by Sarah Perez of Read Write Web

In April, Apple began banning apps using pay-per-install methods, such as those provided by Tapjoy and others. Now W3i, a mobile application monetization company, has come up with what it says is a workaround for developers whose incentivized app install revenue streams have since been closed.

With W3i’s new product called the “Mobile App Ad Platform (MAAP),” developers can offer their iOS apps for free for 24 hours and market them via banner ads that display within other applications.

“Free App of the Day”

Free apps are a big draw for mobile consumers, especially those involved with mobile gaming. The “free app of the day” program on Amazon’s Appstore for Android has been very successful, for example. There, the free apps are used as a lure to get users to try out the Amazon marketplace.

Read more at Read Write Web.

by Kim-Mai Cutler via Inside Mobile Apps

After Apple cracked down on paying for downloads through offer walls in games, developers and monetization companies have been hunting for ways to make up for lost revenue.

W3i, a Minneapolis-based mobile app monetization company, is getting heavily into daily free app promotions. It launched its own free-app-a-day service earlier this year called AppAllStar, and now the company is trying to grow the project by federating free app promotions out into other games. They’re calling it the mobile app ad network (or MAAP for short).

Developers can show W3i’s daily offers for free apps in their games and earn a cut of revenue for every download they drive. W3i didn’t break out the revenue per install a publisher will make, except to say that it would be a “strong majority of the revenue share.” The company said they’re open to negotiating it, depending on the publisher. Developers can control whether they want to show banners, interstitials or other types of units.

Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

by Ryan Kim via Gigaom

Apple’s ban on incentivized installs of mobile apps, once a growing model for app distribution, has killed off one tool for iOS app marketing, but the need to get apps noticed and distributed hasn’t gone away. In fact, with the App Store closing in on half a million apps, it’s only become more imperative.

That reality is pushing app distribution and monetization companies to continue to evolve around Apple’s ban. W3i, once a leader in incentivized installs, has come up with a new alternative app discovery service that it hopes will aid game developers to push downloads while staying within Apple’s rules. The new product, called Mobile App Ad Network, allows game developers to offer their apps for free for a 24-hour period in customizable banner ads that appear in other gaming apps. The new “free app of the day” ads are going into beta today.

Continue reading on Gigaom.

For the second year in a row, W3i has been named one of the Minnesota’s Top Workplaces by the Star Tribune.

More than 1,200 organizations from across the state were invited to participate in The Star Tribune’s Top Workplaces survey with more 60,500 employees providing feedback.

“We’re excited to be recognized again as a top work place in Minnesota.  This recognition is especially important to us because it based solely on employee’s feedback solicited via a survey ,” says Melissa Kron, Manager of Human Resources.  “W3i employees have created a collaborative and fun work environment that challenges us to be creative and innovate in our mission of creating value by connecting people to applications.”

Aside from providing a competitive compensation and benefits package to its employees, W3i invests  in developing its employees.  Among its unique perks, W3i recently started Innovation Friday’s which allows developers at W3i to spend 20% of their time to nurture their technical creativity.

If you’re looking to join a team that continues to rank as one of the best in the state, check out our career page.

People always talk about how cool Google is because they allow their employees to work on whatever they want to 20% of the time. I agree on the coolness factor and I have always been a bit jealous of it. Do you want to know a little secret? W3i does it!

We just had our first W3iDemo to showcase what our Development team has been working during the last 12 Fridays. Innovation oozed out of each developer who presented what they have been working on.

You would think it would be hard to come up with ideas but I just look at what I’m doing and the ideas start flowing.  I just love Innovation Friday. Carl St. Pierre

Each developer only had 7 minutes to demo their projects and every single one of them sacrificed precious demo time to take 1 minute to talk about how they enjoy spending 20% of their time working on things that they want to.

We had demos of iOS apps for internal and external use, internal automation apps that saved employees time, and awesome web apps that you may see some day. The applause by fellow employees after each demo was proof that we are excited and innovative at W3i.

I could go on and on how awesome it is to work at W3i. Click on over to our careers page to see if we have any innovative positions open. You won’t regret it!

Matt Brauchler, Business Intelligence Developer, W3i, LLC
Matt has over 7 years’ experience working in Information Systems. He is a Business Intelligence Developer for W3i with expertise in SQL, Data Warehousing, and Reporting. He is also a lawn perfectionist and enjoys learning new technology.

via Google’s Inside AdWords blog

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

App distribution experts

For more than a decade, W3i has intelligently connected people to apps, successfully growing countless app businesses.

App marketing focus

With a global team of app experts, we have the technology and marketing know how to connect you with the users you need.

In our business, freelancers are hired when there isn’t enough time to do the work ourselves or when we are in need of a skill set that can’t be found internally. Projects ranging from flash banner ads to product marketing videos to coding for applications and more are outsourced to people that have been found on numerous online freelance communities that aggregate a vast amount of people with various skills.

Having been in a position to hire a number of freelancers for our company, there at least three things that I wish I would have known when I started. May you learn from my mistakes.

• Be as specific as possible

-         Details, details, details – you can never have too many of them. Pretend you’re a Type A personality with a bit of Obsessive Compulsive disorder thrown in. I’ve become a firm believer in the fact that you can never provide enough detail for a project. The person that you end up hiring can take or leave the information that you give them… but what you don’t tell them, they won’t know.

-         Know the details ahead of time. Do not lie to yourself and say that they can be figured out as you go along. This will only frustrate the person that you have hired and make the job that much more difficult (plus add to the time it takes to get the project completed). There may be times that you honestly don’t know what you want, but in those cases, be up front and state this in the job requirements. Let the freelancer know if they are going to have creative freedom with the job.

• Thoroughly investigate

-         Most freelance sites have reviews, portfolios, number of jobs worked on and many other details available to potential employers for each of their freelancers. Reading through these will NOT be a waste of your time. Do not just rely on a freelancer telling you that they know how to do something. Get a reference from them for a job similar to what you are asking them to do. Not that all freelancers do this, but I have had a couple of them embellish their skill sets just to get the job that I posted. This led to much frustration on my part and in the end I had to fire those freelancers just to get the job done by someone else who actually had the competence to do it.

• Give deadlines

-         Be very clear about the timeline that you need the project finished in so that your chosen freelancer knows what you expect. Along with their bid, most freelancers will give you a timeline of how long they think it will take them to finish the project. Take the timeline of whomever you have hired and work your deadlines into it. Agree with them on dates for each stage in the process- check-ins, test copies, and final deliverables. The more up-front you can be with these details, the more likely it will be that you have your finished project on time.

While these tips will not guarantee a job well done, they will hopefully help you avoid some common headaches associated with hiring freelancers.  What have you learned from working with freelancers? Sound off below.

W3i’s VP and General Counsel Hayden Creque was recently honored by the Times Media Group as one of Central Minnesota’s 5 Under 40 Business Leaders. The award, in its sixth, seeks to honor business leaders throughout Central Minnesota who display superior  leadership and innovation.

Ryan Ruud, Associate Marketing Communications Specialist, W3i, LLC
Ryan is a new media communicator with a decade of traditional and emerging mass media experience. He uses his passion for apps and connecting people in W3i’s marketing/communications efforts.