App Store Pricing Models

I've spent the last few months considering pricing models for the new version of Fight Scores, an update to my app due to be released in the coming weeks.

Fight Scores 1.0, released in May 2015, was initially positioned in the iTunes Pricing Tier 3, this means it had a price of £2.29 / $2.99. I later lowered this to Tier 2 (£1.49 / $1.99). Since then I’ve played with reducing and increasing the price, often as part of promotions the week of major fights. Nothing has moved the needle too much.

With that initial launch back in May 2015, I had sought to establish Fight Scores as the premium app in it’s field. While I did garner some traction with that approach, it was not nearly enough to be considered a success.

With that in mind, I have had to ask myself what I attach more importance to: Making a relatively small amount of money on a product that I have put a lot of time and effort into over the last few years, or potentially gaining a larger user base by moving to a free model.

In my case I felt the latter was the way I want to go. Although biased, I still consider Fight Scores to be the class of it’s field and I’d like to open it for to as many users as possible to experience it.

Fight Scores 2 will be available for free on the iOS App store. However after reading David Smith’s excellent piece on how the App Store business has changed over time, I have decided to follow suit and move the app towards being ad-supported.

My modest aim is to recoup the monthly server costs I incur and so I’ll be offering users the option of removing apps via In-App Purchase. I understand that I’m in a privileged position to not have to charge for my app and I recognize that this solution would not work for everybody.