AppCubby Reports Back on Their $0.99+Donation Results

David from AppCubby sent us a note about his latest blog post today. This entry gives the results of his pricing experiment that we wrote about last month where he set all of his apps to be $0.99 and provided the ability for people to donate if they thought they were worth more. This update doesn't look to good for that pricing model. Unfortunately he doesn't give any real sales numbers, just aggregated results, but there are still some nuggets of good info in here:

- During the 7 days of the experiment they only got $75 in donations

- Initially, volume made up for the lost revenue from the reduced prices (probably due to the increased press, he notes)

- After that started to wain, volume still stayed way up over the previous week, but revenue started to fall below the previous weeks numbers.

- There was an increase the last day or so, as is typical, people rush to buy before the end of a sale.

It's hard to call this experiment a failure when it was so short. I'm not sure enough time was given for the donation aspect to gain a foothold. But, the result for AppCubby is that they have redoubled their efforts make the best software available and sell it at a price that is fair. All of the AppCubby apps have raised back up to $9.99 and will stay there. And we wish them all the luck in the world!

"To have people say that my products are an absolute steal at $0.99 and that I SHOULD be charging more was a wake up call. As the saying goes, if no one is complaining about your price you're charging too little."

If you're interested in the circle of hell that is app store pricing, check out the blog post, it's a good read for any developer or potential developer.

[ via The Experiment - AppCubby Blog ]