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An App Store Experiment

stuartkhall.com

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Re: An App Store Experiment

#31

Post by monkey_slap »

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.

This is my thought as well. Even at his previous $20-30/day seems quite reasonable. If the author could keep that sustainable, that's adding nearly $10k/year in passive income, definitely not a figure to shy away from. If adding a $.99 IAP with a 2% conversion works as well, that would be even more.

As an app developer, overall I feel these posts only encourage the current app store ecosystem of free or freemium.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#32

Post by mctx »

vitalique wrote: post #22

Off-topic. >It's a great way to kick off the day, and I'm 3kg down. The OP says he is in Australia. How widely is the metric system used there (in comparison to the imperial one)?

Pretty much exclusively metric - the only thing I use the imperial system for in Australia is clothing (34") and height (6'4")

Re: An App Store Experiment

#33

Post by tomg »

poxrud wrote: post #19

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?

I'm surprised the author isn't putting ads on the free version.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#34

Post by monkey_slap »

kirualex wrote: post #16

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

Congrats! Would you be willing to post anything about your success post launch? I'm an app developer as well and I love reading about other people's strategies such as this.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#35

Post by jevinskie »

thenomad wrote: post #18

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 shift…

> "didn't get the success I wanted"

I believe this whole project was an experiment in how successful your app can be when you try out strategies X,Y, and Z.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#36

Post by fieldforceapp »

monkey_slap wrote: post #29
Pxtl wrote: post #20

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.

It becomes much easier over time. I'm at a point where I could certainly accomplish this, especially now with great projects like CocoaPods. Experienced web developers can create a simple CMS lightyears faster than I can, its all relative. Now what I find most interesting is that the author doesn't seem to have a large portfolio of apps. The "More by this Developer" link only shows this app, while his website only po…

From experience, if you stick with standard UIKIt navigation schemes (i.e. use nav bars not FB/Twitter style pop-unders) and, critically, standard Apple approved color schemes (i.e., light not dark UI elements) then crafting an app within Storyboard is incredibly straightforward, especially if you consider PaaS solutions like Parse.com integration[1]. The problem seems to be managing the complexities of non-standard UI elements.

For what it's worth, Jony Ive seems to be pushing us to all adopt the design approach of the OP. Wonder if 'deference to content' will become the new normal?

[1] http://blog.fieldforceapp.com/post/32922733018/weekend-proje...

Re: An App Store Experiment

#37

Post by kybernetyk »

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.

> My question is what does it take to build a real business in the app store?

Conventional wisdom is that the money is in development work and not selling apps by yourself on the store.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#38

Post by kybernetyk »

tomg wrote: post #33
poxrud wrote: post #19

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?

I'm surprised the author isn't putting ads on the free version.

He should wait to see how the free graph will develop after a few days/weeks because chances are that download numbers will fall pretty quickly to ~1000/day.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#39

Post by monkey_slap »

fieldforceapp wrote: post #36
monkey_slap wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It becomes much easier over time. I'm at a point where I could certainly accomplish this, especially now with great projects like CocoaPods. Experienced web developers can create a simple CMS lightyears faster than I can, its all relative. Now what I find most interesting is that the author doesn't seem to have a large portfolio of apps. The "More by this Developer" link only shows this app, while his website only po…

From experience, if you stick with standard UIKIt navigation schemes (i.e. use nav bars not FB/Twitter style pop-unders) and, critically, standard Apple approved color schemes (i.e., light not dark UI elements) then crafting an app within Storyboard is incredibly straightforward, especially if you consider PaaS solutions like Parse.com integration[1]. The problem seems to be managing the complexities of non-standard…

I actually prefer doing all of the design and drawing myself and avoid things like NIBs and Storyboard. It's not really difficult, just takes time to absorb all that there is because there is so much customization you can do. And watch out for iOS 7, especially with animations, there are loads of new options.

Re: An App Store Experiment

#40

Post by acgourley »

sgdesign wrote: post #15

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…

Bloggers will not drive much traffic to your app, do not worry about this. You need to be in the top lists or have a repeatable paid marketing strategy. And usually bloggers will not give you enough of a bump to initially crack the top lists, unless it's a huge amount of them and all synchronized... which would never happen from cold tip submission anyway.
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