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Revenue From Free Vs. Paid iOS Apps

Here’s a look at two weeks worth of sales for the entire Mach Werx line of fine quality iPhone and iPad apps. In particular, it’s the week before and the week after the launch of my free iPad app Starfield 3D. Mostly, this is telling me not to quit my day job.

But I was also interested in what kind of numbers I’d get from doing a free app. The line for Starfield 3D is actually in the hundreds. So waaaay more people are downloading that than all my other apps combined. Of course, I don’t get any money from a free app. But, I do have an in-app purchase to remove the ads from Starfield 3D. I’d heard that the conversion rate (the number of people who actually pay for something after downloading a free version) is about 1% and the data (at least for this one week) seems to hold that up.

Another thing I was wondering was whether or not the ads that I put in Starfield 3D (ads for mostly my own apps) would be effective. It’s a little hard to tell because the numbers are just so darn small. But I think it’s possible that a few people downloaded Castle Tiles from it. So … maybe?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “Revenue From Free Vs. Paid iOS Apps”

  1. Bhaskar Says:
    April 22nd, 2011 at 4:29 am

    plz send me

  2. Mach Says:
    April 22nd, 2011 at 6:53 am

    Send you what? If you’re talking about Starfield 3D, it’s a free app that you can get from iTunes.

  3. Takenso Says:
    April 28th, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    Hi Mach!

    I think it’s time to try to iAds or other ads for payment apps and make them free, revenue is good 🙂

    P.D. plz send it to Bhaskar -_-

  4. Bhaskar Bakshi Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 3:56 am

    Dear sir
    i need only Mach Werx Holograms App for my iphone

  5. Mach Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    What a coincidence. I need only $1.99. Maybe we can work something out… =)

  6. Janne Says:
    May 12th, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    Thanks, posts about revenue are always interesting. What is the unit on the Y axis? US dollars per day, i.e. you made $14 on April 11th?

  7. Mach Says:
    May 12th, 2011 at 10:50 pm

    Heh, yup, $14 on April 11th. So, still not quite enough to quit my day job, but not bad for a hobby. =)

  8. Janne Says:
    May 18th, 2011 at 6:36 am

    Thanks. No, not bad at all! I’m the dev of a similar dice roller app for Android, and it’s just interesting to see that my sales are in the same ballpark as yours, even though they say iPhone users buy more apps. Perhaps it’s no longer true at least for all app types?