I decided to see if I could get more people to play Eyestorm if I made it free. You would expect that the more people who play, the more they recommend it to friends, etc.

Well it turns out that was a super bad idea. Eyestorm went from having a 4.5 star rating to 3 in less than 12 hours. Obviously people like free, but they don't value it very much. We got some extremely good reviews of Eyestorm; For instance this one at the Portable Gamer: http://theportablegamer.com/2009/08/eyestorm-review/.

I still don't understand Apple's rating system where you just give an app stars without a reason. I think that if you have time to give stars but not write 10 words about what you think, you haven't really given the app the time it deserves. Not a single one of those people who got the app for free wrote a review.

...Maybe I should raise the price to $59.99.

Update: Numbers

In case anyone wants some numbers. Eyestorm was downloaded 1500 times in the less than 12 hours it was free. Eyestorm Lite was downloaded 236 times the same day (so 24 hours). Eyestorm is usually bought less than 20 times per week and has not been bought more than 250 times in total. That should give you some idea of how popular "free" is. Amazingly, 9 people actually bought Eyestorm after I raised the price yesterday.

Update 2: More numbers

• The week of the giveaway 1579 Eyestorms were downloaded for free
• The week of the giveaway 23 Eyestorms were bought
• The week prior to the giveaway only 6 Eyestorms were bought

Did it help to put in on discount? Well we sold 17 (almost 300%) during the week despite giving it away for free. Did we make a lot of money: "NO!".

• Before the giveaway Eyestorm had an average rating in the US store of 4.5
• 1 week after the giveaway Eyestorm has an average rating of 3.1

We did get a couple of new reviews on the iTunes store. Interestingly enough, we did not get a single review with less than a 5 star rating. So people don't mind writing positive reviews, but they hate explaining why they give an app 1-4 stars... Same thing applies to Lifecards.