Use this little used strategy to dramatically increase your downloads
When it comes right down to it, in the mobile apps game, it’s really about the downloads. The more downloads of your apps, the more money you’re likely to make.
Of course there are a few other factors involved, some of them I’ve talked about in the post about improving your iTunes ranking. However, at the end of the day, lets face it, more downloads = more money.
So in this first weekly strategy tip I want to talk about a little used strategy you can use to increase your number of downloads with VERY little actual work.
Now, before I give you the strategy, let me say this, I am going to assume that you’re following the advice from my Make The Most From Your Apps post and actually putting all of the monetization components in there … especially the nag screen and advertising banners.
The Strategy
The strategy here is actually quite simple. Start by having your app as a paid app with the nag screen and advertising banners turned off at your server. Then, one week a month simply drop the app down and make it a free app, turning the nag screen and advertising banners on at your server for those downloaders.
What happens is that your app now gets listed in the “paid apps that are now free” and you can easily get 5,000 to 10,000 new downloads during that week.
That means you can get 5,000 new downloads a month with little extra work … which translates to a minimum of 60,000 downloads of just that one app a year.
And that’s minimum. I have apps that have over 200,000 downloads just from doing this and I’ve only been doing it for 9 months.
Now most of my apps don’t do that well, and the average over time ends up around 8,000 downloads during the week the app is free (which means roughly 100,000 extra downloads a year). However, when you figure that’s 100,000 more downloads for doing basically nothing, that’s pretty darn cool.
Try it out and let me know how it works for you. Also, you’ll get a TON more secrets like this when you sign up to receive the Developer Toolbox below.
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iPhone App Developer Matt Goffrey 