Tomorrow Macheist nanobundle will end. As written in the previous entry, they were able to put together 10 applications worth together 342$ for just 19.95$, 5 of which goes to charity, i.e. 14.95$ instead of 342$.
How do they do that? Paying an average of 1.49$ per app feels like buying iPhone applications. Furthermore the bundle organizers get a living out of it, so the developers will get more or less one dollar per sold bundle (plus free attention from the whole Mac world, which usually doesn’t come for free).
Rules of the game
The basic rules of any Macheist bundle are the following:
- it only lasts for few days (a week in this case)
- it is not very often
- some apps are very good (pricey and well coded) and some are very cool (i.e. people want them even if cheap)
- some applications get unblocked if you spread the word on twitter or facebook
- some applications get unblocked if there are at least n buyers.
Each rule is the trick. Read on to learn it.
n is a big number
Yes: if they knew the bundle would be bought by 100 people, then if wouldn’t make much sense: giving away your app for 100 person in a week for 100$ is probably less than what they usually get in the same amount of time. But if n is 50000, they’re getting much more. Of course, to a broader range of people. But in a week.
Who’s the developer who gets so much money in a such short amount of time? Even Rapidweaver, which costs 79$, would need to sell 100 copies per day (which I doubt they do) to get the same amount of money (but then, probably, Rapidweaver developers get more than 1$, since they represent the very expensive app). Of course this can’t go on forever, they would lose money in the long run, but since it only last for a few days (ehi, that’s the first rule)..
..if you really need the app..
you probably already own the app you need, and you bought it when you needed it, not waiting for the bundle. So the developers lose only few potential “real” clients (i.e. clients which would have bought the full price app), because the percentage of this “real” clients who get the discount, is very low, compared to n.
If you don’t really need the app..
then probably you would never get it without discount. You would search for a free alternative, otherwise you would end up using Emacs, like real men do. But if they’re so cheap, for just a week, and there is that very cool app you always wanted, with just a bit of good advertising is probable that you will end up buying, because they’re almost free, and in the end you think you needed it. And, afterall, …
…it doesn’t happen very often
Either you do it, or you’ll lose this great deal forever. It last only few days, and it happens once in a year or so. It means you can afford it! This is great way of making customers desiring things, which could be called..
..advertising
Yes, they’re good in advertising: they make you spread the word, by twitter and facebook, to get bonus apps, meaning they’re doing the best kind of spam: mouth to mouth (so to speak).
“Hey, my friend Brian [not a scam bot somewhere in Asia] told me Macheist has a great deal for 20 bucks, let’s check it out!”
And Brian friend will eventually buy the bundle.
Yes, this is how it works: at the end it will increase even more the number of sold bundles, i.e. the money the developers (and organizers) get. And, worth noting, Macheist also has a quite populated forum, where people can exchange ideas about everything, from apps, to things which could get unlocked, and where the developers hang around to listen to feedback from users.
Why putting the n limit in the first place? Are we not going to get those blocked apps?
If you would get everything, without waiting, user powered advertising wouldn’t work, because people would see no point in reaching n sold bundles, and so they would see no point in spreading the word. And without this word spreading, they would sell much less.
But what does this means? Would we get all the apps anyway at the end? Yes, not giving them before, was just tactics. And which other tactics they use? Well, sometime they..
..play dirty
This time they announced, in the last moments, to boost the bundle, that Tweetie would have been part of the bundle. Not only. It’s months that people are waiting Tweetie for Mac 2.0. There were also rumors its developer was not going to release it anymore, rich enough thanks to Tweetie for iPhone. But, here it is they say: bundle buyers will not only get Tweetie 1, they will also get Tweetie 2 when it comes out, and they’re also going to participate to the Tweetie 2 beta program. This really made a lot of people crazy about the bundle: people who were sceptic, bought it. People who weren’t interested in anything but Tweetie, bought the bundle (which costs as much as Tweetie alone). In shorts, a lot of people bought the bundle in the very last day, and the were way over n=500000 before the end.
Speaking about it, at the end, “the perfect con is one where everyone involved gets the thing they wanted”, as they say in “The Brothers Bloom“. Developers get money and attention, organizers get money, and we get the app. Only this ain’t a con, because the organizers have created a rewarding job doing what they like to do, working with Macs and Mac users; they had great ideas (the rules) and used them wisely to get what they wanted. In shorts, they really did something worth imitation: create a business out of nothing, have fun while doing it, and get rich enough to live with it! Bravo!
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