Mobile Classifieds App Grabio Guarantees Every Listing Will Sell

Grabio, an iPhone app for location based classifieds, just announced via Twitter and Facebook; a new guarantee that they will offer. The guarantee states that if you list an item on Grabio, and it doesn’t sell, Grabio will give you 5 dollars. Horatiu Boeriu the founder said, “a while back we raised some money to fund a guarantee like this. We’ve gotten a little traction in Chicago and thought it a good way to incentivize a little more engagement out of our users that look but don’t list.”

The guarantee has a few stipulations. The item has to be posted within 50 miles of the Chicagoland area, has to be listed for at least 30 days and the guarantee can only be exercised once.

There are several start-ups trying to gain market share in the realm of online classifieds; which has thus far been dominated by Craigslist. None have had much success pulling users away from Craigslist however. Craigslist users seem to be fine with the lack of a location based mobile app, thumbnails on site, user profiles and ratings; which is what companies like Grabio try to offer.

Could a monetary guarantee on the listing do the trick?

How Many Downloads Can An App Get While Piggybacking the Success of Another App?

A while back I created an iPhone app called Popular Brands. It is a logo guessing game. The app shows a small portion of a logo and slowly zooms out and the player trys to guess what the company is before it zooms all the way out. The downloads were not impressive, getting around 10 a day. But one day about 3 weeks ago, it got 50, the next day 100, the day after that 200. On those same days, the iAd revenue went 50 cents, 1 dollar, 2 dollars. 

Apple Doesn’t Allow $1,000 App Pricing Anymore

Up until a few days ago, I had thought a developer could choose any price to sell their app on the app store. This is not the case anymore. iTunes Connect, the website tool for iOS developers to prepare their apps for sale on the App Store; gives a free option and 85 tiered sell prices. Where tier 1 is 99 cents and tier 85 is $999.99. In the past, apps like I Am Rich which did nothing and still charged a $1,000 dollars, were taken off the App Store. Apple, since then, has made an effort to ensure that all apps allowed onto the store offer a little value, even if its just a fart noise.

iPhone Cases; The Bumper Sticker That Covers the Whole Aston Martin

There are some butt ugly iPhone cases in the world.  So ugly in fact that I resisted even getting one till my 4^th year of owning an iPhone.  I see some old farts and young weirdos with these big and bulky cases and its just sad.  I want to keep mine simple and sexy. Having just finished reading the Steve Jobs Biography (absolutely amazing-recommend it) and it is obvious how much jobs loved control.  Ever since the first apple he wanted to completely control the user experience. 

AT&T Begins Data Throttling Customers Before They Even Reach 2GB/month

I’ve owned every single iPhone that’s ever been made. I’ve been with AT&T for close to a decade. I’ve been data throttled a couple times recently. I agree with Matt Burns over at TechCrunch, that AT&T is starting to piss off the important customers; the mavens.

I thought it noteworthy to share my two throttling experiences. The first time it happened, was January. My data usage was at 5GB. When the throttling kicked in, it literally would take me several minutes to load the google homepage(which ain’t that much data). I called up customer support and made them credit me back a dollar for every day I was going to be throttled that month(30/mo equals 1/day, throttling resets at the next pay period).

iPhone App Costs A Dollar; To Buy and To BUY.

There’s a plethora of mobile apps that you can buy for a buck. But there is only one mobile app that you can also buy for a buck. The former being the ability to purchase an app for using/licensing purposes. But the latter being the ability to purchase actual copyright/ownership.

Earlier today an iPhone app developer made a listing on eBay for his app BuckShot. The app sells for a dollar on the iTunes App Store. The opening bid price on eBay is also a dollar. There doesn’t appear to be any reserve. So hypothetically, if there was only one bidder, someone would have the opportunity to buy the app for a dollar or buy the app for a dollar.

eBay seller nSchmidt7 states that this multi-player photo scavenger hunt app has 20,000 registered players and brings in $300/month in revenue. The winning bidder also gets the free/trial version of the app called BuckShot Free.

*UPDATE* As of the morning of Jan 2, the app has had 17 bids and is at $202.50