We found yet another success story for the FREE offer as a more than viable business strategy. This tale wil also show that ideas don’t always come from reading the business section. Part of the Sunday morning routine in the Savannah office is to read the New York Times while eating brunch and undoing all the healthy eating that has been practiced Monday through Saturday.
We always read the Women’s Sports Section, aka, the Styles Section. There, we find out what fashions have been spotted on Manhattan streets, how to mind our P’s and Q’s and see if any long lost friends have taken the matramonial plunge. There’s also usually a few interesting other stories sprinkled throughout.
This week, we learned about the rush to build apps for the iPhone. Apparently, (we wouldn’t know since we’re not cellphone geeks) one can buy all kinds of apps (games, ski report finders, a program that will fog up your screen with steam) for their phone. There are thousands upon thousands of these apps which means that thousands upon thousands of programmers are furiously coding and hoping that their app will be the next big thing.
From the story, The iPhone Gold Rush, we learned about Ethan Nicholas and his app, iShoot (we don’t know anymore about it than it’s name). Here’s what we found most interesting…
When the iShoot app was launched at $4.99, it sold enough copies to net him $1,000. On the second day, his take of the sales was about $2,000. Day 3, his portion of sales dipped to $50. Apparently, it stayed there for WEEKS.
So, guess what he did? He released a free version of the game with fewer features. Why? Because he thought that a taste of iShoot would get people hooked and cause them to pony up a few bucks for the paid version. Guess what? It was a success!.
The results:
iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times.
Lots of people have upgraded to the paid version
On its peak day, iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies (a $35,000 day)
He made $800,000 in five months
Do you have anything that you can give away as a sample? Anything that once people try they might find out they can’t live without? There are several ways to to this. It might be a free evaluation, that leads to a major consulting our outsourcing gig. Or, something smaller, with a lower price point that attracts a big crowd. Do you have anything that you would like us to post in the blog? Share with our audience in the FREEBIES section? Drop us a line at info
