An App Store Experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: An App Store Experiment

#11

Post by Peroni » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 1:56 PM UTC

sadkingbilly wrote: post #8

Peroni wrote: post #4

Your post prompted me to download the app and my first impressions are that the simplicity of the app is a huge selling point. No pointless nav bars, no curious looking buttons, no walls of text, simple, effective UI. I really like it. Hopefully it will help me drop a few kg's!

"huge selling point" is exactly the problem. I liked the post as well, it was very descriptive. But, I feel like he gave up by making it free. I'd be more interested if he can turn it around to profit. Although this was much easier to do in the early days of the app store. Less so now.

Yeah, I still suspect there was another, unknown factor at play when the app was made free. I've seen tons of paid apps trickle along at the same rate of downloads after reverting to free. I'd love to know what the catalyst really was.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#12

Post by wisty » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:15 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #7

I feel like I'm missing something, the post keeps saying you need to "create a story around your product" and "you need to sell your app with a story" yet the post never explains what this means, or does it, instead he has made a cool app that wasn't selling and made it free instead and people installed it and liked it. Doesn't this post demonstrate the problems with selling vs. free, not story this or story that?

There's a lot of focus on marketing, especially app reviews. Perhaps he means you need a hook for journalists to work with? For example, the first X, champion team, X meets Y, stunning screenshots, or something. You need a headline a journalist can use.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#13

Post by shurcooL » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

Peroni wrote: post #11

sadkingbilly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"huge selling point" is exactly the problem. I liked the post as well, it was very descriptive. But, I feel like he gave up by making it free. I'd be more interested if he can turn it around to profit. Although this was much easier to do in the early days of the app store. Less so now.

Yeah, I still suspect there was another, unknown factor at play when the app was made free. I've seen tons of paid apps trickle along at the same rate of downloads after reverting to free. I'd love to know what the catalyst really was.

He said that 2nd step (marketing, promotion) was useless and sales didn't change. But perhaps it was the catalyst. Perhaps people were made aware of the app and added it to their mental wish list. Then, when they noticed it became free, they wanted to get it ASAP.

Perhaps, without the "useless" 2nd step, going free would've been equally flat.

Just a thought.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#14

Post by sgdesign » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:26 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #7

I feel like I'm missing something, the post keeps saying you need to "create a story around your product" and "you need to sell your app with a story" yet the post never explains what this means, or does it, instead he has made a cool app that wasn't selling and made it free instead and people installed it and liked it. Doesn't this post demonstrate the problems with selling vs. free, not story this or story that?

I think his point was that he didn't do that, and sure enough he wasn't able to generate any intest around the paid version.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#15

Post by sgdesign » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:29 PM UTC

I find it frustrating that you basically have no chance of getting coverage on blogs unless you spend your life "building a relationship" with bloggers. Look, I don't want to "build a relationship". I want to build an app!

And I know bloggers get a ton of email every day, and not everything is worth covering, but it would be nice to get at least a reply saying "no thanks" once in a while instead of just being ignored…

/rant

Re: An App Store Experiment

#16

Post by kirualex » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:47 PM UTC

How funny that I also done quite exactly the same app which came out something like 2 days after this one... I blogged about it too : http://alexiscreuzot.com/#!/scribble/4

Re: An App Store Experiment

#17

Post by talkingquickly » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:51 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #6

He went free and only had seven other apps in his category, and he made a few dollars. My question is what does it take to build a real business in the app store? Companies have to pay employees, etc. Are 1% of the companies making most of the money? I think it's going to be hard to build a company 99 cents at a time.

This post from flurry [1] suggests that a big chunk of revenue is going to a small proportion of very successful developers (there was a HN post about which companies they were but I can't find it now).

That said it also suggests that revenue is increasingly moving down the long tail which may be a sign small app companies may become more viable.

[1] http://blog.flurry.com/bid/88014/The-Great-Distribution-of-W...

Re: An App Store Experiment

#18

Post by thenomad » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:56 PM UTC

I really don't want to be That Hacker News Comment, but isn't the story here essentially "made an app, tried to sell it, didn't get the success I wanted, gave up"? Or is there some major benefit to the reviews and download figures for the free version I'm not seeing?

(Although this does tell us one very interesting thing - that a topical app on the App Store, with minimal marketing, can get huge downloads if it shifts from paid to free.)

The part of this story that really impresses me is actually the $440 revenue. That's not at all bad for an MVP, and demonstrates there's a market and that the app sells. Those are the kind of indicators I'd look for before pumping a lot more time into the app and attempting to turn it into a real business.

There's every chance - particularly given the subsequent good reviews - that this app could have been an $xxxx/mo success.

Any chance OP can push an update and upsell his happy customers to a paid version, I wonder?

Re: An App Store Experiment

#19

Post by poxrud » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 2:57 PM UTC

If anything, I found his post discouraging. He's built a great app and only managed to get people to notice it when he made it free. If a top20 app only managed to earn under $500 what does it say about the current state of the app market?

Re: An App Store Experiment

#20

Post by Pxtl » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

I'm mostly blown away that he had the app put together in 5 hours. I can't get a development environment set up in 5 hours. I've spent five hours chasing down a trailing comma bug. Teach me, sensei.