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Free Apps
You don't need to do anything special to create a free app so far as the Store is concerned. You write it,
upload it to the Store, have it certified, and then get the word out.
Free apps can serve several purposes:
• Earn you praise and glory from users and possibly other developers.
• Give you experience producing apps (otherwise known as resumé items!).
• Provide a space for marketing your own products and/or services (as opposed to hosting
third-party ads, as discussed in the next section).
The first purpose here is self-explanatory and doesn’t need any elaboration, I hope! If this is your
motivation, I imagine you’re already doing daily or hourly web searches on your name and will be
watching your app’s ratings and reviews like a floor trader watches stock tickers.
As for gaining experience, that’s a great exercise, of course, but be aware that every app you make
available through the Store—along with its ratings and reviews—becomes a permanent part of your
developer reputation. Because of this, uploading apps to the Store before they’re ready—or before
you’re really ready as a developer—could backfire over the long term. You don’t want your reputation
to be weighed down by early experiments when you finally have the idea that’s really going to take off!
To manage this risk, you could start by only sharing apps with other developers who can side-load
whatever packages you make available through some means other than the Store. You might also
consider creating a personal developer account just for your experimental work, keeping it separate
from the account through which you’d want to post your real apps. This way, any negative reputation
from your experiments doesn’t accrue to your serious work; neither does positive reputation, of course,
but that’s a balance you have to find for yourself. Also, creating an extra account will require an
additional annual fee, but that might be well worth it in the end.
As for marketing, what I mean here again differs greatly from ad-supported apps (see the next
section). Here I’m specifically referring to promoting your own business or causes (such as a charity)
through the functioning of the app where you have complete control over the content.
Be aware, however, that the Store certification requirements are somewhat strict where this sort of
thing is concerned. Section 2.1 states, “Your app must not display only ads.” Section 2.3 says, “Your app
must not use its tiles, notifications, app bar, or swipe-from-edge interactions to display ads.” That said,
it’s recognized that the very purpose of some apps is to provide offers, for example, in which case it’s
not really displaying ads, per se, but content for which the user has expressed interest through the act of
installing the app. The policies are targeted more toward apps that pick up ads from an ad provider,
such that the user would get random content showing up on their tiles and other key areas of the user
interface.
The other point to these policies reflects Section 1.1 of the requirements: “Your app must offer
customers unique, creative value or utility in all languages and markets that it supports.” What this
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