Falling Balls was free from the start and has made me a small fortune in ad revenue.
All the other paid apps have made me, all told, maybe $300 over the last year. When I consider that amount of money vs. the exposure of having thousands more people possibly using the app because they don’t have to pay 99 cents for it, I’ll go with the higher exposure. Furthermore, with Bug Out! I installed Pinch Media analytics. It was discouraging to see that close to half (48.9%) have the users had pirated versions. Therefore, I’ve removed all “lite” versions and made all my apps free. I have not added advertising where there was none originally. You get the original full version for free. Use it, enjoy it, tell others about it.
Going forward, I do not plan to create any more paid apps. I do plan to do more ad-based apps and experiment with in-app purchases. I think it’s also fair to make it so that any in-app purchase also automatically disables all future ads.
All this is not a written-in-stone promise. Who knows what may change in the future? But that’s the way I see things now.