Another $1K App on the App Store | Hacker News Reader

Another $1K App on the App Store

itunes.apple.com

28 pointskushsolitary48 comments

My guess is that is to manipulate all of the app discount sites that scan the app store and report on apps that have recently been discounted. If the developers drop the app to $0.99 then all of those sites will report this as a huge saving, and possibly feature it more prominently as a result (I'm assuming those sites are all automated - and there are a lot of them!)

I am the developer of one of those "discount sites". Well I do not have a site but apps for iOS and OS X that show you the discounts. I filter those things out on the server side in extreme cases and my Mac app allows you to specify your own filter criteria like in iTunes where you can have smart playlists. So for example you could ignore apps where the old price is $999 and the new price is $0.99 or something like that.

http://store-news-app.com/

I wanted to say this must be an April Fool's thing, but looking at the past price points http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2

That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

Looking at previous pricing points though, it seems they changed their prices rapidly up and down. Isn't this blatant price manipulation? They're not banned yet.

Yeah sometimes Apple doesn't catch them all. But they have banned developers in the past for this. If someone reports them, they have a high chance of getting banned.

That's weird, if I wanted to manipulate the price to make it look like my $0.99 are a bargain, I wouldn't set the initial price at $999, as it will become obvious, but at something like $5.

Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999 to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices don't feel bad about their purchases?

Because raising it to $999 temporarily is just a cheap, and obnoxious, way of getting free marketing.

It's trying to game the app store.

I guess its because moving the price up and down a lot is a way to get people to buy it for cheap and review it, and then rise the price to catch people off guard. Apple might see giant price changes as a attempt to trick and fool people.

Instead of allowing it, a outright ban is a much better idea.

EDIT: see the activity here. http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2 .

When its cheap they hook people in and get reviews on sites. then they rise it around the place trying to trap people. Instead of Apple giving these people the chance to correct course and set a fair price, they just ban which is far better. Never give scum a second chance, they always try to find a way.

Why would you want your customers to feel cheated? It also leads to more refund requests, which have a processing overhead.

Right, and Apple debits your account for the purchase price (not the net 70% amount) when a user demands a refund. So a lot of this and you can actually run negative.

Its usually done to trick the top grossing apps rankings. Developer will raise the price to $1k then buy himself some copies using different fake accounts, thus raising the ranking. Once ranking is achieved, they will reduce the price in hope to get more sales.

I'm no expert in App Store rankings but isn't that quite expensive way of doing so? Assuming you pay it 10 times, you end up with burning 3000 dollars in Apple transaction cuts.

And I doubt 10 sales, will get you into top-grossing

What's the cut of Apple in that kind of purchase and how many do they need to buy to get in to that ranking?

If it's 30% and 20, it's still quite a bit money.

I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by messing with prices?

They do it so that when they lower the price to $.99 3 days later, the robots pick up on the 10000% lower price.

It would only be 99.9% lower.

Maybe people really do want to buy the app for $1K? There is no way to know until you test the market.

if you 'accidentally' make a purchase, perhaps they try to snare the kids playing with the ipad lying around.. the money certainly disappears faster than it'll ever come back..

This is the reason I buy $15 Apple 'gift' cards from my local Target instead of using my primary CC on the iTunes store.

Free marketing.

money laundering

this seems like a brilliant online ordering system for heroin

... with built-in money laundering.

at a cost of only 30$!

If you have an AppAnnie account you can see the grossing ranks. Looks like someone in India bought a copy. It's the #6 best-grossing iPhone/iPod app in India right now. It also peaked at #21 in Malaysia on the 29th. So it looks like 2 sales at that price.

http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=gros...

Almost makes me wonder if they're trying to trick people - e.g. this just see a price starting with 99 and assume 99 cents

How does Apple handle things like this? Does it immediately auth the CC for purchases over a certain amount?

To this point, I could see it as a shrewd marketing strategy where they buy the app with different iTunes, get back 70% of the price, and get themselves into the top grossing apps for a bit. Wonder if that helps with visibility?

Yes, that's where I saw it.

You can see the erratic pricing activity here: http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2

I'm one of the developers of this app and I can say that you shouldn't expect a price drop on this app soon. It's been 100$ for several months and now it's 1000$. It's not a special type of promotion, not a way to trick app review sites, it's just 999$ for an app and that's it. Some people can afford buying an app for 1k$ and you know what? We are not one of them so we just can't afford buying our own app for promotion purposes :) Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money back. Some do, but some don't and it helps us continue the development of our new project. You can continue discussing "how scum we are" but the truth is no one is trying to fool anybody. It's absolutely legal to sell an app for 999$, and those who bought it for 99$ or 999$ don't write reviews that spill dirt on us or our game, they just play it and make some effort to entertain themselves, and those who got it for free very often are too lazy to read 5 words in the training mode just to understand how to play. I'm done.

This must be trolling.

> Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money back.

Can you explain the refund process?

I'm not sure about the customer loses but when he requests a refund, we don't receive a cent of it. For us it's 100% money back. People do that quite often. And it's not trolling.

When price changes from say free to 1K and people have to update do you have to pay for the update?

Are there legit apps over $100 ?

Pretty much all AAC apps. If you license one of the decent TTS libraries, they require you to keep the price above $100 and take 20% of the net.

I recall one that helped you study for the bar exam and was really expensive. I assumed it was legitimate.

This one I think: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/barmax-ca/id345722008?mt=8

Called BarMax. They even call it "cheaper" on their official web-site. Which just raises the question: cheaper than /what/?

$999 is cheap for a bar review. Prices do vary from state to state, but BarMax, Barbri, and Kaplan all offer programs for the CA bar.

Barbri for California: $4,135 http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.htm...

Kaplan for California $2,190 http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review-Courses/General-B...

Cheaper than other forms of Bar Exam prep like BarBri or Kaplan which run in the thousands.

Cheaper than the books it replaces, which I heard cost thousands of dollars.

Sure -- plenty.

Here's another example. It replaces a custom hardware gadget that costs much more: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunelab-piano-tuner/id335568...

Proloquo2Go

I ignored this initially, thinking it had be an April Fools' joke. Then I saw the comments piling up and thought I should check it out. I will continue to treat it as an April Fools' joke.

It seem to be a good way to have free marketing. They will probably drop it back tomorow to free or 0.99$

free marketing? I'll take it!

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