Have you purchased an app only to find that it has gone on sale or free a few days later? It has happened to me many times, and it’s not a nice feeling.
So here’s a simple tip that I follow that has helped me save money on paid apps.
Developers very often put their apps on sale, either during the holiday season or some other time of the year in the hope that they sell more copies, leading to a growth in net revenue. So when you’ve set your mind on a certain app, it’s likely that it might be going on sale soon. Now how do you know that?
Price history
AppShopper.com has a neat feature where it keeps a track of the price history of all apps, so you can find out if there have been price changes for an app, and how likely is it that the price will fall in the near future.
You can check the price history on their website or using their AppShopper Social app (direct iTunes link). To check the price history on the AppShopper Social app, launch the app, tap on the Search tab, and search for the app you’re looking for, then scroll down and tap on App activity.
If there have been price changes then you may want to defer your decision to buy it, and wait for the developer to drop the price of the app again.
AppShopper Wishlist
Another AppShopper.com feature is wishlists, where you can add apps you want to the wish list by tapping on the I want it option in the AppShopper Social app, and AppShopper will send you price change alerts for it, either through push notifications or via email.
You can access the settings by tapping on the gear icon in the top left corner (available from the Stream, Friends, Wish List and My Apps tabs). Tap on Push Notifications, and ensure that the toggle for push notifications for price drops has been enabled (it is enabled by default). Alternatively, you can enable email notifications by taping on the Email Notifications option.
That’s it. So the next time you’re buying an app, make sure you go to AppShopper.com or to the AppShopper Social app, and search for the app. If you see that price changes are very frequent, it might be a good idea to delay your purchase and add the app to your wish list instead.
If you’re just looking for good deals, then there are quite a few apps in the App Store to keep track of top ranked apps that have gone free or discounted, which we will cover as a follow up to this post.
You can also bookmark our App deals page or join our Facebook Fan page, follow us on Twitter, add us to your circles on Google+, subscribe to our RSS feed as we have started covering deals on popular and top rated apps.
