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applications, and give the winner a free copy of another one of your applications? Promo codes make contests like this quick and easy for everyone involved. You can even make the contest a part of one of your applications. Or you could run the contest on Twitter, Facebook, or another social networking site. By tapping into a social networking site, you have the potential of creating a viral marketing event. Viral marketing is about creating a buzz—for example, creating a video that viewers enjoy so much that they pass it along to their friends. Say you create an app demo video that you manage to get in front of 1,000 people, who each share it with two of their friends, who in turn share it with two of their friends, and so on. You can see the snowball effect this creates. Another situation in which you might want to share free promo codes with others is if you have a few beta testers who have been testing your new application and you want to reward them for all their hard work with a free copy of the final product.

In iPhone OS 3.0 it is possible to redeem promo codes right from the App Store application on the phone. Currently it is not possible to send promo codes as links either through text messaging or e-mails, but users can take promo codes that they may have received in an e-mail and copy and paste the code into the redeem section of the new App Store iPhone application. There are even Web sites devoted to giving away iPhone application promo codes. For example, www.appgiveawaycom helps developers generate buzz about their applications by creating promotional giveaways around the app promotional codes. Consider that while only a few people can win the promotional codes for the free applications, many more people see the applications listed on the site. This is a great form of advertising and marketing.

Finally, you may want to allow someone to review your application. There are many sites that focus specifically on reviewing iPhone applications. Many of these sites request that you provide them with a promo code so that they can review your application without having to buy it. It can get very expensive for a site to review hundreds of iPhone applications if the site has to pay for all of the applications it reviews.

FIGURE 10.17

Requesting promotional codes

Contests

We mentioned earlier that you could have contests for your application where you give away App Store promo codes to users so they can download your applications for free. But that's not the only way you can take advantage of contests to promote your applications.

Many developers of graphics- and photo-related iPhone applications hold contests for their applications where users can submit content that they have created with their applications. In one case people might compete to draw the best picture, and in the other case users might try to take the best photo.

Other ideas are to create in-game challenges and reward users with prizes accordingly. Usually these contests would be framed around the basic idea of the application. For example, if you created a game with many challenging levels, you could run a contest for the first player to make it through all 13 levels. If you have a puzzle game that is a time-based challenge, you could give a prize for the player with the best score in the next 30 days. The possibilities are endless. You just have to find the right ones to fit your applications.

App Store rejections

One day you are likely to have one of your applications rejected by Apple for the App Store. It happens, and you shouldn't let it affect you personally. In most situations you will be able to address the issue and resubmit your application and have everything work out for the best.

If you have an application rejected, often you can find another application that already exists on the App Store that does exactly what your application was rejected for. It can be quite frustrating, but getting upset will not do anything to help the situation. Just assume that there is another developer looking at one of your other applications already