Do Free App Store Applications Pay?

by Jody Mitoma on August 31, 2008 at 6:04 pm

iPhone Atlas made a post sharing their views on whether or not you get anything out of posting free applications on the App Store, and I feel it should be shared with the Touch Podium community to possibly shimmer a bit of inspiration.

Developers have been gaining great revenue from Apple’s recently released App Store, thanks to the immense community of iPhone and iPod Touch owners. There have been rumors of MooCow, the developer of Pianist, Drummer and Band, selling over 400,000 copies of his applications, turning him into an instant millionaire. TapTapTap and other developers have also shared their revenue stream with the public, showing that it is very possible to receive $2,000+ in pure profit per day via App Store application downloads alone.

Now, we know that uploading priced, quality applications on the App Store will bring in revenue, but does uploading free games to the App Store do us any good financially? I’ll let iPhone Atlas share their thoughts on that one.

One category of revenue intake many developers are closely watching is that of free-to-paid conversion. Since no real shareware model exists for the iPhone, some developers have decided to offer free, limited-functionality versions of their applications alongside paid, full-functionality versions. The question is whether or not users will convert to the paid version after having used (or at least downloaded) the free version.

Stats from one developer paint a fairly grim portrait, though not one that is wholly out of line with shareware conversion rates for other platforms.

Josh Anon, the developer of FlipBook, an application that allows free-form doodling and image manipulation, says that less than 1% of users who download the “lite” version of his application purchase the full edition.

“We’re quite happy with the number of people who have decided to try FlipBook Lite and the great reviews it’s receiving! Of course we’d be happier if the conversion rate to the paid version were higher (it’s under 1%), but we’ll see what happens as time goes on. ”

FlipBook Lite currently holds the #6 spot in the free software category on the iPhone AppStore with 251,360 downloads so far.

FlipBook’s 1% conversion rate from free-to-paid would bring in approximately 2,510 paid downloads. FlipBook costing just short of $10 a piece would convert to the developer profiting $17,570.00 from one application alone, in less than a months time.

So is it worth it? That’s for you to decide.

(via iPhone Atlas)