Make paid Android app free for a week?

Question

I have a paid Android app that costs some $. I would like to make it free for a certain period of time. I.e. a promotional price of $0. In Google Play, there is an option to make an app free but when I check it, it says:

"Setting the price to Free is permanent; you cannot change to a price later."

That's certainly not what I want! After a week I want to set my original price back! So...

Q: How can I have a promotional price of $0 during, lets say, a week?

Answer 1

This is not possible due to potential ways to exploit the workings of the Google Play store (potentially skewing download counts, and such; a free app is more likely to get downloads, and those will boost its rankings before you make it cost money).

This has been asked before, and the consensus is that it's not possible by design. There are a few solutions in that thread, such as:

• Make your app free, last one week, then have the user use in-app purchasing to continue using it. (Not sure if this is exactly what you hoped, but it's a potential way of monetizing regardless.)
• Put up a free version, and take it down in a week. Users will have to reinstall the app to get the paid version but this would still have the same desired effect.
• Do an update (or have a setting in your app that expires at a certain time) to remove the paid features after a week (this might tick off a lot of users, though).

Sadly, as I said, this is not possible, so you'll just have to work around it best you can.