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Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

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Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#21

Post by clarky07 »

limeyy wrote: post #17

There is alot of similarity between this story, making iOS apps and making AdSense websites 7-8 years ago. One could slap a website together in a week, and one would see the revenue slowly but surely coming in and going up. The strategy of "making a website every week", and the total will make up for it worked too, for a while. Nowadays, every niche is crowded, and often more professionalised with several persons wor…

Yeah, it's definitely similar. Now, I would like to think I didn't cross into the spam realm, but it's a very similar concept, and it's the same problem. Without upkeep and continuous improvement the sites didn't last, and there is a tipping point where you simply can't keep up with so many projects.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#23

Post by MBCook »

clarky07 wrote: post #12
cclogg wrote: post #10

"The decline soon after? That’s the Chomp search update followed by iOS 6 and the card app store layout. So sad." Man, I do find that quite sad... the app store still has some major issues with regards to discoverability. It's funny because you'd think as the app store became more and more saturated, that they'd create more ways to deal with that, but many of the changes have actually made it worse lol :/

There is a lot of hate for the app store by developers, and i've dished out some of it, but frankly with over a million apps it's not an easy problem to solve. I actually think the store is in a pretty decent state right now overall. You can't possibly make everything very visible. It's a pretty good deal to be on the shelves, now you just have to work harder on your own promotion.

> ...but frankly with over a million apps it's not an easy problem to solve.

Maybe a perfect solution isn't easier, but it should be very easy to improve the mess that is the app store. Let's start with a very simple suggestion:

Searching for an app by name should return that app.

Yeah. It's much better than it used to be (today when I search for Tweetbot it pull up Tweetbot) but that hasn't always been the case. You still have the issue that they clearly have a CDN with a slow refresh so that when an app is first released you can find it via links online or features on the front of the app store but not by searching the name.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#24

Post by limeyy »

clarky07 wrote: post #21
limeyy wrote: post #17

There is alot of similarity between this story, making iOS apps and making AdSense websites 7-8 years ago. One could slap a website together in a week, and one would see the revenue slowly but surely coming in and going up. The strategy of "making a website every week", and the total will make up for it worked too, for a while. Nowadays, every niche is crowded, and often more professionalised with several persons wor…

Yeah, it's definitely similar. Now, I would like to think I didn't cross into the spam realm, but it's a very similar concept, and it's the same problem. Without upkeep and continuous improvement the sites didn't last, and there is a tipping point where you simply can't keep up with so many projects.

Yeah, I didn't mean you were in the real of spam, neither was I. But you were addressing "Chomp" update, hurting your sales, no idea what "Chomp" was but with simple websites it happened the same, Google "improved" their search, but while also hurting bonafide smaller websites, just seeing them as collateral damage along the way to keep the real nasty stuff out.

Besides that, these days one needs to setup social media presence, monitor that, be active there as well. And the whole thing of coding, design, marketing... Is these days alot to handle as a one-man-band, doing this on several projects. So yeah, focus, and go for 1-2 projects and develop those really well, and hope for the best. But, I totally understand where you're coming from.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#25

Post by slayed0 »

clarky07 wrote: post #19
emptybits wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users buy Apple phones (++aapl_profit), they browse or search the app store, they find something , and they spend a few more bucks on an app (++aapl_profit). Users remain blissfully unaware of the full situation or lost potential. No major user complaints and we can only speculate about lost potential Apple profits. Sadly, I think Apple serves most users best by simply ensuring the "top" choices during an app store b…

Oh sure, and as long as devs aren't leaving (they aren't) apple is likely not doing anything "wrong". They have unashamedly said their order of doing things is 1. Good for apple 2. Good for users 3. Good for devs (distant third too) They have been nice lately though. I'm really excited about the App Store analytics and all that entails. It's really nice that they've finally added that for us.

Why should they be ashamed of that order? How would you reorganize it? I would say that ordering is pretty much required given the fact that they are a publicly listed consumer technology/software company.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#26

Post by clarky07 »

limeyy wrote: post #24
clarky07 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's definitely similar. Now, I would like to think I didn't cross into the spam realm, but it's a very similar concept, and it's the same problem. Without upkeep and continuous improvement the sites didn't last, and there is a tipping point where you simply can't keep up with so many projects.

Yeah, I didn't mean you were in the real of spam, neither was I. But you were addressing "Chomp" update, hurting your sales, no idea what "Chomp" was but with simple websites it happened the same, Google "improved" their search, but while also hurting bonafide smaller websites, just seeing them as collateral damage along the way to keep the real nasty stuff out. Besides that, these days one needs to setup social medi…

Yeah so Chomp was a small startup working on app store search that Apple bought. End of June 2012 they did a huge update to the search algorithm, that effected a lot of apps.

One of the biggest changes being that free app downloads were weighted much higher. Until that point, I had only paid apps, and things were going pretty well. Overnight, sales got hit really hard. One thing that I didn't really include in the article, but I'm pretty happy with my ability to deal with those changes as well as I was able to. I started adding free apps, and came back pretty well.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#27

Post by clarky07 »

jasonsync wrote: post #22

You seem to have a fairly predictable sales cycle happening there. Hope your next app is a "Winter App". Then you'll be able to sleep easy all year long :-)

Ha, yeah I've been working to fill in that gap. I did add a skiing/snowboarding tracking app, but it doesn't have quite the same sales as the others, and the skiing season doesn't really start until late december/january. It is part of the reason january-march isn't as bad as oct-dec.

Ideally, the next project will sell well year round :-)

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#28

Post by clarky07 »

slayed0 wrote: post #25
clarky07 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, and as long as devs aren't leaving (they aren't) apple is likely not doing anything "wrong". They have unashamedly said their order of doing things is 1. Good for apple 2. Good for users 3. Good for devs (distant third too) They have been nice lately though. I'm really excited about the App Store analytics and all that entails. It's really nice that they've finally added that for us.

Why should they be ashamed of that order? How would you reorganize it? I would say that ordering is pretty much required given the fact that they are a publicly listed consumer technology/software company.

I have no problems with it at all, and I think that is the order it should be. I know a lot of devs would prefer to be higher on the food chain though, or at least it seems that way sometimes.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#29

Post by oisino »

I built 6 apps for another ecosystem (Shopify https://apps.shopify.com/partners/socialproof-it) and had very much the same experience as you. We did the low fidelity approach like you and also found that has diminishing returns as the app market matures. Once we started focusing on one app for Shopify https://apps.shopify.com/shopify-recurring-payments we found the returns quickly dwarfed what we made before. For it allowed us to be the best for thats all we did. I would recommend not focusing on two apps but just doing one really well. Doing multiple apps means your mediocre in different things takes all your energy to be the best. PS: Love the idea your going to focus on Apple Watch no one is the market leader/expert so great place to be.

Re: Four Years of Success and Failure on the App Store

#30

Post by icefox »

limeyy wrote: post #17

There is alot of similarity between this story, making iOS apps and making AdSense websites 7-8 years ago. One could slap a website together in a week, and one would see the revenue slowly but surely coming in and going up. The strategy of "making a website every week", and the total will make up for it worked too, for a while. Nowadays, every niche is crowded, and often more professionalised with several persons wor…

The only people I know that make money on AdSense are those that have sites that provide not very good information, but just enough to get you there and click on the ad which might have what they are looking for. Can anyone tell me of a site that doesn't use this technique that makes money with adsense?
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