To make your iPhone app a success, you not only have to be a smart developer — you also need to be a savvy marketer. Tim from LogYourRun.com is both and shares his strategy for maximizing sales of his LogYourRun app.
It’s another example of trying something new with how you sell your app. If it doesn’t work as you expect, try something else.
Learn from Tim’s experiences with choosing to make his app free or paid — and how it paid off for his popular app.
Marketing Your App: How did you make the leap into creating an iPhone app?
Tim: I am an independent software developer and I run a website called LogYourRun.com. About a year ago I decided to supplement the site with an iPhone app 
since the iPhone has GPS and the iPod touch has the capabilities of a pedometer.
MYA: Choosing a price is difficult for many iPhone developers. What did you decide to price the LogYourRun app?
Tim: I have always believed that the best things in life are free so I put the app out for free.
As many other developers have experienced, this resulted in a series of poor ratings from people that downloaded the app but was not really interested in the functionality of the app and when they delete the app they are asked to rate the app.
MYA: What did you do?
Tim: Since the first edition of the app was released I had been working on an improved version which would use the map feature as well as download training programs to the device.
When I launched this version I decided that I was not going to give it away for free due to the ratings problem that plague free apps. But I did not want to deter people from getting the app since the app drives traffic to my site and I wanted loyal users to have a chance to get the app for free. So I put the app out for free but with the clause that it was only going to be free for the first 2 weeks.
This information was widely distributed to my users and posted on my website. This meant that people would not delete the app after downloading since they would then have to pay if in the future they wanted the app – thus no ratings would be submitted.
After two weeks I increased the price to $1.99. Downloads immediately dropped – but has since increased again – and now I am actually making money on the downloads.
I have since then also put out a free version with limited functionality which has helped drive traffic to my website as well as to the paid app.
I can share that it definitely worked to charge for the app – all of my reviews are 4-5 stars now and I have very good retention of users. You can read more about my adventures at http://blog.indieiphonedev.com/
The LogYourRun app is available in the App Store by clicking on this link .
Have you created an app for the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad? If you would like to be considered for a feature on Marketing Your App, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us for more information.
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Nice article.
However, I don’t think deleting a free App forces the user to pay for it if they want it again at a later date. As I understand it, once you’ve downloaded an App you can re-download it any time in the future without paying.
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