The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2012
Dropzone's $2 Tuesday put a $14 indie Mac app in the top 3 of the paid App Store
Three indie Mac apps dropped to $2 for one Tuesday; Dropzone jumped to the top of the paid charts and its developer netted over $8,000 in a day.
Aptonic · LittleFin · Apparent Soft
What it had to solve
Dropzone normally sold for $14, and its developer worried that a $2 day would cheapen the app, upset customers who missed the deal and create a support crush. LittleFin's Mike Dattolo proposed joining Compartments and Socialite for one discounted Tuesday instead.
How it works
Two Dollar Tuesday began with a cold email. Mike Dattolo of LittleFin asked the developer of Dropzone, a $14 menu-bar productivity app for OS X, to join a one-day promotion: on a single Tuesday, Dropzone, LittleFin's Compartments and Apparent Soft's Socialite would each sell for $2 in the Mac App Store, with every developer simply lowering their own price and keeping all proceeds.
The Dropzone developer hesitated. He worried that $2 would cheapen a $14 app, upset customers who missed the discount and flood him with support requests; he finally flipped a coin and said yes. Dattolo handled the marketing, pitching bloggers, and the sale was covered by The Verge and Lifehacker as a daily app deal.
The results were far beyond the developer's expectations. Dropzone's U.S. Productivity ranking rose from an average around 170th to the top 3 paid apps overall, reportedly second only to OS X Lion for a while and briefly number one in Germany. He sold over 6,700 copies in the promotion and made more than $8,000 after Apple's 30% cut — his previous best, an Apple front-page feature, had sold around 300 copies.
Why it lands
- A $2 price makes an impulse purchase of a $14 utility, removing the main friction for trying it.
- Three apps coordinating on one day multiplied the press story: one deal post named all three and advertised each other.
- Chart placement did the real marketing: once Dropzone reached the top paid list, the App Store itself promoted it to shoppers.
- Each developer kept full proceeds, so there was no bundle accounting and no reason for any participant to hold back.
What it did
Dropzone rose from around 170th in the U.S. Productivity category to the top 3 paid apps overall — reportedly second only to OS X Lion, and number one in Germany — selling over 6,700 copies. The developer reported more than $8,000 in revenue after Apple's 30% cut; his previous best, an Apple front-page feature, had sold about 300 copies.
What you can take
A steep one-day discount can work as shared promotion: coordinated press and chart momentum lift every participant, and the temporary price cut itself becomes the story.
Since then
The developer wrote that he had never sold anything close to that volume before and shared the full sales numbers, calling the promotion beyond his wildest expectations. Dattolo planned to run Two Dollar Tuesday as a regular weekly promotion, and the developer recommended joining it to anyone invited. The one-day event became a reference point for indie Mac developers weighing steep discounts as a discovery strategy.
Sources
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