Marco Arment: “I’m asking people who bought a $200-829 device (many of whom also pay monthly for data service) to take a $5 risk. People risk that much for a side-dish of mashed potatoes that might suck at a restaurant, or a tremendous milkshake at Starbucks that they’ll finish in 30 minutes, without much consideration. iPad and iPhone owners often risk $30-70 on a case that they might break, lose, or get bored with after a few months.”
The App Store is such a strange beast. I think it’s a great distribution mechanism and if you’re an Indie Dev trying to keep the costs down it’s a real blessing. No need to worry about collecting money or keeping servers running. I’m more than willing to give 30% to Apple for that service.
The dark side is, as Marco points out, trying to convince people to take a chance on a $5.00 application.
When RxCalc shipped we priced it at $5.99. After a few months we decided to run a special and make it free for a day. After that we decided to keep the price at $0.99 believing it would increase sales. Well, we were wrong, again. It didn’t change sales, at all. We still get a trickle of sales, a few every day, just as we did at $5.99.
We will be making some changes to the price with the next release. When that will be, I have no idea.