Just a few days ago it became known that GameDuell, one of the central players in the German mobile software market, and Vostu, Brazil’s largest social gaming company, announced support for GetJar’s new virtual currency – GetJar Gold. Read below about why they decided to support an independent Android app store.
In fact, the new currency is not yet in wild demand among mobile software developers. Its support – since the start of the project this February – has been included in its SDK by just over a hundred companies. However, given that the audience of GetJar Gold users is already about 1 million people, there is a suspicion that soon there will be much more developers supporting the virtual currency.
Moreover, this is supported not only by the number of users and as much as $ 42 million invested in GetJar by the investment companies Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management, but also, for example, the following “insignificant” detail: those developers who started using the GetJar Gold virtual currency doubled their profits, and the conversion rate in some cases increased seven to eight times.
What’s the secret?
Unlike other incentive services that ask you to watch ads or download some sponsored application, users earn GetJar Gold every time they download an application – any application. Moreover, in the future, users can spend the earned currency on paid applications like the premium version of Angry Birds Space, and even on in-app purchases.
Users are “vitally” interested in downloading or buying new applications. Moreover, in the latter case, they are sure that everything they spent will eventually return when they want to purchase the application not for real money, but for GetJar Gold.
The service itself works approximately as follows: 100 GetJar coins is 1 dollar earned from advertising. Coins are paid to users for downloading and purchasing programs. They, in turn, can be spent on the purchase of paid applications. When buying coins, they will be converted into real money, which will go to the developers’ account. At the same time, the service holds only 10%, which, you will agree, is also quite attractive for developers.
So it turns out that GetJar pays users incentives from its own advertising revenue.
According to Ilja Laurs, founder and director of GetJar, this system is viable because it is designed for a long-term period. The more users GetJar has, the more its advertising revenue. That’s why the company considers it normal to reinvest part of earnings to strengthen its own positions.
By the way, it will be possible to get acquainted with representatives of GetJar at the White Nights Mobile Games Conference, which will be held on June 14 and 15 in St. Petersburg.