iPhone app results - lessons for CPA?

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd share this with you all - it's not about a CPA campaign, but about the results a friend had recently with launching an iphone app.

He made an app in a very specific music-based niche (it's pretty cool actually, something a certain niche should love).

He made a free version, and a paid upgraded version with more features.

When he first launched the "free" version though, they started out charging $1 for it.

Things were very slow, and it wasn't really being picked up - very low figures.

So.....they made it free and ....BAM - it goes huge, and they get 2.3 million downloads!! He still hasn't sold much of the paid version.

However they can't market to the free downloads directly as iTunes has the list!

I thought this was interesting because:

-It shows how much of a difference a "free" thing can make - I mean, they couldn't sell it at $1 - the niche they're after expect a lot of things like music to be free. It shows the potential of any "free" offer imo. Lots of similarities here to certain types of CPA marketing.

-There's a huge potential to apply proper marketing and upsell the free downloads to paid, but it needs to be thought out first (like in this case have the app offer "upgrades" from time to time).

-While they took a loss on the initial offer - these apps could point people using them to a site where they could try and upsell or make other offers.

-They can't upsell directly (email) as itunes (apple) have "the list" - lesson for other types of marketing - the money is in the list, and the biggest players like apple know this.

-There's talented app builders out there (as there are other types of clever tech people) who could benefit from working with talented marketers (that's us!) from the start, to make more of an opportunity like this. He was surprised when I started drooling over the potential of 2.3 million downloads!

Anyway, thought you all might find this interesting - certainly got me thinking not only about apps, but the psychology of online marketing, CPA, list building etc.