Five Strategies To Find Amazing Deals On Android Apps and Games

Everybody Loves a Deal!

Deals are addicting, and everyone wants one.

Black Friday lines and driving across town to get slightly cheaper gas prices are just a few examples of what we will do to bag a bargain.

Thankfully, to get a deal on Android apps and games does not require the stamina of a professional endurance “line stander” (you know who you are). Android bargains are just a few clicks away if you know where to look.

Today, I will reveal to you the five strategies I use to hunt through the mountains of apps out there to find a sweet steal.

The Old Standbys Honorable Mention

Most of you probably already know about Amazon’s free paid app of the day and maybe even about GetJar’s Gold program – in fact, if you stop by this site much, I know that you know about these sites because I talk about them all the time.

Both of these places are excellent sources of android app deals.

Free is always the best deal.

Most of the time, however, you will not find many of the apps you want for free.

Many publishers are not going to just give their digital work away for nothing, but many are willing to offer limited time discounts — aka, the deals we are in search of.

Finding apps and games on sale can be a real challenge partially because the Android Market is so vast and includes ALOT of crap apps that have to be sifted through.

5 Deal Stalking Methods To Find The Perfect App At The Right Price

Hot Deals

AppBrain App Market IconThe first strategy is to spend a little time over at AppBrain - which is an Android Market browser that allow many more sorting and filter options. In fact, AppBrain was pretty much the real Android Market browser for a long time until Google got their act together.

Some of the available filters at AppBrain will help us find fresh price drops and apps that have received a massive amount of recent activity  — “Hot Today” and “Hot This Week“.

I usually start with the “hot” apps lists, which will usually reveal rather quickly if a publisher is doing a one day promotion that people are thrilled about because there is a sudden massive flurry of activity.

If you do not want to visit the site often, you can follow these categories on Twitter or get category based feeds in your favorite feed reader.

Love The Filters!

Hot FlamesMy second strategy also takes place on the AppBrain website.

Once you choose a category on AppBrain, you can choose a filter called “price reduced” located in the bottom left.

This is one of the best ways to see which apps have suddenly become less expensive.

You will find that there is some junk to wade through — look for the apps that have high download numbers overall.

Knowing the Right Words

The third strategy I use to find apps and games on sale is to go to the Android Market and search for “sale” and maybe throw in to the search box a few other few key phrases like “limited time only”, “promotion”, and “holiday [insert the name of an approaching holiday] deal”.

These searches will bring up two types of apps – 1) Apps that are ABOUT sales and 2) Apps that ARE ON sale. You’ll have to weed through them a bit.

Amazon Always Has a Deal On Something – Even Apps

The fourth strategy is to check the deals page at the Amazon Appstore. It changes weekly – I watch this like a hawk because the deals there are often exclusive to Amazon and do not exist in the Android Market.


I have picked up very expensive apps here like Quick Office, Easy Tether, Touchdown, and others for up to 75% off their usual price.

Let Others Do The Work For You

SlickDealsThe final fifth strategy I use to bring home the app bargains relies on the community driven site “SlickDeals”.

After setting up a free account, you can set up alerts for keywords that relate to a specific deal you are looking for.

For example, I might set up a deal alert with the word “android app” or “Android Market”. If I am looking for a specific app, I set up a deal alert using that app’s name.

If someone posts a deal using any of the keyword deal alerts I’ve set up, I will be sent an email and a message on the SlickDeals site itself.

You have the choice of whether or not to have these alerts only emailed to you or only sent to you as a message on the SlickDeals website — or you can choose to have both done to cover all of your bases.

You can have an e-mail instantly sent to you any time someone posts a deal regarding the word that you set as your alert key. I have found this very effective especially when hunting for inexpensive games.

The Sum of It All!

To find stellar bargains on Android apps and games, try using these five strategies:

  1. Check AppBrain’s Hot Deals categories .
  2. Use the “Price Reduced” filter at AppBrain.
  3. Use the Android Market search box to find publishers offering sales and limited time deals.
  4. Stalk the Amazon Deals page religiously.
  5. Join the SlickDeals community and set up some instant deal alerts.

That’s the skinny ya’ll, but do not forget to add coming back here every once in a while to see our Special Deals category ;) .

Keep on Rock’n!

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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Ten Sweet Apps For 10 Cents Each – Google’s 10 Billion Promo At The Android Market

Got a Dollar?

If you have just one dollar, you can get 10 premium apps from the Android Market with Google’s “10 Billion Promo”. 10 Billion Downloads of Android Apps is a huge milestone for the Android Market, and Google wants to celebrate.

!0 Days, 10 new Apps a Day, 10 Cents Each. This means just $10 = 100 premium paid apps on the Android Market.

Each paid premium app is only 10 cents — that’s right — just a dime!

10 Billion Google Promo

From the Official Google Blog

To celebrate this milestone, we partnered with some of the Android developers who contributed to this milestone to make a bunch of great Android apps available at an amazing price. Starting today for the next 10 days, we’ll have a new set of awesome apps available each day for only 10 cents each.

Today, we are starting with Asphalt 6 HDColor & Draw for KidsEndomondo Sports Tracker ProFieldrunners HDGreat Little War GameMinecraftPaper Camera,Sketchbook MobileSoundhound Infinity and SwiftKey X.

10 Billion Promo Graph

Already Own Them From Another Market?

Some of these apps have been offered for free either as one day wonders at Amazon or part of the Gold Getjar promo, which means that you may already own these apps in some form or another.

That is great — BUT — I highly recommend purchasing these apps so that you have them coming from the Android Market where security is a priority and the apps come with updates (and in my personal experience, it seems like developers tend to update their Market apps before the Amazon ones – GetJar does not even get updates).

Get Hooked Up w/ Google’s 10 Billion Promo Now!

 

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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Songbird’s Free Android Media Player App Keeps Rock’n

Songbird Music Player Android App Screenshot PlayerFrom the archives [originally published in April]:

I don’t know about you, but the cute short black birdie with the DJ headphones makes me smile every time.

I am excited that there is a new Android app, which you can get from Songbird or the Android Marketplace.

Songbird has had a desktop client for a some years now that made listening to music on the internet an easier feat.

It was made to look a bit like Itunes and Firefox – sort of like the kid they would have.

As a result, we have this really cute black bird and a super sweet media player.

Right now, it is simple, sleek, and sexy.

Oh, and its completely free!

I’m excited to see where this app goes in the future. I hope to see more music browser functionality like its desktop version in the future.

That will make Android’s songbird truly stand out among the rest of the media players on the market.

Maybe Songbird’s attempt to make a stellar Linux media player that has since been discontinued laid the foundation for this very promising Android app.

What are you waiting for? Check it out!

Songbird Music Player IconSongbird Music Player Android Market QR Code

 

The best access to your music collection on your Android device.

Songbird for Android is an elegant music player for your mobile devices. Browsing your music collection is easy, and playback controls are always accessible. The unique ‘now playing’ drawer offers quick access to album art and additional details, including Facebook and Flickr integrations.

Key Features:
* Clean and clear interface with unique ‘now playing’ drawer
* Matching widget with album art
* Lock screen widget
* Flickr photo-stream of artist images
* Podcast support
* Facebook ‘Like’ integration
* Playlist creation and editing
* Set track as ringtone
* Headset support (wired and Bluetooth)
* Bluetooth car audio support
* Audioscrobbler support
* Full-featured search
* Super-simple music browse + playback control
* Localized in 26 languages

Songbird Screenshots

Songbird Music Player Android App Screenshot LibrarySongbird Music Player Android App Screenshot Widget

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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Two Bucks Free At Amazon MP3 For One Tweet

Amazon MP3I love the Amazon tweet promotions because I love free stuff, especially free money. What is great about these giftcard freebies is that you do not have to spend it right away, and they can just acumulate.

(UPDATE: This particular promotion apparently expires on Halloween – So use it or lose it I guess….)

So far this year, I’ve collected quite a few bucks at Amazon Instant Video, Amazon MP3, and the Amazon Appstore. Most of the time, all they in return is a tweet — I can do that!

Amazon MP3 is an app you should have on your phone anyway, as you can put your entire music collection in the cloud and access it on the go from anywhere. You do not need a Kindle Fire to take advantage of these sweet Amazon service perks.

What are you waiting for? Get in there!

Two Bucks Free at Amazon MP3

Note: This two dollars is only good toward album purchases and not toward individual MP3 songs.

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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Try Grooveshark’s Anywhere Service And Their Android App For Just $1 ($27 dollar value)

Try Grooveshark’s Anywhere Service And Their Android App For Just $1 ($27 dollar value)

Grooveshark_LogoI took advantage of a special deal with Grooveshark about eight months ago or so to get a year for the price of a T-Shirt. It is truely an awesome service. I do not think I would actually pay the monthly subscription cost, but it is worth the special deal prices.

Grooveshark’s base service in the browser player or on their Adobe Air desktop app is free – so if you’ve never heard of Grooveshark, you can see all the cool stuff you can do before spending a dollar to get the Android service. Their in-browser player is a lot like iTunes’ user interface – I am very impressed with it overall. There is even a thriving social ecosystem where you can follow other people’s playlists, etc.

Continue reading “Try Grooveshark’s Anywhere Service And Their Android App For Just $1 ($27 dollar value)” »

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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A Few More Google Music Invites – Join the party!

A Few More Google Music Invites – Join the party!

I have 3 more Google Music invites to give away to the first three comments

Dana Rock

Dana Rock

Owner/Editor of Rock That Mobile - a growing network of blogs about all things mobile.

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