Using App Gifting for Promotion
By Natalia Luckyanova, half of iPhone Gaming’s cutest couple, wrote to share their experience giving away 1000 copies of Harbor Master using the new Gift-This capability of the App Store.
Here’s what she had to say, emphasis added by me:
We decided to try a mass giveaway to see how gifting really works. We gave away 1,000 copies of Harbor Master to promote the upcoming Harbor Master HD for iPad. This got a lot of very heated reactions from other developers (mostly worrying that gifted apps affect rank and this would allow anyone to buy their way into the top 100 apps).
Interestingly, we found that gifts do NOT count towards an app’s rank at all. Also, awarding that many gifts definitely took a lot of time. However, it was a great experience for us nonetheless. We got some publicity for Harbor Master HD and got a lot of love from the player community. If nothing else, app gifting will help not to be limited to 50 promo codes when trying to share an app with media and the community.
Full details available on their blog.
Definitely good to know. Thanks!
I am sure app gifting will really be use for promotion but at least we will be able to regift some of our apps. I am excited to try this one.