Google has been testing a few new sale features on the Play Store for past month, and now, the search giant has pushed the green button. Select developers had the functionality to set sale prices that showed up on the purchase button and even give the paid app for free. With the feature now official, Google has set up a support page for developers with all the relevant info on the subject.
It is best to learn few important things before one goes to set apps to free. First of all, the new sale system can be located under the Pricing and Distribution in the dev console. Developers can set their app on sale for a minimum of one to a maximum of eight days. Every app can be on sale once every 30 days i.e. there must be a gap of 30 days between the start of a new sale and the end of a prior sale. Earlier, developers could only change the pricing for an app, but these tools include proper support in the way prices are displayed in the Play Store.
Paid apps and games can now be made free under the new sale system, however, this will impact the developer stats. Free downloads won’t show up in the console as buyers and the app will not appear in any top paid list during the sale tenure. Temporary free apps will remain free for the users who download the same during the sale time.
How to create the sale for paid apps and games
Create sales for paid apps
You can create a sale to offer your paid apps at a discounted price. When users view your app on the Play Store, they’ll see both the sale price and the original price.
Set up a sale
- Go to your Google Play Developer Console.
- Select an app.
- Select Pricing & Distribution > Create sale.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to name your sale and set up the start and end date. The sale name will only be seen within your Developer Console and won’t be visible to users.
- Select Create sale price.
- To offer your app for a discounted price: Enter your sale price (in the default currency). We’ll use the price you enter as the base for calculating market-specific prices.
- To offer your app for $0 temporarily: Select the button next to “$0 sale.” Keep in mind, a $0 sale is temporary and is not the same as permanently offering your app for free.
- By default, all checkboxes will be selected and the sale will be offered globally. If needed, use the checkboxes to select specific countries where you want to offer the sale.
- Select Schedule sale. Your sale will begin according to the start date you entered during step 4.
Guidelines & requirements
Sales & pricing templates
Since each sale is created per app, sales won’t be supported by pricing templates.
If you’ve created a sale for an app that’s part of a template, you’ll need to stop the sale or wait until the sale completes before you can make any changes to the template.
