to pitch and you want to see your app on here and that will drive the thousands and tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of downloads which we've done a couple of times already so I got a permission from my client to share the numbers for you so let's take a look at what happened when we ran this paid to free campaign got pressed for an app advice what happened to those numbers so here's the clients app and well while he gave me access to all the numbers I wanted to honor his privacy and I remove all the information about the app so we have four different apps that we're showing here and I removed all the information about the app itself 90 degrees and everything else but I just wanted to point out sort of the download numbers and the sales from running this campaign for a paid app so let's take a look so

4:11

we ran this on the third as you can see you have a little pointer going we ran this campaign on August 30 2017 so I'm sharing you case studies that are working today today not things that were a year ago we drove over 30,000 downloads you can see on this chart it's a little bit over 30,000 downloads for this app on the day it was free now the key for a paid app when you're running this strategy is to make it free for just one day right because here's what happened on August 4th we're able to still drive what it looks like to be about 5,000 downloads for this app now some of it worth was free but most of it was still paid right a little bit was paid now this is an app that is price really high so it's a twelve dollar app so as you can see we don't need that many downloads to get a thousand dollars from this app so here's the hack that I would give you if you are paid out let's say your price around a dollar maybe two

5:10

dollars there what I would do is play around with the pricing go up a little bit to maybe four to five dollar probably five five dollar range and then run this campaign as a five dollar paid app that's going free and then the next day make it you know five dollars again or $2 or $3 whatever you want to make it whatever you feel comfortable this is your comfort level if you want to game the system a little bit I might make it pretty expensive and then run it as a really expensive app so like a five dollar app going free and then the next couple of days make it back into five dollars and you know reap the benefits of that that's what I would do if you were trying to hack the system if you want to be honest about it maybe just keep it at a dollar to dollar run it you'll still get the downloads and we did about 30,000 downloads for a $2.00 app and we made it free for a couple of days but the tweak that I made to this

6:02

campaign is we just did it for one day so if you're a paid app just and run this campaign for a day and then get the benefits of that second date because usually the two biggest days the first two days are the biggest download days you know the first day is going to be a big ax stand then if we still kept it paid I'm sure we would have done 20,000 downloads or the second day you know maybe fifteen to twenty thousand dollars so would it drove probably close to fifty thousand dollars for this but you know I think it's more beneficial especially for Indies to make it paid to make it paid again on that second day and reap the benefits of the press and still get those downloads and actually make some money off of this so for this app we drove a thousand downloads a thousand dollars worth of revenue just from running this campaign all right so it's a great strategy that's the hack that I would sort of tweak as you run

6:50

this campaign for paid app the last thing I want to point out is that as you can see from this chart we actually got an increase in downloads for the other free apps without doing any type of cross promotional activities okay so this app we do about 11% increased week over week on the same days the previous range we did about 11% increase in downloads and then for this other app which is free too we did about 200% increase in downloads now what I've normally seen too and this is the list of Laz app which you only get about two downloads and actually went down we actually see an increase in paid apps too so it wasn't a huge increase in downloads for this which I would have liked to see a bigger one but when I've done this for some of my other apps that are free and I have some paid apps in my portfolio I actually see an increase in downloads for my paid apps so I don't know why I didn't happen here

7:48

to kind of hit or miss and harder to predict but it's sort of a no-brainer to kind of you know put this kick together and run this campaign for this app and so we did as you can see just a recap we did 37th out 37,000 downloads for this paid app and then we drove a thousand dollars worth of revenues and we actually got an increase in downloads for his other free apps as well so for me it's like a no-brainer strategy to run especially because you're not really paying anything to get this additional thousand downloads or I'm sorry 30,000 downloads and 37 thousand downloads and a thousand dollars in revenue you're not paying anything so unlike Facebook ads where you might have to spend five hundred dollars to make your a thousand you're not you're essentially not doing anything to make the additional one thousand dollars that you would get from this campaign so it's a no-brainer strategy that's why I love

8:41

running it for all our clients especially when I can because it's just one of these campaigns where you can drive a tremendous amounts of downloads and really not have to pay out anything as acquisition costs go up you know this is a great campaign to run because look you see all the numbers and I shared the numbers if you want to see previous case studies of past apps I'll link that into the video below where I show you you know one of our free apps what happened to that we do a 15,000 downloads for that app and then here's what happened to the in-app purchases as well as I'll link that into the video but it is one of the best strategies to drive downloads on a budget and even if you have a bigger budget I've actually run this campaign or some of my bigger clients as well because it is a easy way to I've downloads for apps alright lastly I want to point out that we are launching a brand new service called app masters

9:31

Academy it's something that we were going to do earlier in the year things got pushed out a little bit but it's at masters Academy and for this strategy the paid to free strategy we actually have a little mini course that's in at masters Academy so you want to check it out it is going to launch at just $25 a month $25 a month and it's going to go up as we get more and more stuff but we're going to add our secret apple feature strategy in there we've got all the black hat is so mini course in there and then our complete ASO masters course is going to be in there as well so it's pre-orders right now it's at masters Academy comm if you want to check out all the different strategies and all the different little mini courses that we put together and we're going to try to highlight as much as possible and what I want to do as well is build that community and anything that you guys may have be struggling with sort of be there

10:26

as a coaching community as well so I'll help you along the way and be able to access maybe do some recording some live coaching recordings and just have it just for that community and for everybody within the members is that what in there as well so if you're interested in signing up it is doing pre-orders right now we're going to launch it very soon in early September but it is app masters Academy comm $25 a month it will go up to $100 is where I want I think it's because frankly I don't want all of our campaigns out there so I don't want too many members frankly and I want a price point where that will make sure that we don't get too many members in there as well so it's pre launching right now at $25 is just $25 a month if you're interested go check it out it is app masters Academy com you're going to save I think it's 75% off the original price if you get that pre-order pricing right now it is at

11:22

masters Academy com I'll see you guys on the next video bye