We love getting feedback from our users. It helps us make them happy, and that makes us happy. Feedback and user engagement is also at the heart of our App Booster SDK for developers, to empower other developers to communicate directly with their users.

As a business, we also love saving money. Over the years we’ve spent a very substantial amount of money on localizing our app into 11 languages, and with every new verison of our app we experience the pain of getting new translations, inserting those strings in a string file, adjusting the text, getting those adjustments translated, QA’ing in each language, etc. It’s a costly process both in time and money.

In developing the latest version of our app, we honed in on a method that both saves us a lot of that time and money while increasing translation quality: We replaced expensive translators (who aren’t familiar with our app to begin with) with user volunteers. Those users took pleasure in contributing to an app they use on an everyday basis, so making these users happy is just the cherry on top.

Here’s how we do it.

It begins with having a feedback mechanism that opens a direct communication channel with users. Naturally we use our own App Booster product, as it enables us to:

• Broadcast in-app notifications to our users

• Target and localize those notifications by geography

• Collect direct responses from users to those notifications

• Message with them through our app or via email

The notification we sent out looked like this:

There are many ways to collect feedback from users, but without all of the above you’re not going to be as potent and efficient in CRM as you can be. That’s the case for using App Booster, and I’ll leave it at that. On to how we’ve solved the very painful and often expensive problem of translating your app by relying on our users.

(For the TL;DR crowd, you can skip to the bottom to get a rundown of our time/cost-saving process.)

▶ Pain point: Translation is expensive

As Apple now has an App Store in 155 countries, they encourage developers to localize their apps into as many languages as possible. Their page for internalization and localization of apps lists vendors for localization and provides guidance for the administrative and technical processes for localizing your app.

These vendors don’t come cheap, though. Another way to put it is that the localization vendors who are worth your while are expensive. Quality localization vendors will generally charge several hundred dollars per language, up to a thousand dollars if you’re also translating a lot of iTunes metadata. If you’re inclined to skimp, consider that using a cheap translation provider and nothing more will result in severe compromises in quality.

I’ll explain further below how we save money by using cheap translation providers yet still produce great quality translations by having our users review and improve the text.

▶ Pain point: Translation is difficult to time correctly

Unless your product development cycle includes wireframes and designs that map out every last word of the text that’s going to appear in the next version of your app, you’ll find that you rarely reach the point well in advance of your planned release where you can say, “Okay all the text is ready for translation.” QA might turn up issues that requires interface changes, or the text that you wrote just doesn’t look as good or appealing in your app once you’ve got a build.

Now it’s two days before your ship date and you’re making changes to the English (easy enough). Having to postpone the release a few days to wait for translation is a bummer; having to perform another round of QA to see if the newly translated text fits well is even worse.

Since translation of any kind is a creative process, it takes time. When it requires opening screenshots or navigating through an app to get better context, it takes even longer. Professional translation services can have a turnaround time of up to a week. AppLingua has a smart service called AppBack that puts the app back in the hands of translators once the translations have been done so that they can verify the quality and accuracy of their translations, but again that takes time.

▶ Pain point: Translation is a clunky process

For iOS developers, your translations might be stored in XIB or string files. We use strings. If you’re unfamiliar with “strings” (an odd name for a block of text that appears to derive from “a string of characters”), an individual line of text will look like this:

“_NUMBER_ITEMS_COUNT” = “There are %d items”

Getting this translated presents all kinds of problems:

• If you’re getting your translations from someone who’s not familiar with strings, they’re not going to know off-the-bat that they don’t need to translate ”_NUMBER_ITEMS_COUNT” (in fact, they can’t, or the system will break). This means you can’t just copy/paste your file into a web form and get translations for only the parts of the paste job you need translated. Tethras, for one, has a clever solution for this, whereby you upload your files and they extract the text that actually needs to be translated.

• In addition, the uninitiated won’t know what to do with “%d”, which here represents an integer variable. Presented in the app, this might display as “There are 2 items”. Not only must your translators be precise in not removing or (accidentally) manipulating “%d”, but they might actually need to move it. In Japanese, for example, correct grammar requires that %d appear at the beginning of the text. If “%d” seems relatively harmless to you, consider that you might end up with stranger things like “\n[0]%@[/0]“.

▶ Pain point: Translation requires context

▶ Pain point: It’s really difficult to judge the quality of the translations you receive.

For the latest version of our app, we received a Japanese translation for the phrase, “Awesome!” that looks like “スゴーイ！” Google Translate spits out “素晴らしい！”

Unless you speak Japanese, good luck figuring out which one is better.

▶ Pain point: Some languages require a lot more characters for a string than your interface can fit

Say your design includes a big welcome message somewhere that literally says “Welcome”. Now you’re translating to German and Russian. Hmm, here’s how “welcome” translates in those languages:

• Wilkommen
• добро пожаловать!

How our users help us solve these problems with the Appsfire app

Here’s a quick rundown of how we’ve dramatically cut down on the time and cost of translation without compromising quality:

1. We got traction around the world by translating our app into different languages using professional translation services. This cost a fair chunk of change, but it was necessary to bootstrap. Asking users to translate an entire app from scratch is asking a lot, probably too much.
2. We later recruited volunteers through an App Booster notification. We got at least four volunteers in every language, including smaller locales like Polish. We got dozens for Spanish and French. A handful already had translation experience!
3. With a week to go before we wrapped up our latest version, which includes 50 new blocks of text, I emailed the users we’ve worked with in the past. Some didn’t reply and some were busy, and in those cases I dipped into our pool of volunteers.
4. Meanwhile, I sent off our translations to a very fast, but mediocre-quality translation service. I included screenshots of almost every string to provide context. For 368 words, this cost us about $270 for 10 languages.
5. I copy/pasted the translation from the translation service into a spreadsheet, which I then shared with our user volunteers. Here’s the important part: Instead of burdening our volunteers with one or two hours of non-compensated work, I got decent-enough translations so that their only job was to improve them. And most importantly, these users know our app very intimately, so they’re better suited for the job than any professional translator.
6. I included a hidden column in the spreadsheet with a formula that constructs the string as it needs to be formatted in the app. This makes it user-friendly for our volunteer so he never has to see at anything code-y like “_COPY_CLIPBOARD_”
7. Optionally, you can add these users to your ad hoc build and enable them to try out the app before you ship it. Seeing the text in the app almost inevitably inspires some worthwhile tweaks.

The result? You can judge for yourself. Take a look at the screenshot below of the spreadsheet I sent to our Spanish volunteer. Bear in mind that the spreadsheet was not color-coded when I sent it to him; not only did the user color-code it according to his evaluation, but he added separate columns for his revisions and comments.

Not only does this make our lives easier, but it makes us super happy to know that the next version of our app was made possible by a very happy user. All in all it’s a huge win for us to simultaneously save money, increase quality, and satisfy users like the one below (our Italian translator):

We’re introducing today a new version of Appsfire. Well.. not literally.

We’re adding some optional Premium features in the form of In-App Purchase – the core of Appsfire remains exactly the same. After months of feedback and feature requests from our users since the launch of our 4.0, we’re giving our most dedicated users a few extra tools so they can take their app discovery to the next level.  Here’s what we’ve added:

• Advance filtering by App Score
• Faster discovery with In-App Downloads (enabling app installations without leaving Appsfire)
• Ad-Free discovery

Why in-App Purchase?

These are advanced features we actually wanted to add back in the original 4.0, but they’re challenging to build and maintain. But we also felt they were only interesting to a subset of our users. So, although these features aren’t free, we hope that some of you will find this to be a way to support our efforts.

It goes without saying that we’ll be adding new features to Appsfire regularly, and they’ll be absolutely free. And the core of the app  remains free and will remain free.  If you love Appsfire for all the free tools we give you to find the best apps and deals, then you’ll continue to love all that we have in store.

Now, onto the new premium features.

Ad-Free discovery

Appsfire is essentially an unpaid app discovery service. We offer the best discovery experience for the best apps out there. Our model is too work with developers and promote them on dedicated, clearly marked spaces in a non intrusive way. And that seems to work for most of our users. But some of our users preferred a completely ad-free experience. We’re bringing that option today.

And you can remove it for the duration of your choice:

• 3 months ($0.99)
• 1 year ($3.99)
• Lifetime ($8.99)

And before anyone gets to scream, in case you don’t pick that option: we’re not “adding” additional advertising to our app – we’re just offering a way to opt out of what has always been present. That’s a big difference!

Filtering by App Score

Some people like to browse through as many apps as possible, as long as they’re at least pretty good (Appsfire will never recommend an app with an App Score, our own app ranking algorithm, below 60). But some users are more picky, and others only want the best of the best.

So if you’re only interested in the very best apps in the App Store, you can set your Minimum App Score to 90. You can also set it 60, 70, 75…whatever your app-loving heart desires.

As is our mission, we’re putting you in the driver’s seat with this one.

In-App Downloads, or “Faster Downloads”

When you opt for “Faster Downloads”, you can download an app without leaving Appsfire. The App Store will actually pop over the app, so after you’ve clicked ‘Install’ you’ll find yourself right back in Appsfire, where you can continue browsing apps. It is in particular convenient when you want to download a few apps in a row. For those who crave speed, this is a super cool feature.

Those are all the new features we’ve added in our latest version (marked  4.2), but we’ve got another big one that’s already in the pipeline. A little hint: If you love being the first to know about the latest and greatest news in the App Store, you’re going to love what we have in, well…what we have store

And if you’re new to Appsfire, you can find us here on the App Store.

This blog post was originally published on TheNextWeb

All eyes on App discovery: suddenly, because of what happened to a single app promotion company (ref. appgratis), the background noise indicates that everyone is now concerned about the entire field of app discovery: what it means and how it should work.

It is surprising that this debate did not raise, so far, more participation from other app discovery and promotion services in place because there is a lot to be said. Perhaps everyone is trying to keep a low profile…

As a player in this field, we’ve been listening quietly. We are concerned that a specific case is going to create so much confusion that the ecosystem will suffer from it. It is easy to mix things up, compare what shouldn’t be compared, and put everyone in the same basket.

App discovery should be all about trust. Trust with the users and trust with the developers. A good recommendation has to be based on a good product and a trusted voice. Break that trust and your recommendation is worthless. Faith is lost.

The mobile app ecosystem is young and as it grows, it needs better rules and better standards to enforce and maintain that trust. App discovery implies several stakeholders and the whole value chain has to be considered: users, developers, and App Stores.

App discovery can’t be totally owned by app stores

Because the app stores are not paid marketing channels but unpaid editorial and algorithmic retail spaces, a lot of companies, including ad networks and services who are solely focused on app discovery and promotion, but also others partially focused on App discovery (blogs, review sites, social networks) play a big part to what gets “discovered” or not. This is the learning based on a research by Forrester Group.

They key take away is: App discovery is not and will never be “owned” totally by a platform although it is clear that the discovery of apps still take place in the store in a large proportion.

The same happens in other verticals like music (do you discover all your music on iTunes only? certainly not) or even physical products you want to buy (do you discover all you want to buy on Amazon? certainly not).

There is always a disconnect between the “discovery” phase and the “purchase” process. They can be tightly or loosely coupled, or completely decoupled. And this is why a big chunk of the mobile app discovery is already not taking place in the app stores in significant proportion: in the news (on TheNextWeb for example), in ads, in magazines, on twitter, on Facebook, in the latest PSY video, on Pinterest, on Google and so on and so forth.

That’s the reality.

On the rankings: why it matters and why it doesn’t

App Discovery is very hard. But app store top rankings (on iOS mostly) are known as the Holy Grail of discovery. Unless you get featured by Apple or Google, this is the second most effective way to get discovered. Anyone who has already reached the top 25 rank of a given country store knows exactly what we mean. They generate pure organic downloads (sometime twice what you would normally get by not getting there) without much effort because millions of users are checking them every day. Leader boards are popular. And rightly so.

What everyone is secretly thinking is “how do i get there?”. This is the first obsessive question we get from developers we work with. The answer is simple “there is no simple way”. You either pay 3rd party ad networks (legit or not) or be lucky enough to enjoy one of the following:

1. Apple/Google/Amazon features you (App of the week, Deal of the week … ).
2. You have an massive existing app user base and self promote your app (eg Zynga Games, Temple run 2 / Temple run).
3. You run a massively popular website where you suggest your users to download your app (eg run youtube.com, maps.google.com from your mobile browser and see how they suggest you to download their app).
4. You obtain a massive PR coverage (which sometimes need out of pocket money) in short period of time. If you make the cover of the New York Times and are mentioned the same day on CNN expect to jump to the top 10 rank.
5. You have a stunning app that will generate over time a massive network effect. Eg Instagram/Snapchat/Whatsapp.

That’s it. Nothing else.

What you need, really, is as many downloads as possible in a short period of time per store to raise to a rank. Everyone knows that. But the difficulty is how to make it happen.

Unfortunately getting high in the rankings doesn’t matter in itself. Too many developers are only obsessed with top ranks vs creating a sustainable continuous store presence – and many times because they have been advised by marketing agencies to do that or are just seeking the dream of vanity spotlight. They just don’t invest enough energy on a comprehensive marketing plan. It’s fine to build momentum but you also need to keep growing and keep engaging users. Ranks matter only if they are part of a larger equation which includes engagement metrics and also strategies to keep growing continuously (read this great Quora thread on the topic).

This obsession of getting to top ranks has created a myth that only ranks matter to get discovered. It’s about time developers wake up and get deeper into the customer lifecycle. This is also the role of App discovery services and ad networks to educate developers in that direction.

App Discovery and Ad Networks can’t guarantee top ranks (technically)

So… can you buy as many download as possible in a short period of time?

Let’s talk about the “paid” discovery and how ad networks operate. You can find in the market two type of solutions. Those who will guarantee a ranking result (“pay me, get to the top 10”) those who will not guarantee a ranking result.

We have been interacting with many small and large networks and we can confidently say that many known networks never guarantee top ranks because either:

1. they don’t actually know App Store numbers (yes!)
2. their ad platform is based on bidding and therefore the outcome is unpredictable
3. they “sell” [more precisely “make you pay”] only traffic generated and not downloads or even less ranks (eg Facebook, iAd)
4. they don’t want or even can’t (by lack of reach)
5. they sell CPI (cost per install) but without any guarantee of delivery

Actually the last words are critical: no “guarantee of delivery”

You can go to Admob and ask to buy 100 000 clicks on a given date: it does not mean you will obtain them. Why? Because other advertisers will bid for the same user “attention” and the ad network is not even in the capacity of guaranteeing anything. It doesn’t mean networks don’t provide boost packages if you want to… But rarely that will be enough.

Most ad networks are designed first provide a way to accelerate your growth: not to guarantee or even less game top ranks. Does that mean you can’t reach a top rank using ad networks? The answer is “Yes. You can *buy* ranks” But they will not guarantee anything and most of the time their ad platform is not even designed for this. That’s why their reporting does not even report on “ranking”.

Actually if you want to reach a top rank you will need a combination of several ad networks at once. It requires a lot of manpower and coordination. In fact, many companies have a “growth team” whose job is only to put those complex plans together.

Now what about App discovery services? Some of them (like Appsfire) also run ads. Very few of them guarantee or even have the power to provide a “boost” to high ranks. App discovery services typically provide an additional layer to help users find apps in a different way (social discovery like Heyzap, age oriented like AppoLearning, editorial oriented like Appadvice, and so on…).

Of course all of those solutions may have an impact in the rankings but they are not designed to replace them and they are not designed to systematically place apps in the top ranks, day after day, specially if you want to reach all the key geographies (USA, France, Germany,..) at once. They are designed first to provide healthy continuous, targetted and incremental growth.

Let’s also remember that overall ads represent a tiny fraction of the global discovery (6% according to this report).

Does that mean paid advertising is a bad thing for apps? Does that mean reaching a high rank is bad? Of course not. Paid growth is fine. Why? Because Mobile apps are a business first and not a charity activity. No developer can be blamed for trying to grow his baby by using paid advertising solutions.

Paid advertising is not evil. Certain practices only are evil.

Our Suggestion: Better standards for App discovery and Promotion

By now things should be a little clearer. But is that enough? Can we, as an ecosystem, live in a world where app discovery has not managed to gain the full trust of all its parties (users and developers)?

Mobile advertising is still young and very much unregulated. Until recently you could still find ads that did not look like ads (see image below), or full screen ad formats you could not even close (meaning forcing you to “artificially” click on an ad).

Ad networks and App discovery services are still in search for a better tomorrow. Not just for performing better but also to become more tolerated and enjoyed and useful to users.

Here are a few ideas or elementary principles on which a healthy app discovery and promotion industry can build upon. They are actually more common sense than anything else. Those principles concern both users and developers/publisher.

Transparency with the user

1. Disclose clearly to your users you are an ad network (iAd and Admob do that very clearly) or an App discovery with ads. In other words be transparent about whether your are a paid or unpaid discovery solution. This matters because users need to understand your primary motivation.
2. Separate clearly ads from content and if you can’t make it clear to the user.
3. Disclose advertising when/where used. Promotion and Discovery are different. Users need to know which is what.
4. Do not game “deals” (a deal is a real discount of bonus, not an artificial trick).
5. Make it easy to ignore or even remove ads (fat dismiss button, or in-app purchase option to remove ads).
6. Attribute what is yours and what is not: if a deal is not brought/negotiated by you, your users have the right to know it.
7. Use creatives that are not misleading just to drive installs and maybe disappoint users. in the example below the banner seem to indicate the app is special “today” when we clicked it was pointing to an app that has always been Free…

Transparency the developer/publisher

1. Have a consistent pricing policy for “paid discovery” and “unpaid discovery”

The developer community is small and talks a lot. Applying the same prices and rules to all customers is important. Of course a price grid can change over time when the size or the quality of the inventory evolves. But it is not right to make developer A pay X and developer B pay Y for the same service at the same period. Ad networks with a bidding system have this problem solved by itself and of course their bidding mechanism works the same for all developers. Of course if your service is free to developers they should know it too.

2. Provide a transparent reporting, with source of attribution

You need to know what you’re paying for. The only way is to have a way to fully attribute the success or the failure of a promotion. As a developer you have the right to ask for a transparent tracking so you know exactly, at a granular level, where your traffic is coming from.

This is just to make sure you will not pay for something you did not buy. Even if you didn’t pay for it, it will help you understand what works and what doesn’t. But also it will help you figuring out if the network you’re using is using traffic sources you have not approved.

3. Do not force an app description modification

Your app is being promoted. Good for you. You do not have to promote the service who promotes you in the description of your app.

This practice is common when a developer decides to drop its price. It can be useful to remind the user that such a promotion actually takes place. But it should not be mandatory.

Ad networks and discovery services should only make this optional.

4. Do not promise top ranks.

Apple (and probably Google soon) have made it clear. Do not work with networks who guarantee top spots or even a given number of downloads. They create distortion and friction in a market that needs to be fluid and organic. Facebook, iAd, Chartboost, Admob, Millennial,….do not guarantee a top rank. If, this is your goal, as a developer, then find your way to it and if you get your result, great! But remember this is not enough as Dan Porter (OMGPoP former CEO) recently said it.

Conclusion: What about the App stores?

We can’t speak for everyone and each company is free to adopt any rule they want, including marketing agencies and consulting companies who advise app developers. We just think the bar needs to be raised and trust reinforced.

This is a fast moving market. Maybe lawmakers will bring a different context, maybe industry organizations (like the IAB – the internet advertising bureau or the MMA – mobile marketing association) will look at it from a different angle. What we believe is that this market needs to be understood better and needs to be operated by high standards to grow and align with the interest of all parties.

At this moment it is not clear if Apple’s decision concern all app discovery services or only a few of them (remember Appshopper is back?) or whether it will also extend to ad networks as well (all eyes on Facebook). Future will tell. But one thing is certain: ad networks and app discovery services are sources of traffic that can be beneficial to users and the platform they live in. This works with music, this works with books, this works with movies. Users want and need trusted out-of-store sources to make decisions. There is no reason this cannot work with apps.

But on this, only the Platforms can decide.

“Freemium is not what it used to be”

“How can i pay my Palo Alto rent, only with a Free app”

“It’s just too hard to make money today”

“App Discovery just sucks. Appsfire, Please do something!..”

Those are some private quotes we’ve been collecting from App Developers for the past 3 years. Developers need a better solution to make money. It’s not just enough to get users. Someone need to pay for the bills too. 

It is well known that getting users today is quite easy. All you have to do is pay, ask Apple kindly, or hire a bot farm in China. But that is solving only one part of the equation: User traction.

How do you really make money out of a free app? Cause let’s remember most downloaded apps are by far Free apps.

Appsfire has been working on reinventing app discovery for the past three years. And today we’re introducing a solution to finally solve the problem of monetization for free apps.

And we call it “App for Cash“

The basic idea is simple. Appsfire is aggressively and obsessively negotiating with all the top developers of Free apps. Every day we will propose wide selection of great Free apps but at a reasonable higher Price. 

Why would a user want Free apps for a paid price? A few great reasons

1. You support the developer of the app you love so much (well, in theory)

2. no more crappy ads for apps showing up already in the top 10 ranks, every one has downloaded twice by mistake

3. No more funky invite system and reminder to open an app, you have no idea in which folder it is stuck.

4. you’ll get a wonderful “thank you” card send to you by Fedex or regular mail based on the country (for certain countries, we’ll have to use fax or telegram)

5. 10% of the revenues will be paid to the UDA (unemployed Developer association) to sustain the ecosystem

So many great reasons. Imagine for a second

Temple Run for  $4.99! SnapChat for $9.99!

So what will the app look like?

Very much like the current Appsfire (Screenshot above) which highlight the best deals But with unique breakthrough features

1. Price up alert: track any free app, the moment it become paid > you get notified

2. Price filter: Filter for only 1.99, 2.99, 3.99 and more for users willing to spend particularly a lot

3. Fake activity: we will highlight so called “Paid apps” which, most of the time are free but get paid from time to time to give the illusion they are “great paid apps”

4. Price Cheater” We will highlight and filter apps that are Free with in-app purchase but decide to abandon the in app purchase to become Paid only. To get in App for Cash you need to be a real FREE app first. No tricks

5. Worst deals ever: find the apps that did not raise their price enough. 

6. A negative notification system: if we notice you do no spend enough on App for Cash, we’ll send you negative notifications (this is the -1 you see on top) that will possibly destroy your App for Cash account if you do not take actions.

7. Every day we’ll add an crazy funny joke to the highlight of the day. Why? because if you have to spend $10 on a app, it’d be better funny. Ah?

The Cherry on Pie

Because Apple does not seem to be very worried with incentivized downloads, we have built a unique program. We call it “Cash for Cash”. Users will actually get paid to download paid apps. Obviously we won’t be able to pay you 100% of the value of the App. So instead you’ll get a special “virtual cash” each time you buy a paid app.

What is this Virtual Cash good for? You can convert it in Bitcoins each time you reach our “Fortnox spend level”. We don’t have all the details nailed yet, but don’t worry – it will be well worth it

A healthy Ecosystem

No more race for top ranks (because really? who cares?) , No more unpaid bills at your favorite Coffee chain, No more dirty tricks to get money.

What the App Discovery industry need is a new standard. A new way. A new Path (by the way, we’ll try get Path “Paid” before they decide to do it themselves) 

Apple will surely welcome such a counter intuitive initiatve

We love it. (Nearly) All our team was behind this project. 

We can’t wait to see how this will change our industry. 

We’re submitting the app in the coming days. We planned a special announced on Money Magazine, once it’s live