As a business, we also love saving money. Over the years we’ve spent a very substantial amount of money on localizing our app into 11 languages, and with every new verison of our app we experience the pain of getting new translations, inserting those strings in a string file, adjusting the text, getting those adjustments translated, QA’ing in each language, etc. It’s a costly process both in time and money.

In developing the latest version of our app, we honed in on a method that both saves us a lot of that time and money while increasing translation quality: We replaced expensive translators (who aren’t familiar with our app to begin with) with user volunteers. Those users took pleasure in contributing to an app they use on an everyday basis, so making these users happy is just the cherry on top.

Here’s how we do it.

It begins with having a feedback mechanism that opens a direct communication channel with users. Naturally we use our own App Booster product, as it enables us to:

• Broadcast in-app notifications to our users

• Target and localize those notifications by geography

• Collect direct responses from users to those notifications

• Message with them through our app or via email

The notification we sent out looked like this:

There are many ways to collect feedback from users, but without all of the above you’re not going to be as potent and efficient in CRM as you can be. That’s the case for using App Booster, and I’ll leave it at that. On to how we’ve solved the very painful and often expensive problem of translating your app by relying on our users.

(For the TL;DR crowd, you can skip to the bottom to get a rundown of our time/cost-saving process.)

▶ Pain point: Translation is expensive

As Apple now has an App Store in 155 countries, they encourage developers to localize their apps into as many languages as possible. Their page for internalization and localization of apps lists vendors for localization and provides guidance for the administrative and technical processes for localizing your app.

These vendors don’t come cheap, though. Another way to put it is that the localization vendors who are worth your while are expensive. Quality localization vendors will generally charge several hundred dollars per language, up to a thousand dollars if you’re also translating a lot of iTunes metadata. If you’re inclined to skimp, consider that using a cheap translation provider and nothing more will result in severe compromises in quality.

I’ll explain further below how we save money by using cheap translation providers yet still produce great quality translations by having our users review and improve the text.

▶ Pain point: Translation is difficult to time correctly

Unless your product development cycle includes wireframes and designs that map out every last word of the text that’s going to appear in the next version of your app, you’ll find that you rarely reach the point well in advance of your planned release where you can say, “Okay all the text is ready for translation.” QA might turn up issues that requires interface changes, or the text that you wrote just doesn’t look as good or appealing in your app once you’ve got a build.

Now it’s two days before your ship date and you’re making changes to the English (easy enough). Having to postpone the release a few days to wait for translation is a bummer; having to perform another round of QA to see if the newly translated text fits well is even worse.

Since translation of any kind is a creative process, it takes time. When it requires opening screenshots or navigating through an app to get better context, it takes even longer. Professional translation services can have a turnaround time of up to a week. AppLingua has a smart service called AppBack that puts the app back in the hands of translators once the translations have been done so that they can verify the quality and accuracy of their translations, but again that takes time.

▶ Pain point: Translation is a clunky process

For iOS developers, your translations might be stored in XIB or string files. We use strings. If you’re unfamiliar with “strings” (an odd name for a block of text that appears to derive from “a string of characters”), an individual line of text will look like this:

“_NUMBER_ITEMS_COUNT” = “There are %d items”

Getting this translated presents all kinds of problems:

• If you’re getting your translations from someone who’s not familiar with strings, they’re not going to know off-the-bat that they don’t need to translate ”_NUMBER_ITEMS_COUNT” (in fact, they can’t, or the system will break). This means you can’t just copy/paste your file into a web form and get translations for only the parts of the paste job you need translated. Tethras, for one, has a clever solution for this, whereby you upload your files and they extract the text that actually needs to be translated.

• In addition, the uninitiated won’t know what to do with “%d”, which here represents an integer variable. Presented in the app, this might display as “There are 2 items”. Not only must your translators be precise in not removing or (accidentally) manipulating “%d”, but they might actually need to move it. In Japanese, for example, correct grammar requires that %d appear at the beginning of the text. If “%d” seems relatively harmless to you, consider that you might end up with stranger things like “\n[0]%@[/0]“.

▶ Pain point: Translation requires context

▶ Pain point: It’s really difficult to judge the quality of the translations you receive.

For the latest version of our app, we received a Japanese translation for the phrase, “Awesome!” that looks like “スゴーイ！” Google Translate spits out “素晴らしい！”

Unless you speak Japanese, good luck figuring out which one is better.

▶ Pain point: Some languages require a lot more characters for a string than your interface can fit

Say your design includes a big welcome message somewhere that literally says “Welcome”. Now you’re translating to German and Russian. Hmm, here’s how “welcome” translates in those languages:

• Wilkommen
• добро пожаловать!

How our users help us solve these problems with the Appsfire app

Here’s a quick rundown of how we’ve dramatically cut down on the time and cost of translation without compromising quality:

1. We got traction around the world by translating our app into different languages using professional translation services. This cost a fair chunk of change, but it was necessary to bootstrap. Asking users to translate an entire app from scratch is asking a lot, probably too much.
2. We later recruited volunteers through an App Booster notification. We got at least four volunteers in every language, including smaller locales like Polish. We got dozens for Spanish and French. A handful already had translation experience!
3. With a week to go before we wrapped up our latest version, which includes 50 new blocks of text, I emailed the users we’ve worked with in the past. Some didn’t reply and some were busy, and in those cases I dipped into our pool of volunteers.
4. Meanwhile, I sent off our translations to a very fast, but mediocre-quality translation service. I included screenshots of almost every string to provide context. For 368 words, this cost us about $270 for 10 languages.
5. I copy/pasted the translation from the translation service into a spreadsheet, which I then shared with our user volunteers. Here’s the important part: Instead of burdening our volunteers with one or two hours of non-compensated work, I got decent-enough translations so that their only job was to improve them. And most importantly, these users know our app very intimately, so they’re better suited for the job than any professional translator.
6. I included a hidden column in the spreadsheet with a formula that constructs the string as it needs to be formatted in the app. This makes it user-friendly for our volunteer so he never has to see at anything code-y like “_COPY_CLIPBOARD_”
7. Optionally, you can add these users to your ad hoc build and enable them to try out the app before you ship it. Seeing the text in the app almost inevitably inspires some worthwhile tweaks.

The result? You can judge for yourself. Take a look at the screenshot below of the spreadsheet I sent to our Spanish volunteer. Bear in mind that the spreadsheet was not color-coded when I sent it to him; not only did the user color-code it according to his evaluation, but he added separate columns for his revisions and comments.

Not only does this make our lives easier, but it makes us super happy to know that the next version of our app was made possible by a very happy user. All in all it’s a huge win for us to simultaneously save money, increase quality, and satisfy users like the one below (our Italian translator):

We’re adding some optional Premium features in the form of In-App Purchase – the core of Appsfire remains exactly the same. After months of feedback and feature requests from our users since the launch of our 4.0, we’re giving our most dedicated users a few extra tools so they can take their app discovery to the next level.  Here’s what we’ve added:

• Advance filtering by App Score
• Faster discovery with In-App Downloads (enabling app installations without leaving Appsfire)
• Ad-Free discovery

Why in-App Purchase?

These are advanced features we actually wanted to add back in the original 4.0, but they’re challenging to build and maintain. But we also felt they were only interesting to a subset of our users. So, although these features aren’t free, we hope that some of you will find this to be a way to support our efforts.

It goes without saying that we’ll be adding new features to Appsfire regularly, and they’ll be absolutely free. And the core of the app  remains free and will remain free.  If you love Appsfire for all the free tools we give you to find the best apps and deals, then you’ll continue to love all that we have in store.

Now, onto the new premium features.

Ad-Free discovery

Appsfire is essentially an unpaid app discovery service. We offer the best discovery experience for the best apps out there. Our model is too work with developers and promote them on dedicated, clearly marked spaces in a non intrusive way. And that seems to work for most of our users. But some of our users preferred a completely ad-free experience. We’re bringing that option today.

And you can remove it for the duration of your choice:

• 3 months ($0.99)
• 1 year ($3.99)
• Lifetime ($8.99)

And before anyone gets to scream, in case you don’t pick that option: we’re not “adding” additional advertising to our app – we’re just offering a way to opt out of what has always been present. That’s a big difference!

Filtering by App Score

Some people like to browse through as many apps as possible, as long as they’re at least pretty good (Appsfire will never recommend an app with an App Score, our own app ranking algorithm, below 60). But some users are more picky, and others only want the best of the best.

So if you’re only interested in the very best apps in the App Store, you can set your Minimum App Score to 90. You can also set it 60, 70, 75…whatever your app-loving heart desires.

As is our mission, we’re putting you in the driver’s seat with this one.

In-App Downloads, or “Faster Downloads”

When you opt for “Faster Downloads”, you can download an app without leaving Appsfire. The App Store will actually pop over the app, so after you’ve clicked ‘Install’ you’ll find yourself right back in Appsfire, where you can continue browsing apps. It is in particular convenient when you want to download a few apps in a row. For those who crave speed, this is a super cool feature.

Those are all the new features we’ve added in our latest version (marked  4.2), but we’ve got another big one that’s already in the pipeline. A little hint: If you love being the first to know about the latest and greatest news in the App Store, you’re going to love what we have in, well…what we have store

And if you’re new to Appsfire, you can find us here on the App Store.

All eyes on App discovery: suddenly, because of what happened to a single app promotion company (ref. appgratis), the background noise indicates that everyone is now concerned about the entire field of app discovery: what it means and how it should work.

It is surprising that this debate did not raise, so far, more participation from other app discovery and promotion services in place because there is a lot to be said. Perhaps everyone is trying to keep a low profile…

As a player in this field, we’ve been listening quietly. We are concerned that a specific case is going to create so much confusion that the ecosystem will suffer from it. It is easy to mix things up, compare what shouldn’t be compared, and put everyone in the same basket.

App discovery should be all about trust. Trust with the users and trust with the developers. A good recommendation has to be based on a good product and a trusted voice. Break that trust and your recommendation is worthless. Faith is lost.

The mobile app ecosystem is young and as it grows, it needs better rules and better standards to enforce and maintain that trust. App discovery implies several stakeholders and the whole value chain has to be considered: users, developers, and App Stores.

App discovery can’t be totally owned by app stores

Because the app stores are not paid marketing channels but unpaid editorial and algorithmic retail spaces, a lot of companies, including ad networks and services who are solely focused on app discovery and promotion, but also others partially focused on App discovery (blogs, review sites, social networks) play a big part to what gets “discovered” or not. This is the learning based on a research by Forrester Group.

They key take away is: App discovery is not and will never be “owned” totally by a platform although it is clear that the discovery of apps still take place in the store in a large proportion.

The same happens in other verticals like music (do you discover all your music on iTunes only? certainly not) or even physical products you want to buy (do you discover all you want to buy on Amazon? certainly not).

There is always a disconnect between the “discovery” phase and the “purchase” process. They can be tightly or loosely coupled, or completely decoupled. And this is why a big chunk of the mobile app discovery is already not taking place in the app stores in significant proportion: in the news (on TheNextWeb for example), in ads, in magazines, on twitter, on Facebook, in the latest PSY video, on Pinterest, on Google and so on and so forth.

That’s the reality.

On the rankings: why it matters and why it doesn’t

App Discovery is very hard. But app store top rankings (on iOS mostly) are known as the Holy Grail of discovery. Unless you get featured by Apple or Google, this is the second most effective way to get discovered. Anyone who has already reached the top 25 rank of a given country store knows exactly what we mean. They generate pure organic downloads (sometime twice what you would normally get by not getting there) without much effort because millions of users are checking them every day. Leader boards are popular. And rightly so.

What everyone is secretly thinking is “how do i get there?”. This is the first obsessive question we get from developers we work with. The answer is simple “there is no simple way”. You either pay 3rd party ad networks (legit or not) or be lucky enough to enjoy one of the following:

1. Apple/Google/Amazon features you (App of the week, Deal of the week … ).
2. You have an massive existing app user base and self promote your app (eg Zynga Games, Temple run 2 / Temple run).
3. You run a massively popular website where you suggest your users to download your app (eg run youtube.com, maps.google.com from your mobile browser and see how they suggest you to download their app).
4. You obtain a massive PR coverage (which sometimes need out of pocket money) in short period of time. If you make the cover of the New York Times and are mentioned the same day on CNN expect to jump to the top 10 rank.
5. You have a stunning app that will generate over time a massive network effect. Eg Instagram/Snapchat/Whatsapp.

That’s it. Nothing else.

What you need, really, is as many downloads as possible in a short period of time per store to raise to a rank. Everyone knows that. But the difficulty is how to make it happen.

Unfortunately getting high in the rankings doesn’t matter in itself. Too many developers are only obsessed with top ranks vs creating a sustainable continuous store presence – and many times because they have been advised by marketing agencies to do that or are just seeking the dream of vanity spotlight. They just don’t invest enough energy on a comprehensive marketing plan. It’s fine to build momentum but you also need to keep growing and keep engaging users. Ranks matter only if they are part of a larger equation which includes engagement metrics and also strategies to keep growing continuously (read this great Quora thread on the topic).

This obsession of getting to top ranks has created a myth that only ranks matter to get discovered. It’s about time developers wake up and get deeper into the customer lifecycle. This is also the role of App discovery services and ad networks to educate developers in that direction.

App Discovery and Ad Networks can’t guarantee top ranks (technically)

So… can you buy as many download as possible in a short period of time?

Let’s talk about the “paid” discovery and how ad networks operate. You can find in the market two type of solutions. Those who will guarantee a ranking result (“pay me, get to the top 10”) those who will not guarantee a ranking result.

We have been interacting with many small and large networks and we can confidently say that many known networks never guarantee top ranks because either:

1. they don’t actually know App Store numbers (yes!)
2. their ad platform is based on bidding and therefore the outcome is unpredictable
3. they “sell” [more precisely “make you pay”] only traffic generated and not downloads or even less ranks (eg Facebook, iAd)
4. they don’t want or even can’t (by lack of reach)
5. they sell CPI (cost per install) but without any guarantee of delivery

Actually the last words are critical: no “guarantee of delivery”

You can go to Admob and ask to buy 100 000 clicks on a given date: it does not mean you will obtain them. Why? Because other advertisers will bid for the same user “attention” and the ad network is not even in the capacity of guaranteeing anything. It doesn’t mean networks don’t provide boost packages if you want to… But rarely that will be enough.

Most ad networks are designed first provide a way to accelerate your growth: not to guarantee or even less game top ranks. Does that mean you can’t reach a top rank using ad networks? The answer is “Yes. You can *buy* ranks” But they will not guarantee anything and most of the time their ad platform is not even designed for this. That’s why their reporting does not even report on “ranking”.

Actually if you want to reach a top rank you will need a combination of several ad networks at once. It requires a lot of manpower and coordination. In fact, many companies have a “growth team” whose job is only to put those complex plans together.

Now what about App discovery services? Some of them (like Appsfire) also run ads. Very few of them guarantee or even have the power to provide a “boost” to high ranks. App discovery services typically provide an additional layer to help users find apps in a different way (social discovery like Heyzap, age oriented like AppoLearning, editorial oriented like Appadvice, and so on…).

Of course all of those solutions may have an impact in the rankings but they are not designed to replace them and they are not designed to systematically place apps in the top ranks, day after day, specially if you want to reach all the key geographies (USA, France, Germany,..) at once. They are designed first to provide healthy continuous, targetted and incremental growth.

Let’s also remember that overall ads represent a tiny fraction of the global discovery (6% according to this report).

Does that mean paid advertising is a bad thing for apps? Does that mean reaching a high rank is bad? Of course not. Paid growth is fine. Why? Because Mobile apps are a business first and not a charity activity. No developer can be blamed for trying to grow his baby by using paid advertising solutions.

Paid advertising is not evil. Certain practices only are evil.

Our Suggestion: Better standards for App discovery and Promotion

By now things should be a little clearer. But is that enough? Can we, as an ecosystem, live in a world where app discovery has not managed to gain the full trust of all its parties (users and developers)?

Mobile advertising is still young and very much unregulated. Until recently you could still find ads that did not look like ads (see image below), or full screen ad formats you could not even close (meaning forcing you to “artificially” click on an ad).

Ad networks and App discovery services are still in search for a better tomorrow. Not just for performing better but also to become more tolerated and enjoyed and useful to users.

Here are a few ideas or elementary principles on which a healthy app discovery and promotion industry can build upon. They are actually more common sense than anything else. Those principles concern both users and developers/publisher.

Transparency with the user

1. Disclose clearly to your users you are an ad network (iAd and Admob do that very clearly) or an App discovery with ads. In other words be transparent about whether your are a paid or unpaid discovery solution. This matters because users need to understand your primary motivation.
2. Separate clearly ads from content and if you can’t make it clear to the user.
3. Disclose advertising when/where used. Promotion and Discovery are different. Users need to know which is what.
4. Do not game “deals” (a deal is a real discount of bonus, not an artificial trick).
5. Make it easy to ignore or even remove ads (fat dismiss button, or in-app purchase option to remove ads).
6. Attribute what is yours and what is not: if a deal is not brought/negotiated by you, your users have the right to know it.
7. Use creatives that are not misleading just to drive installs and maybe disappoint users. in the example below the banner seem to indicate the app is special “today” when we clicked it was pointing to an app that has always been Free…

Transparency the developer/publisher

1. Have a consistent pricing policy for “paid discovery” and “unpaid discovery”

The developer community is small and talks a lot. Applying the same prices and rules to all customers is important. Of course a price grid can change over time when the size or the quality of the inventory evolves. But it is not right to make developer A pay X and developer B pay Y for the same service at the same period. Ad networks with a bidding system have this problem solved by itself and of course their bidding mechanism works the same for all developers. Of course if your service is free to developers they should know it too.

2. Provide a transparent reporting, with source of attribution

You need to know what you’re paying for. The only way is to have a way to fully attribute the success or the failure of a promotion. As a developer you have the right to ask for a transparent tracking so you know exactly, at a granular level, where your traffic is coming from.

This is just to make sure you will not pay for something you did not buy. Even if you didn’t pay for it, it will help you understand what works and what doesn’t. But also it will help you figuring out if the network you’re using is using traffic sources you have not approved.

3. Do not force an app description modification

Your app is being promoted. Good for you. You do not have to promote the service who promotes you in the description of your app.

This practice is common when a developer decides to drop its price. It can be useful to remind the user that such a promotion actually takes place. But it should not be mandatory.

Ad networks and discovery services should only make this optional.

4. Do not promise top ranks.

Apple (and probably Google soon) have made it clear. Do not work with networks who guarantee top spots or even a given number of downloads. They create distortion and friction in a market that needs to be fluid and organic. Facebook, iAd, Chartboost, Admob, Millennial,….do not guarantee a top rank. If, this is your goal, as a developer, then find your way to it and if you get your result, great! But remember this is not enough as Dan Porter (OMGPoP former CEO) recently said it.

Conclusion: What about the App stores?

We can’t speak for everyone and each company is free to adopt any rule they want, including marketing agencies and consulting companies who advise app developers. We just think the bar needs to be raised and trust reinforced.

This is a fast moving market. Maybe lawmakers will bring a different context, maybe industry organizations (like the IAB – the internet advertising bureau or the MMA – mobile marketing association) will look at it from a different angle. What we believe is that this market needs to be understood better and needs to be operated by high standards to grow and align with the interest of all parties.

At this moment it is not clear if Apple’s decision concern all app discovery services or only a few of them (remember Appshopper is back?) or whether it will also extend to ad networks as well (all eyes on Facebook). Future will tell. But one thing is certain: ad networks and app discovery services are sources of traffic that can be beneficial to users and the platform they live in. This works with music, this works with books, this works with movies. Users want and need trusted out-of-store sources to make decisions. There is no reason this cannot work with apps.

But on this, only the Platforms can decide.

Image courtesy of EFM

With all the commotion and confusion (cf. the appgratis case, Appshopper last year), we wanted to reiterate and clarify how Appsfire works. Some have raised legitimate questions about us and our future, while others will also start imagining things. First and foremost, let’s review what Appsfire is all about:

• The Appsfire app is a non-paid app discovery service. 100% of the apps we recommend within our app are not ads. We built a solution with users in mind, over three years, with four major iterations.

• Appsfire makes a living out providing developers with marketing services. Promoting third-party apps is one of them. When we promote an app, we do so in demarcated sections of our app, clearly marked as “promoted”. Users can act on it or ignore it. This model is similar to Google’s original model: organic search results vs. clearly marked sponsored links.

• We use push notifications to remind users of recommendations, including social and explicitly subscribed-to recommendations. Push is opt-in and of course can be opted out of within a couple of clicks from within our app. Push is not mandatory to use the app.

• We built a service that filters out fake deals and clones, and aggregates the best apps from the market (our underlying technology is called App Score).

• Appsfire is a curated guide of the best apps in the App Store: think of it as the Michelin guide of what should matter to iPhone, iPad and Android users.

In short: We built the Appsfire app to help users find apps without distorting the rules and the spirit of the App Store: we disclose ads very clearly, we don’t mislead users to “deals” or promotions that are not real, and to the publishers, we do not guarantee results or ranks. It’s important to bear this in mind if you wish to compare us with some other service.

On the future of app discovery and promotion on iOS

• Fact: Apple has singled out one app this week, and it does so very sparingly and usually with solid reasons (Tapjoy a while back, AppShopper last fall).

• Fact: Unlike what has been written, Apple has not blackballed an industry, in this case app discovery, which obviously helps create strong positive dynamics.

• Interpretation: Official reasons were given. Yet no one should assume to know exactly what motivated Apple beyond the official PR on either side.

• Interpretation: App discovery and app promotion go hand-in-hand, will not cease to exist, and to the contrary will be strengthened by regulators like Apple/Google and governmental forces: tracking down malpractice, nullyfying the effects of bots, enforcing do-not-track privacy guidelines i.e. UDID>IDfA, etc…

Where does this leave us?

Appsfire is still up and running. Our roadmap is unphased, keeps the users at the center, and keeps the highest standard in its advertising practices (above all: transparency and full disclosure).

Could things change? Could Apple decide to remove more or all app discovery apps, and therefore decide that we’re out of the store too? Of course they could.

Could Apple go even further and prohibit any kind of advertising for apps in any kind of app? Yup, that too. Apple is unlikely to not care, and is naturally likely to continue fighting for what is best for its users.

As of today, Apple has remained coherent and consistent in terms of focusing on the user experience, also making sure the App Store remains a trusted source which is a difficult thing to do with “gameable” rankings, something we objectively think should be minimized as a source of discovery (the rankings based on download volumes that is).

Some may remember that Appsfire itself was once in a tough situation with Apple over 3 years ago, in fact just after receiving our own first round of funding! We fought for our vision, our values, and eventually solved the problem while trying our best to be within the spirit of the ecosystem, requiring a business ethos built on many years of experience in advertising complemented with deep respect for the amazing mobile app ecosystem re-invigorated by Apple (and let’s not forget, copied by the rest of the industry).

Any company working on a platform has to work within the rules but also in the respect of the spirit of the rules which are not always explicit. This is something we’ll have to live with, and so will all players in our space. It’s a balancing act.

You receive a flyer at home with a special discount on Jack Daniels at your favorite store. 50% off today. You arrive at the store. You look at the shelf price of your upcoming alcoholic beverage. It displays the 50% off sticker. Cool!

Hmm…Wait. You’re looking closer and the actual price is not 50% but the regular price you normally pay. You’re upset and you contact the store manager to find out what’s going on.

Does this scenario sounds familiar? Probably not. Why?  Because in the world of retail there are rules and regulations about promotions, discounts and advertising.

You can’t just organize fake discounts and claim it is is a cool discount to attract users.

Now back to the App Store.

Apple and Google give developers the ability to change the price of the apps they built quite easily. Price increase or price decrease, the developer has the control (with the lone restriction that Google blocks developers from setting a price on their app once it’s been made free. God knows why…)

Organizing a price promotion is a great marketing tool to find out the right pricing for your app, but also to accelerate adoption. Apple organizes a Free App of the Week (example below) every week and there are many services that help surface those promotions too (Disclosure: Appsfire is one of them).

But this is also something many developers or services are manipulating to fool users and make them believe there is an opportunity here. And here, unlike in the “real retail world”, there is no chance to find out what is a “real promotion” or a fake one. Why? Because the App Store only displays the price at the moment of your visit and there is no reference to price evolution.

If a developer claims “200%” off at $0.99 how can you really find out if the price was $2.99 just before? Maybe it was only $0.99?

There’s more to it. As a developer you can change the price as many times as you want. And in theory you can organize price discounts as many times as you want. In that context, how can you know if the discount applies to a price that truly represents the standard price?

The reality is that the App Store is full of fake deals: deals that are either deceptive or misrepresentative.

Here are the varieties of fake deals:

1. Fake price drops: The app claims it’s on sale in its app description, when in reality the price has never changed.
2. Inaccurate price discount: The app claims a X% discount, when in reality the magnitude of the discount is smaller. For example, the app that has recently gone free claims that it’s down from $5.99, when in reality the all-time high price of the app was $3.99.
3. Artificial discount (screenshot below): An app that just launched or is normally worth X will artificially raise the price up to Y for a day or two and then will drop the price back to X, claiming it as a “discount”
4. YoYo Apps or High-Frequency Price Droppers: Apps in “promotion” every few days.
5. Paid to Freemium: A paid app is indeed becomes free, but the price is now applied in in-app purchase (nothing wrong with that…unless the developer claims “FREE TODAY”)
6. Fake “free today”: The app claims it’s “free” today. In reality it’s free all the time or the vast majority of the time.
7. Fake In-App bonus: The app claims “$X worth of In-App Purchase” and offers no way to redeem this bonus or offers no in-App bonus. Or it offers an In-App bonus that does not have the value it claimed.

The good news is that the App Store is full of legitimate promotions like the recent price drop organized by Apple and Rovio on Angry Birds.

So what do we do with this? It’s all about trust

Users have to consider carefully what they download. They can use third-party services (like Appannie or others..) to find out the price history of an app. Appsfire offers such a feature (more on that coming soon).

Unfortunately many app guides or review sites list all those “discounts” and scams as if they were equal, and many “app marketing services” and ad networks do not hesitate to also use those techniques to create the illusion of a “deal” and create a stronger marketing leverage.

Apple and Google could be more careful by limiting the number of times a developer can change their pricing or by limiting the ability to update the app description (as Apple recently did with the app title). Maybe a firm, operationally-enforceable rule on this point would be welcome.

It is critical users can trust developers. Quality discovery is based on trust. If you rupture that trust, discovery is broken.

“How can i pay my Palo Alto rent, only with a Free app”

“It’s just too hard to make money today”

“App Discovery just sucks. Appsfire, Please do something!..”

Those are some private quotes we’ve been collecting from App Developers for the past 3 years. Developers need a better solution to make money. It’s not just enough to get users. Someone need to pay for the bills too. 

It is well known that getting users today is quite easy. All you have to do is pay, ask Apple kindly, or hire a bot farm in China. But that is solving only one part of the equation: User traction.

How do you really make money out of a free app? Cause let’s remember most downloaded apps are by far Free apps.

Appsfire has been working on reinventing app discovery for the past three years. And today we’re introducing a solution to finally solve the problem of monetization for free apps.

And we call it “App for Cash“

The basic idea is simple. Appsfire is aggressively and obsessively negotiating with all the top developers of Free apps. Every day we will propose wide selection of great Free apps but at a reasonable higher Price. 

Why would a user want Free apps for a paid price? A few great reasons

1. You support the developer of the app you love so much (well, in theory)

2. no more crappy ads for apps showing up already in the top 10 ranks, every one has downloaded twice by mistake

3. No more funky invite system and reminder to open an app, you have no idea in which folder it is stuck.

4. you’ll get a wonderful “thank you” card send to you by Fedex or regular mail based on the country (for certain countries, we’ll have to use fax or telegram)

5. 10% of the revenues will be paid to the UDA (unemployed Developer association) to sustain the ecosystem

So many great reasons. Imagine for a second

Temple Run for  $4.99! SnapChat for $9.99!

So what will the app look like?

Very much like the current Appsfire (Screenshot above) which highlight the best deals But with unique breakthrough features

1. Price up alert: track any free app, the moment it become paid > you get notified

2. Price filter: Filter for only 1.99, 2.99, 3.99 and more for users willing to spend particularly a lot

3. Fake activity: we will highlight so called “Paid apps” which, most of the time are free but get paid from time to time to give the illusion they are “great paid apps”

4. Price Cheater” We will highlight and filter apps that are Free with in-app purchase but decide to abandon the in app purchase to become Paid only. To get in App for Cash you need to be a real FREE app first. No tricks

5. Worst deals ever: find the apps that did not raise their price enough. 

6. A negative notification system: if we notice you do no spend enough on App for Cash, we’ll send you negative notifications (this is the -1 you see on top) that will possibly destroy your App for Cash account if you do not take actions.

7. Every day we’ll add an crazy funny joke to the highlight of the day. Why? because if you have to spend $10 on a app, it’d be better funny. Ah?

The Cherry on Pie

Because Apple does not seem to be very worried with incentivized downloads, we have built a unique program. We call it “Cash for Cash”. Users will actually get paid to download paid apps. Obviously we won’t be able to pay you 100% of the value of the App. So instead you’ll get a special “virtual cash” each time you buy a paid app.

What is this Virtual Cash good for? You can convert it in Bitcoins each time you reach our “Fortnox spend level”. We don’t have all the details nailed yet, but don’t worry – it will be well worth it

A healthy Ecosystem

No more race for top ranks (because really? who cares?) , No more unpaid bills at your favorite Coffee chain, No more dirty tricks to get money.

What the App Discovery industry need is a new standard. A new way. A new Path (by the way, we’ll try get Path “Paid” before they decide to do it themselves) 

Apple will surely welcome such a counter intuitive initiatve

We love it. (Nearly) All our team was behind this project. 

We can’t wait to see how this will change our industry. 

We’re submitting the app in the coming days. We planned a special announced on Money Magazine, once it’s live

Some rumors say it will happen between June 10th and June 15th according the forecasted planning of the Moscone Center.

We created a stream on appsfire which will display apps who are planning to be present at the WWDC this year.

How to get in there? Just tweet “Looking forward to meet @appsfire at WWDC 2013 http://getap.ps/deals/wwdc2013” and you’ll get featured – Tweet it!

App discovery is a jungle but it does not mean every single service that labels itself “app discovery” operates by the same rules.

You can find two categories of discovery services: paid discovery services and unpaid discovery services.

Paid discovery services require from the app developer some sorts of financial transaction to be exposed whether upfront, fee based or revenue share based. The most famous form of paid discovery are ad networks: admob, millennial, iAd, Facebook… They get paid by developers to expose apps through ad units and then users decide to interact with those ads. But paid discovery can have some other forms like the “Free to paid” services, some blogs who ask to be paid for a review, PR of course and SEM if used for that purpose.

The prime incentive for paid recommendation here is by far money. And the user being exposed to the recommendation comes second.

Unpaid discovery services will drive users to consider downloading an app without any sort of financial incentive from the developer and without a direct interest in the specific app they are recommending. The most famous form of unpaid discovery are the editorial lists that Apple and Google are putting together every day [if you still believed you had to pay for this, stop dreaming…]. Most review sites publish unpaid reviews (e.g. AppAdvice, 148apps, iPhon.fr,.. ), SEO is [normally] free, friends recommendations,..

The prime incentive for the unpaid recommendation here is quality, credibility and trust. The user here comes first.

Both paid discovery and unpaid discovery are necessary in that world and have benefits. But paid discovery has to be disclosed of course, because the user has to understand the agenda and the prime motivation of the recommender. How can you trust a recommendation service if the prime motivation is not perfectly aligned with yours: getting what is best for you?

Bottom line

App discovery as a service can work only if users trust you. Paid or unpaid, in the long run you can’t fool users. If you run ads, or if you are paid just say it – clearly. It will only reinforce the trust your users will have into your service. Imagine how bad it would look if Apple were taking money for apps being featured, but were not disclosing it in a clear and obvious way both to users and developers. If you do not get paid, users have to understand it too, although it is likely to be their default assumption (hence the importance of disclosure)

And when, as a user, you’re exposed to a recommendation, always ask yourself “why am i being recommended this? ” . Think of how many times you saw an “ad” which didn’t look like an ad..

As a developer try also to understand how users are usually exposed to an app with the service you’re going to use and understand the rules by which it operates.

——–

side note: Appsfire is all about unpaid app discovery. Our recommendations are made only based on the quality of the apps we believe are good [we call it "app score"]. We also leave some room so users can also become recommenders of apps they believe are good (We call it “spotted by users” ) even if we may not recommend those apps ourself. But we do also run an ad program which is for app promotion and we clearly disclose this is promotion. This is how we make a living.

On twitter, you have been 2,469 people to tweet the message and on facebook 42 people found the correct answer ( which was 2) to the question.

We selected randomly 3 winners among those people.

Congratulation to:

• @bazd1ca
• @GaspardMagon
• @mat_bene

You won a $50 iTunes voucher!

Thank you for your participation and stay tuned for the next contest!

What’s new in 1.6?

1: FAST, POWERFUL & OH SO PRETTY

We completely redesigned the app. It is faster, more powerful and more elegant than ever. Just because it’s a data-driven app doesn’t mean it can’t look super awesome!

We hope you like it. (For avid Appstatics fans, you’ll notice we that decided to put Global rankings first and not the Category so you can get to rankings faster than before.

2: TRACK REVIEWS

As a developer, it is very important to understand what your users think about your app, but it’s hard to switch between stores in iTunes to see the different reviews by country. Appstatics is going to fix that: you can now track your reviews from every App Store around the world!

We’ve also added Appsfire’s App Score to every app so you get a quick glance at the quality of each app.

3: FINE TUNED SETTINGS

We’ve added some settings so you can configure the app to present you with the info you want right at startup.

If you use Appstatics mainly to follow your portfolio of apps, you can have the app display the “Favorites” tab right at launch instead of the default “Popular” tab.

Finally, we added a little optional upgrade. Since you’re probably most interested in how your app is performing in major markets, we added the possibility to see first the major App Stores first (USA, UK, etc.) so you can get to that info faster.

So what are you waiting for? Go download Appstatics 1.6!

Next Tuesday is a very special date for us: We are celebrating Appsfire’s 3-year, 3-month and 3-day anniversary!

To celebrate this occasion, we’re offering 3 iTunes vouchers of $50 (because $33 iTunes vouchers don’t exist!)

It is not a common anniversary to celebrate, but at Appfire we like to do things a little differently. Maybe you are wondering why we choose this anniversary date? It’s simple math…

3 – (3/3) = 2, and we’ve served 2 billon app recommandations through Appsfire!

For a chance to win one of these vouchers, you have 2 options:

1. Tweet the following message: “I’ve got a chance to win a $50 iTunes voucher for @Appsfire 3rd anniversary http://getap.ps/deals/3rdAnniversary” [direct link]
2. or/and answer the following question on Facebook [link] (Liking & sharing will increase your chance to win!)

Three winners will be selected from the people who tweeted the message and people who answered correctly question on Facebook.*

Good luck!

*The contest is exclusively for people having a US iTunes account, a French iTunes account or a Paypal account.

To our Android fans and those on Android who love apps, this update has been long overdue. We delivered a major upgrade to Appsfire for iPhone/iPad this past autumn to rave reviews, and since then we’ve helped millions of app lovers on iOS to discover great apps and great deals. It took us awhile to bring the Android app up-to-speed, but we think you’re going to love what we have in store with 4.0.

Simple and beautiful

Above all, we strive to deliver app lovers a simple and beautiful experience for discovering new apps. We’ve refreshed our longtime “Streams” interface to make it easy to browse through many apps across many categories with just a few flicks and clicks.

App Score for Android: The quickest, most reliable way to know if an app is worth downloading

In May 2012 we introduced the Appsfire App Score, a 1-100 score for every app in the App Store. The higher the score, the better the app. Or, put otherwise, the more sure you can be that it’s an app worth downloading.

With Appsfire for Android 4.0, we’re bringing App Score to Android. As soon as you fire up the app to view your daily recommendations, you’ll see the App Score for each app. You can also get further detail when you click in to view an app in more detail.

Oh so pretty

One of the things we love about the Google Play Store is the beautiful artwork that they feature for each app. We’ve baked that right into the “Detail View” for each app. You can really get a sense for the style and spirit for (the awesome) Tango app in just a glance, don’t you think?

Go get it!

We could go on about what else we’ve packed into this version, as well as the updates and new features we’ve already got in the pipeline. But that might hold you up from downloading the app! So why don’t you check it out for yourself in the Google Play Store. As always, we’d love your feedback on what we can do to deliver you a better app discovery experience.

The most interesting data is about Facebook-owned apps whose App Score decreased last month. It’s almost certainly due to the release of the Facebook Poke app, which has a low App Score, as the quality of each app from a specific developer impacts the App Score for all of their apps).

Imangi Studios (creators of Temple Run) released the 2nd edition: Temple Run 2 but did not reach the all-time Top 25. Maybe next month.

iPhone

TOP 25 Ever – iPhone – Game

• Fastlane Street Racing Lite, PAC-MAN Lite and Diamond Dash left the Top 25 Free apps.
• Words With Friends, Where’s My Water?, Angry Birds Rio and Infinity Blade and Asphalt 7: Heat left the Top 25 Paid apps.
• Angry Birds Rio, Infinity Blade and Ice Age Village enters the Top 25 Free apps.
• Plague Inc., Cut the Rope: Experiments, Flight Control, Zombie Highway and Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies enters the Top 25 Paid apps.

TOP 25 Ever – iPhone – Other

• Facebook, Facebook Messenger and AroundMe left the Top 25 Free apps.
• Facebook apps App Score has been penalized by the release in December of Facebook Poke which has an App Score of 36.
• Battery Doctor Pro, t + Silver and cPRO+ craigslist client left the Top 25 Paid apps.
• i. TV, iTranslate, and 8,500+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes Free enters the Top 25 Free apps.
• Keynote, AgingBooth and 360 Live – Client for Xbox Live enters the Top 25 Paid apps.

iPad

TOP 25 Ever – iPad – Game

• Hidden Objects: Gardens of Time, Blood & Glory and Gun Bros left the Top 25 Free apps.
• Where’s My Water?, Infinity Blade, Asphalt 7: Heat and Angry Birds Rio HD left the Top 25 Paid apps.
• Infinity Blade, Ice Age Village and The Simpsons™: Tapped Out enters the Top 25 Free apps.
• The Room, Nyan Cat: Lost In Space, Temple Run: Brave and Shark Dash enters the Top 25 Paid apps.

TOP 25 Ever – iPad – Other

• Facebook, AroundMe, and Chrome left the Top 25 Free apps.
• Battery Doctor Pro – Max Your Battery[...], t + Silver, IM+ Pro and Penultimate left the Top 25 Paid apps.
• i. TV, 8,500+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes Free and TripAdvisor enters the Top 25 Free apps.
• MyCalendar Mobile (Top 5), Keynote, Ignition and djay enters the Top 25 Free apps.

January Highlights

Apps Released in January

• No apps released in January reached the top 25 ever.
• Temple Run 2 reached #1 in Top 25 January Game (iPhone & iPad) but it was not enough to be in the Top 25 ever

Mailbox is promising to revolutionise the way we’ll use email (Gmail for now) on our mobile phones (iPhone for now). So they have done a set of great things beginning with apparently an awesome product that only a few users are able to use for now and have added a reservation system to progressively let others in.

This was massively amplified by bloggers who are all saying this is a great product but did not care too look at the collateral damages of this invite system.

It is very clear this reservation has some deep technical reason to handle the scale. But we’re seeing here more of a smart marketing technique to create desire and interest.  And we think they did not handle it right. Here is why.

The problem is the following: there is right now a lot more people waiting than people using the app [below what i see on my screenshot and i was very early on in the reservation system]. So why did Mailbox launched now?

They knew what the level of demand was before the pressed the green light button to release the app. They knew they would generate a lot of frustrations from users

And this translated in a massive proportion of 1 star reviews (20% of all reviews, 30% of the 5 star apparently attributed by those who were let in). Why so much frustration?

1. Well the reservation – prior to the app launch –  they put in place was already promising you to let you in on a first arrived first served basis. But the reality is that most user who jumped in realised that although they received a code to get in – they were still tens of thousands of users away to get in. So in other words it is a reservation system that was not really reserving anything
2. The new users who downloaded the app because they saw it top rank, did not even get a sense of what the app actually does and gave a poor rating
3. The queueing system does not give a sense of timing: how long will i wait to get in

How could have they handled it better?

1. From the get go give a full preview of Mailbox on a dummy account. There is no scale or tech issues here. Just let people taste the product

2. include in the app a video preview of what the app does

3. include a feedback system in the app to make sure negative comments and frustrations go to them directly and not through the app store

4. Include in their app first screenshot the fact the app is not available yet and that there is a queueing system. They have a little sentence in the description: no one bothers to read description specially when you re showing up in the top 25.

That’s why although the app is being top ranked in many countries right now, the App score (our quality score) is only 63 (promising). Now let’s see how they handle their next steps.

update 24h later: it’s getting worse. Screenshot below is US only and it’s even worse in countries like France…And Mailbox App Score dropped to 38

• 9 million downloads of our App (mostly on iOS)
• 50,000 ratings in the App store  across all stores (with an average of 5 stars in many stores like USA), and lots lots lots of super Reviews / Videos Reviews
• 25,000 direct user feedbacks sent to Appsfire
• Well over 1.5 million users interact daily with Appsfire
• Well over 11k Twitter followers on @appsfire and 1 mention every 3 minutes on average
• 1.5 billion app recommendations to date (i.e. total number of apps discovered on Appsfire)
• 100 million download intents to date
• Our promoted apps are downloaded up to 200,000 times within a 24h/48h window - without incentive (paid advertising is disclosed as such to our users)
• The Appsfire AppGenome, our app metadata & machine learning engine, tracks and scores 1.5 million apps in real-time (iOS+Android)
• No less important: Appsfire counts 17 über employees
• AppBooster, our Mobile CRM toolkit has been installed and published within 350 live apps (including top rated Apps like Fuzel) reaching up to 35 million users (iOS mostly)
• Out of our millions of users, around 300,000 active users connect via Facebook (see AppData graph below)

Thanks to all of you. Let’s see what happens in 2013

With the new year 2013, Appsfire has grown immensely (more on that in a few days).

We’d like to celebrate this beginning of the year with a very special deal for indie mobile app developers. We’ll break our regular promotion pricing structure to offer any small team behind a great app a package of promotion that will accelerate the growth of your project starting as low as $1500

Some developers (here and here) have already enjoyed it, big time. If you want your metrics to look like the graph below, Hurry. This is only this month of January 2013

You don’t want to miss it.  First arrived first served, we have only a few spots

Shoot us an email at partnership@appsfire.com

our 2012 predictions were mostly OK.

• Apple will still dominate by far the app ecosystem in terms of payout.
• Apple will pass 1m live apps in the App store and will announce it at WWDC
• WWDC tickets will sell out in 14 seconds, maybe before they even get on sale.
• Apps will come to Apple TV. This time for good
• Snapchat will get acquired by Facebook or Google. Without making a dollar
• Instagram will add a couple of filters and this will make the NYT cover.
• Apple maps will get good. Not sure how; maybe through an acquisition
• Mobile advertising will still suck in 2013: a huge chunk of the ad inventory will be of low quality or run by bots
• Facebook will emerge as a valuable alternative to traditional mobile ad networks and will hit some of the big names out there
• Mobile messaging consolidation: Viber, Text+, Pinger, Line, Wechat, Tango, Kik, Whatsapp…..you got it…
• SuperCell x 10: those guys are not done.
• Microsoft will have a hard time getting developer’s priority attention in spite of massive investments
• Google will finally get Gmail app right but will be seriously challenged by a killer email native app [that they will have to buy again]
• Twitter will buy Tweetbot. No choice
• No Television set by Apple [damn!]
• No smart watch by Apple [double damn!]
• No Facebook phone [triple damn!]

note: the december report will be published soon too…

Interestingly, many Rovio apps left the Top 25 in November:

• Angry Birds Free, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio Free for iPhone
• Angry Birds HD Free, Angry Birds Rio HD Free, Angry Birds Seasons HD Free, Angry Birds Seasons HD, Angry Birds Space HD, Angry Birds Rio HD  for iPad