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Comment by martinadamek | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for all the feedback guys! App like this should never replace real thing! My wife is children book illustrator (and created the first set with animals) and she draws with our son on paper a lot. This app can help you in certains situations, where you need to entertain your kid for a while and phone is the thing you always have. I am also getting mixed feedback about buy buttons, so I will experiment tonight and will bring better solution which will be even less annoying. If you have good examples or suggestions, I'll be happy to see them!

Thanks again.

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I absolutely hate anything inside of a kids app that gives my kid the opportunity to buy, install, or even view anything I haven't vetted. Ads are especially bad.

I like the idea of a buy button that makes you prove you're an adult by typing xyz in a box, or some other trivial-for-an-adult task, before it launches the store. IIRC Zoodles' "Kid Mode" has a voice that says "ask an adult to help you with this" any time a kid tries to access a premium feature.

> I am also getting mixed feedback about buy buttons

Personally, I prefer approach where there is a free version with ads, and a non-free version with no ads and no buy buttons.

Alternatively, some apps simply have the full version ad-free and buy-button-free, and you can optionally buy a "support the developers" version from the store. If the "support-app" is installed, the full version simply adds a "thank you!" on the launch screen.

I don't know how well these approaches do in sales statistics, but I personally go for products like those if given a choice, and I always pay for them if I use them. If nothing else, it's more straightforward and honest.

It is very frustrating to have a fun or useful app which is only provided as a free version and constantly annoys me with buy buttons and ads. I want to just pay - sometimes a lot - for the product instead of watching ads and being nagged to buy Koynz(TM).

For now I have tried to solve it by removing all BUY buttons from the interface but one - on welcome screen, that buys you everything forever - which is effectively turning app into 'pro' version without ads, offers, just pure content. IAP is new to me, but from what I read it is the most effective way to monetize. Needs to be done nicely, though.

A "buy everyting and shut up" button sounds wonderful. :) I'll have to try out your app as soon as I get my tablet back.

What ads in children's app?!

Car loans and mortgage offers, for some absurd reason. Probably targets my Google account. Consequence of the "monetize by throwing some ads at the user" insanity I guess.

Anyway, I was talking about apps in general. Any well-designed casual game is popular among kids.

Perhaps brestfeeding children are looking for some variety in their milk? This could be a significant untapped market.

It's frustrating because ads don't work well for the users and parents often hate in-app-purchases. Really the best way to monetize a kid's app is to charge for it up-front. But that makes it hard to market. You want to get free downloads to build momentum and fans but then you've got to feed your own family (which users never seem to understand). At least on iOS it's easy to schedule a "free for a day" sale to get attention. Amazon has "Test Drive", their in-browser free trial and NOOK has a separate APK upload for a free trial. (I haven't tried the NOOK free trial yet but I suspect that not many users know about it.)

Exactly. I hope that current model (get for free and pay once to get everything forever) will make happy both sides :-)

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