I've been approached by the MacAppADay folks asking me if I want to give away a mere 5000 copies of one of my apps, like, for no money. This is just wrong on so many levels that I feel compelled to write something in case any other Mac developers out there are feeling crazy enough to get involved in something like this.

1. Write cool Mac app.
2. Give it to some guy with a flashy website.
3. Don't charge for it.
4. ???
5. Profit

This is not a business plan, this is a recipe for killing your sales figures, pissing off all your users and generally going out of business and here's why:

Users expect support

The app might have cost them nothing to download, but it will cost you every time they get in touch with you because they've lost their serial or they can't figure something out.

People don't read the small print

So you've given away your app for free, but in the small print you've stated there are no free updates or there are some other limitations. Result = annoyed users who suddenly find they can't use your app any more because upgrading to Leopard broke it or they hit some other limitation. Users go and slag your app off on their blog and to their friends. Goodwill--;

They have no incentive to upgrade

You've given your app away for free once, why should they bother to pay for an upgrade when they can wait and see if you'll give them something else for free? If you don't then it's no skin of their nose, they'll just find another free solution.

It will piss off your paid customers

Not only are your paid customers now competing with hoards of people who've not paid for your support time and attention but they feel gutted that they paid for your app when they could have had it for nothing. Why should they pay you to upgrade in future if they think there is a chance you'll give your app away for free again in the future?

You're not Microsoft or Sony

Companies like Microsoft and Sony can afford to sell things at a loss and make money back selling add-ons like games and services - very, very few shareware developers, if any, can use this kind of business model. There is absolutely no evidence that any goodwill/advertising created by giving away your app for free to thousands of people will generate any actual return in terms of increased future sales. What's far more likely is that you'll undermine your future sales for months to come.

What's free today is free tomorrow

What you think because you gave away your app away for free for a day that people will suddenly pay for it tomorrow? No, tomorrow people will share it with their friends, stick it on Limewire and torrent sites and they'll continue to enjoy its 'freeness'. You gave it away free in the first place, it's hardly a difficult moral decision to give a copy to someone else now is it?

So dear fellow developers, before you jump on to someone else's profit making, marketing bandwagon, think about what the consequences will be for both your business and your existing user base.