Since this Sunday is Mother’s Day (in the US at least), I’m making Flower Garden FREE for the weekend. Yes, that’s right, completely free!
Am I going crazy? Giving away the fruit of my labor for so many months? The App Store will do that to people, but this is a bit more sane. The idea is to encourage many more people to try it out. I’m actually hoping some of them will like it so much, they’ll buy a few of the in-app purchases from the Flower Shop. And even if they don’t, hopefully they’ll spread the (good) word about Flower Garden and they might also sign up for the mailing list. And in this business, expanding your user base is a great strategy that can be leveraged for future projects.
The idea of giving away a free app isn’t anything new. There are whole sites like FreeAppCalendar dedicated to doing exactly that, and other developers, like NimbleBit have been doing that on and off very successfully to reach a wider audience with their games.
How will it work out? I don’t know yet, but Flower Garden is quickly going up the charts even early on Saturday. It’s currently in the top 50 free apps in Japan, and about to get in the top 10 kids games in the US, so it’s looking good.
If you haven’t picked it up yet, this is the time. And if you have, make sure you tell your friends and family to download it and check it out before it goes back to the regular price. I’ll report back on the results of this promotion in a few days.