Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
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Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#2I'm really enjoying these articles. Thanks for sharing.
Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#3I'm really enjoying these articles. Thanks for sharing. Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
Hi, Anirudh here, and thanks for reading. Although iAds eCPM has dropped, we normally still manage high single digit figures. Our revenues from ads have roughly halved, but there are the odd anomalies in eCPM rates. For instance, yesterday was pretty stellar at a $17.7 eCPM average. Certainly, late last year, especially when iAds was first launched in the UK, ad revenue and CPM rates were at their peak.
However, by moving onto the Mac App Store at an early stage with popular apps, we have shifted from solely relying on large ad revenues as our income source to paid app income. Our overall daily turnover ratio between paid app earnings and ad revenue is now roughly 50-50.
Open to answering any more questions directly here on HN, so do keep them coming.
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#4Thanks for sharing as well.
Seems that you had a three pronged approach to success:
1. Create something that has a proven market, and do it well (Talking Tom Cat clone) 2. Viral marketing (Youtube videos and Facebook sharing) As well as cross app promotion 3. Create more apps with the same formula and framework already set up.
This should work for a lot of other devs as well, although they may not see the same level of success as these gentlemen.
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#5I'm really enjoying these articles. Thanks for sharing. Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
Hi, Anirudh here, and thanks for reading. Although iAds eCPM has dropped, we normally still manage high single digit figures. Our revenues from ads have roughly halved, but there are the odd anomalies in eCPM rates. For instance, yesterday was pretty stellar at a $17.7 eCPM average. Certainly, late last year, especially when iAds was first launched in the UK, ad revenue and CPM rates were at their peak. However, by m…
Thank you so much for the response. It's really insightful. I haven't read too much about developer experiences on the Mac App store, so I'm really looking forward to your next blog post. Thanks again!
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#6There's a real nugget of wisdom in listening to angry customers. So many customers will say something nice to not offend.
When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say.
So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this person or other who liked their startup. I always ask did anyone say they didn't like it? Usually they say sure but I just ignored them - big mistake.
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#7There's a real nugget of wisdom in listening to angry customers. So many customers will say something nice to not offend. When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say. So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this pers…
You've kind of hit the nail on the head right there. We made precisely the same mistake with CopterKid, believing it to be virtually faultless in every regard. It's all about being sensible enough to decipher a well-wished constructive/negative criticism from a downright trollish one.
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#8I love these posts, and I am rooting for you guys, but find it a little depressing that you first started making real money by cloning someone else's crappy novelty fluff app.
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#9I see all your apps are free, what are your thoughts on paid apps?
Re: Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
#10There's a real nugget of wisdom in listening to angry customers. So many customers will say something nice to not offend. When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say. So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this pers…
I believe Erik Ries said much of the same thing in a talk I saw once (can't find it now, of course). The gist of it was that nobody likes to get angry, and angry customers are therefor especially important because they actually care enough about your product to get angry at you for screwing it up.