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My First Year in the App Store

trevormckendrick.com

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Re: My First Year in the App Store

#71

Post by monkey_slap »

trevmckendrick wrote: post #64
monkey_slap wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to be doing a similar writeup as my app launches in 2 weeks. I've got a small budget. All the design+dev was me, but I'm spending about $300-$400 on marketing. We'll see how that goes. If anything I believe you should be spending more on marketing nowadays. There's no real way, at least to my knowledge, to search for a niche hole with keywords. I do, however, like to think of an app idea and then spend an h…

I agree it's hard to do really detailed research similar to, say, the Google Keyword Tool. It's mostly a gut check. "Does this have a lot of competition? Does this keyword appear to get a lot of searches?" What's your app name?

Poetreat. Aiming for May 7. Week of polish then submission. http://poetreatapp.com/

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#72

Post by callmeed »

I'm curious what translation you used (I signed up for the rest of the posts but haven't got through them).

Most modern English translations of the Bible are copyrighted and often you can only quote/print a limited number of verses without paying licensing. (I think the best public domain version is probably the ASV from 1901).

Did you license a spanish version of the Bible? Pay someone to translate a modern one? If so, were there legal hurdles to translating a copyrighted version?

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#73

Post by zerr »

victorhn wrote: post #69
zerr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what about those "lucky" developers who live in countries where selling apps is not available in both - apple appstore and google play markets? Are there any other channels for selling apps? I "Ask HN"-ed this but didn't get much attention...

Is there a site where i can see what countries this is not available? (i googled but found nothing)

Google Play - Supported locations for merchants:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Apple app store:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4277613/list-of-countries...

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#74

Post by trevmckendrick »

callmeed wrote: post #72

I'm curious what translation you used (I signed up for the rest of the posts but haven't got through them). Most modern English translations of the Bible are copyrighted and often you can only quote/print a limited number of verses without paying licensing. (I think the best public domain version is probably the ASV from 1901). Did you license a spanish version of the Bible? Pay someone to translate a modern one? If…

You're right that most well known Bible translations are copyrighted. I found one that is in the public domain so it was game on.

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#75

Post by drivers99 »

dhruvmittal wrote: post #5

I was actually really excited by the "...you can get the next 9 posts delivered to your email by signing up here:" at the bottom. I like it. I like email, because I can read it anywhere and filter it any way I want. I dislike unsubscribing from email updates about as much as I dislike getting updates I'll never read. By making it easy to get emailed only about a story I've already demonstrated interest in (by reading…

That's what I use spamgourmet for. I give out a different address to various sites without fear. The address you give out includes a number which is the number of emails you will allow them to send to you at first. You can reload that number whenever you want to allow them to send more messages, or you can whitelist the sender if you want to keep receiving messages without it counting down.

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#76

Post by sillysaurus »

trevmckendrick wrote: post #21
austenallred wrote: post #19

The coolest part of this post, IMO, is that by finding that niche you freed yourself up to work on whatever you want to work on. Legitimate residual income.

Thanks, and yes and no. When I realized I'd found a decent sized niche I had to make a decision: do I let it sit and coast/build something else, or do I invest more here? I've decided with the latter, which will play out for at least the next year. Jury still out whether it was the right decision.

If you completely abandoned the project as it currently exists, do you think your income would drop off sharply?

In other words, how much of an ongoing effort is it to ensure your income stays high? Does search favor apps that are being updated constantly? Or is there any reason not to eventually just stop working on the app?

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#77

Post by markdown »

ujsfdo wrote: post #67
trevmckendrick wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the initial mockups by hand and some of the debugging. Other than that all outsourced.

Would you care to throw the offshore team some love by posting who they are? I have a web service and would love to use them if it cost $500.

+1

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#78

Post by gwern »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #22

Whenever anyone complains to me that its hard to make money on software, and/or the App Store is rigged, I always tell them I think anyone can make a living by making a bible app. You don't even have to be the best one, just pretty good, and iterate - it's the canonical product that you know has a big audience, willing buyers, and poor competition on the low end of the market. Case proven by this guy! The next time y…

Patio11 has argued forcefully that developers systematically neglect women and underserve that large market; I wonder if we can add to that 'and developers also ignore religious markets too'?

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#79

Post by autotravis »

monkey_slap wrote: post #71
trevmckendrick wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's hard to do really detailed research similar to, say, the Google Keyword Tool. It's mostly a gut check. "Does this have a lot of competition? Does this keyword appear to get a lot of searches?" What's your app name?

Poetreat. Aiming for May 7. Week of polish then submission. http://poetreatapp.com/

Nice landing page.

Re: My First Year in the App Store

#80

Post by soup10 »

gwern wrote: post #78
andrewljohnson wrote: post #22

Whenever anyone complains to me that its hard to make money on software, and/or the App Store is rigged, I always tell them I think anyone can make a living by making a bible app. You don't even have to be the best one, just pretty good, and iterate - it's the canonical product that you know has a big audience, willing buyers, and poor competition on the low end of the market. Case proven by this guy! The next time y…

Patio11 has argued forcefully that developers systematically neglect women and underserve that large market; I wonder if we can add to that 'and developers also ignore religious markets too'?

Really, developers ignore every demographic that they aren't a part of. There's a reason "suits" are often at the head of large creative focused corporations and compromise artistic integrity to make things more palatable to their target markets. Market research and knowledge is a very real thing that product focused developers often completely ignore or rely on instincts of unknown quality.
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