App Store Milestone: $10K

http://www.ear-fung.us/2012/01/09/app-store-milestone/

by Gertig • 15 years ago

149 60 15 years ago

chubs2• 15 years ago

Thanks for posting that. I'm in a similar situation with a couple of apps that have done surprisingly well, and am hoping to replicate their success on other apps.

I especially like your marketing idea: qr codes on business cards handed out at a conference. Glad it worked for you!

markrickert13• 15 years ago

Thanks! (original author here). Incidentally, there's ANOTHER industry conference this weekend. I got 500 business cards printed up (double sided with both my apps) to hand out. Other than that, Facebook is the only other real "marketing" I've done.

tstegart3• 15 years ago

Do you know if anyone actually used the QR codes? I don't know anyone who has actually used one. Did you have a way to check if it helped having a QR code on there? Or do you think it was you talking to them and your business card that closed the sale, rather than the QR code?

chubs2• 15 years ago

I think you've also got a good headstart with your wife already being in that industry. Clever marketing.

That's my next mountain, so to speak: how to market my apps. Still scratching my head on that one.

sumukh15• 15 years ago

I've always thought that personal marketing/hawking of apps doesn't do much to drive sales.

The best marketing you can get is through reviews and word of mouth. In my mind, that money is better spent on improving the product.

Gertig• 15 years ago

Handing out business cards for the app at the convention was a smart move. It's amazing that doing something so simple can be so effective yet I find myself getting stuck in the mindset of trying to fix things digitally. Get out of the house!

ryanwaggoner5• 15 years ago

Thanks so much for posting! I think the real key here is that you went after an underserved niche, instead of trying to build something with mass appeal. The app store is crowded for sure, but there are still tons of underserved niches out there just waiting for a good app.

markrickert13• 15 years ago

Definitely. I'm not trying to build the next Cut THe Rope or Angry Birds here.

My wife is my muse and I try and make her life easier. In turn I make others lives easier.

boundlessdreamz• 15 years ago

Completely offtopic: You are using cloudflare. Please Don't!! They use an IP blocklist and block legitimate readers like me. See this screenshot. https://img.skitch.com/20120110-xfpmpw5rww8fajf13a73hm1k3u.j... I use a mac and I'm blocked because there could be a virus in my computer or network??

mapster2• 15 years ago

Could this realistically be scaled to 10 such apps per year for a 100k income?

markrickert13• 15 years ago

That's a good question. I guess the answer depends on if you can find enough underserved niche markets that you know enough about to create something unique and special.

And remember, that $10k was in 6 months. So potentially, we're talking about $20k/yr for this app. 10 apps would be a potential $200k a year.

Right now, I'm content with this being supplementary income, but I never imagined that when I paid that $99 developer fee that I'd do so well.

mapster2• 15 years ago

Congratulations on your success. Shows the market is ripe for attacking niche markets. But you also did some smart marketing as well.

watmough• 15 years ago

The answer just has to be "yes", subject to the number of party-based network marketing type operations, especially those for "soft-goods" such as semi-precious jewelry, soaps/toiletries, candles/ornaments, lingerie/(err)novelties, etc.

Hostessing these sort of deals successfully takes a lot of prep and work up-front, during and after to make sure it runs smoothly, customers are totaled up correctly, orders placed, items delivered etc.

There's likely a wider scope for checklist and CRM-type apps...

itmag2• 15 years ago

http://maxkle.in/how-to-become-rich-even-if-nobody-is-follow...

ja27• 15 years ago

Yes or from fewer, if you can find a good niche:

http://blog.lescapadou.com/2011/10/how-ive-made-200000-in-io...

markrickert13• 15 years ago

I know i'm a bit late on this, but here's a PRIME example of someone using the shotgun effect in the itunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist... 504 apps all with slightly different title and keywords, all with sub-par execution (based on looking @ screenshots)

I think their company name says it all: "FQ Publishing"

phil3• 15 years ago

I wonder if the author changed the title or keywords when he shipped version 2. That's one of those hidden factors that can make a big difference in sales.

(Not to minimize the importance of word of mouth and a great product, of course.)

markrickert13• 15 years ago

Hey Phil, I don't remember WHAT exactly I changed in the keywords from version 1->2, but I'm pretty convinced that making the app prettier and easier to use was a key factor in the growth in popularity.

Keywords are one of those things you don't think about right away, but they can have a HUGE impact on search results in then end.

brc• 15 years ago

I'm curious - if the UI has changed - are people just picking this up from screenshots? With no trial mode, I'm interested in how you think improvments in the software improve sales. Note that I totally agree with this position, but I'm curious as to how this plays out on App Store purchases.

vessenes• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of some stellar advice I read years ago -- to launch a new software product, just hang out in the forums of a group of people focused around a topic / hobby / area of passion.

Ask them what they need. Build it.

This doesn't minimize all the work that goes in, but I think it's a great practical reminder that building for an audience with a need is the first step of product management and product marketing. When Amazon launched the original Kindle Development Kit, I posted in ebook forums asking for 'requests' for apps. I received many, many pages of really pretty good ideas for applications.

I couldn't build any because Amazon turned me down for their early-access program, but I was gratified to see how much time and energy enthusiasts put in to helping design and spec an app.

latitude2• 15 years ago

> Ask them what they need. Build it.

Careful with that. Been there, here's a postmortem - http://v4.swapped.cc/certtime

ryanwaggoner5• 15 years ago

So I read through the whole account, and the whole original thread on logopond. And hindsight is always 20/20, so take this as you will.

First, you never asked if people would pay. I only saw one mention of money exchanging hands in the thread, and it was from someone saying that they wouldn't pay unless it had been proven rock-solid from a legal perspective.

Second, how many people actually landed on the signup page during the time you had the beta up? I think devs often hit the trough of despair and rush to add new features, when the real problem is that they just don't have enough people coming in the front door.

Sorry it didn't work out, though. What's your next project?

reidmain• 15 years ago

> Ask them what they need. Build it.

In my experience it is:

Ask them what they do. Ask them what they want. Distill that down to what they need. Build it.

People regularly don't know what they need but if you ask the right questions you can figure out what is actually important to them and what is stuff they think the need but actually don't.

tobtoh• 15 years ago

I thought this paragraph was particularly insightful:

"I learned a lot from releasing my first iPhone app: Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator... primarily that you shouldn't release an ad-supported app that does not have high user engagement times. The app was a utilitarian "one use and quit until you want to use it again" type of app. I can see an RSS reader or a Facebook client being free with ads, since there's a long user engagement period, but this revenue model simply didn't work with my application type."

It's a pretty good 'rule of thumb' on when you should or shouldn't consider ads as your monetisation method.

coryl• 15 years ago

Thank you for sharing, its appreciated by people like me who are new to mobile development.

Question: Can you disclose any information about your in-app sales? You mentioned you sold customizable background art, what was the price point? How many did you sell? Roughly what percentage of app owners end up doing an in-app purchase?

Thanks

asmosoinio• 15 years ago

The OP answered this on the blog:

---- No problem. Those are some pretty complex stats, but I'll try and simplify them for you.

Total In app purchase revenue to date: $460.73. That came from 545 total transactions averaging out to about $0.85 per transaction ($1.22 before Apple's cut). I have some art that's $0.99 and some is $1.99, but nothing over that. You can see the percentage of the whole by looking at the last graph. Anything at the bottom of Sept-Dec that isn't that large maroon color was an in-app purchase.

During that same time frame, I had 3,007 purchases of the app, which means on average, 18% of my users made an in-app purchase (not taking into account users that purchased more than one item or users that upgraded from previous versions and then bought an item). If I take into account my total user-base of 4,748, then about 11.5% of users made an in-app purchase so far.

As I understand it, the in-app purchase for a game like Jetpack Joyride hovers around 1% or so (read that somewhere, can't remember where). So 18% and 11.5% are pretty dang high in-app purchase numbers. ----

karpathy• 15 years ago

A lot of success can come from creating simple apps for undeserved niches. I've made about $10,000 over last two years selling an app that is literally 5 images in a tab view. It took me one weekend to make. I know it's not too much, but it feels good in the pocket, the money flows steadily every day no matter what and requires absolutely no maintenance or additional work on my part, ever. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in the long tail of the distribution.

itmag2• 15 years ago

Very interesting. Tell me more :)

markrickert13• 15 years ago

A quick google search for his username will pull up his website and you can find his app there.

Great job on the app, and congrats on the success!

tsunamifury2• 15 years ago

My business partner makes over $120,000 a year with just three apps in a very particular field where a limited number of users are willing to pay 19.99 for it.

Don't just join the 99c app game -- if you are looking at joining the app market, examine what unique expertise you can bring to it and target a niche.

sumukh15• 15 years ago

Yes. This is probably the biggest mistake that people make as newcomers to the app store. If you believe that your app is worth $X, you should be charging $X.

tsunamifury2• 15 years ago

Unrelated: I see that you helped the Freemont Unified build an app. A guy on the board of directors there helped me get off the ground on creating education apps, are you still working there or was it a one-off project?

ryanwaggoner5• 15 years ago

Speaking as an iOS dev with a couple apps in the works (one done and ready to submit, one in development), the issue I see with that is that it seems to be higher risk. What if I pour so much time into this super-premium app and then it doesn't sell? Whereas I can do five .99 or 1.99 apps in the same amount of time.

But then I think about how crowded the app store is and how bad discoverability is, and maybe going after a super-small niche with a high price is actually the only low-risk strategy left (long tail). And maybe since it's so niche, you win just by showing up, not by building a super premium app. Which then begs the question of how you find ideas like that.

I'm rambling, but I'd love thoughts from those who have dabbled in the tiny-niche-but-high-cost model on the app store.

eps• 15 years ago

> Which then begs the question of how you find ideas like that.

One option is to go after a professional audience, i.e. create apps that are likely to be paid from a corporate account. Look at LogMeIn - they have a remote desktop access app aimed at sysadmins and it sells for $99 with 5 star rating. Look at Office-like apps - $10-$20 a pop and they sit firmly in top grossing charts. Anything useful that qualifies as a business expense just begs for a higher ticket price.

sumukh15• 15 years ago

> What if I pour so much time into this super-premium app and then it doesn't sell?

The advantage of being able to set the price dynamically will let you experiment. What I've found is that holding the quality of the app constant, you can experiment with the pricing. You might get 10 sales at $5 or 50 sales at $1. If you believe your app really does provide $5 worth of value, it will probably sell. If it doesn't you can experiment with the pricing. It's only "super-premium" if users think it is.

>> Whereas I can do five .99 or 1.99 apps

I'd discourage going this route. For most people this will make more money ... Wait! Don't stop reading. What it won't do though is increase the quality of the applications you put out. You'll end up with 4 or 5 mediocre apps in most cases that roll on getting a few bucks a day. You might get lucky and have an app with better sales, but it's not the same as a rockstar performance by one app. OP's example is a good illustration of this.

>> win just by showing up, not by building a [great] app.

Nope, that's unfortunately not how it works. Sorry. You can win by executing on idea that you have validated. It's much like a startup.

>> how you find ideas like that

You see a need and you fill it. I think that's the best way to put it. Since I can't really help you find an idea, I can tell you this much, you should validate your idea first if you want to reduce risk.

phil3• 15 years ago

The good news is that you don't have to choose. Launch at $0.99 and look for huge exposure. If that happens, great! If not, you can experiment, get a sense of what the elasticity curve for that particular app looks like, and price it optimally.

cageface• 15 years ago

If you're working solo this is a much better approach, particularly if you don't have a real graphic designer on board.

epaga• 15 years ago

My experience with our educational app is that we actually sold less units(!) when we tried going down from $3 to $1 - we changed nothing other than the price so we have to assume our target group (teachers, mainly) is more attracted to apps > $1 - presumably because they assume them to be higher quality (and may actually be right about that). Has anyone had a similar experience?

ifearthenight• 15 years ago

Thanks for sharing. Always interesting to read through challenges others have faced/are facing.

signalsignal3• 15 years ago

Congratulations. If you don't mind me asking, what do you use for data storage in iOS? In other words do you use Core Data, SQLite, or something else?

markrickert13• 15 years ago

Most of the apps I write use transient data loaded from a server, so I download and cache the JSON from my server locally and build the tables, etc. that way.

I haven't delved into CoreData just yet. It looks daunting, and I've only been doing this for a year, but it's next on my list to learn.

Check out my github account for some of my iOS stuff. (my username on hn = my username on github)

signalsignal3• 15 years ago

Thanks, but I am a little lost. I take your answer to mean the Checkout Helper app uses JSON to read from a database for the column of prices and discounts, but how is it cached locally?

I am just wondering how to do something similar in an app I have built, calculates a column of numbers, but in a different knowledge domain from your app.

App Store Milestone: $10K

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