After writing quite a few applications both for myself and my clients I started wondering about what really makes sense – free apps or paid apps? I mean its pretty straightforward when you think about paid applications, but why the heck would someone spend days or even weeks to create an app which is ultimately free for download? And why would a client be paying me big bucks to create one for him?

When I started out developing applications about a year ago, most of the apps that I developed were paid applications. Typically I stuck to the $0.99 tier and banked on volume to make money. It certainly worked for a while and I was happy with the income. Soon after, as the app store started getting crowded this was not the case. There were way too many apps around in the app store and some of them even started advertising their apps using companies like Admob. Admob has actually twice approached me on whether I would be interested in advertising my apps with them. Of course this will involve spending money as it goes by CPC similar to Google Adwords and Yahoo Searchmarketing.

I opted not to advertise my apps and was looking for a different route. I noticed that most major apps on the app store had a free “lite” version which was more like a teaser for the paid version. Since the app is free anyway, this would be downloaded by a lot more people and its pretty much free marketing for you. You need to make the lite version to be “just enough” for the user to want more. Its a very thin line between giving away too much and giving away too little. If you give away too much in the lite version, the user might not want to download the paid version since the lite version already has what he wants. If you give away too little, he would think that the application is not worthy of the amount that you might be charging for a download. So you got to figure that out carefully.

The other thing about free apps is that its an excellent marketing tool. This is why you can see many big companies like Coca Cola and DHL uploading free apps which serves as a great marketing and advertisement tool for them. More and more companies seem to be following this trend and I can assure you that even companies in Malaysia have started looking into this. Imagine being able to reach out to high end, tech savvy, decision makers and potential customers via a free app. This is definitely not quite possible using a “static” ad on a newspaper or a billboard. You are actually adding a certain element of interactivity and also a working version of the services that you are offering though the application itself.

So in my opinion, both free and paid apps have their place and value on the app store. It depends on what is your end goal and what is actually your strategy. A good app can really become a chart topper just by offering a trial version as long as you have just enough bait on your hook. At the same time, a free app can also be a great marketing tool for a company to add value to existing customers as well as reach out to new potential customers.

Related posts:

1. Transfer your apps to your jailbroken iPhone
2. How to become an iPhone app developer – Part Two
3. How to become an iPhone app developer – Part Three
4. How to become an iPhone app developer – Part One