

App Store Milestone: $10K - Gertig
http://www.ear-fung.us/2012/01/09/app-store-milestone/

======
tobtoh
I thought this paragraph was particularly insightful:

"I learned a lot from releasing my first iPhone app: Six-Pack Equivalent
Calculator... primarily that you shouldn't release an ad-supported app that
does not have high user engagement times. The app was a utilitarian "one use
and quit until you want to use it again" type of app. I can see an RSS reader
or a Facebook client being free with ads, since there's a long user engagement
period, but this revenue model simply didn't work with my application type."

It's a pretty good 'rule of thumb' on when you should or shouldn't consider
ads as your monetisation method.

------
vessenes
I'm reminded of some stellar advice I read years ago -- to launch a new
software product, just hang out in the forums of a group of people focused
around a topic / hobby / area of passion.

Ask them what they need. Build it.

This doesn't minimize all the work that goes in, but I think it's a great
practical reminder that building for an audience with a need is the first step
of product management and product marketing. When Amazon launched the original
Kindle Development Kit, I posted in ebook forums asking for 'requests' for
apps. I received many, many pages of really pretty good ideas for
applications.

I couldn't build any because Amazon turned me down for their early-access
program, but I was gratified to see how much time and energy enthusiasts put
in to helping design and spec an app.

~~~
latitude
> _Ask them what they need. Build it._

Careful with that. Been there, here's a postmortem -
<http://v4.swapped.cc/certtime>

~~~
ryanwaggoner
So I read through the whole account, and the whole original thread on
logopond. And hindsight is always 20/20, so take this as you will.

First, you never asked if people would _pay_. I only saw one mention of money
exchanging hands in the thread, and it was from someone saying that they
wouldn't pay unless it had been proven rock-solid from a legal perspective.

Second, how many people actually landed on the signup page during the time you
had the beta up? I think devs often hit the trough of despair and rush to add
new features, when the real problem is that they just don't have enough people
coming in the front door.

Sorry it didn't work out, though. What's your next project?

~~~
latitude
> _you never asked if people would pay_

That's off the point. Virtually no one who asked or cheered for the service
ended up even _trying_ it. I conversed with many designers privately
beforehand and they were unanimously saying that - yes, this is something that
I've been waiting for and something that I would personally use a lot.

The takeaway here is that the community validation of an idea may not meaning
much, even when it is very explicit.

> _What's your next project?_

I'm leaning towards opening a restaurant :)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I see what you're saying. You're saying that it's a moot point because you
asked if they would use it and they said yes, but then they didn't actually
use it.

But the thing you have to guard against most in customer development is a
false positive (am I using that right?), where people say they will sign up,
buy, whatever, but then they don't. So anything you can do to get closer to a
fully validated yes is worth it.

Lots of ideas are neat and things I might say I'd use, but will I whip out my
credit card and give you $20 / month or whatever? The ideal is to get a
commitment to pay before you build (prepay, pay $1 for the beta, kickstarter,
whatever).

However, I think if you had really asked that question and really hammered
whether they'd PAY, you might have gotten a little more honesty about whether
they would actually _value_ it. You wouldn't have gotten perfect honesty, but
I bet the enthusiasm would have waned significantly if you had asked "would
you pay $20 / month for this" instead of "would you use this".

But sometimes it just sucks and it goes wrong in the end no matter what you
do.

I'm working on a project that's very similar in terms of stage, needing to be
validated, uniqueness, etc. So my plan is to reach out to a ton of people, see
if they have the problem, see if they'd pay for the solution, and then build a
landing page _with a giant price on it_ and see if I can get people to click
on the sign up button. Before I write a line of code. I'm tired of building
things no one wants or will pay for.

------
tsunamifury
My business partner makes over $120,000 a year with just three apps in a very
particular field where a limited number of users are willing to pay 19.99 for
it.

Don't just join the 99c app game -- if you are looking at joining the app
market, examine what unique expertise you can bring to it and target a niche.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Speaking as an iOS dev with a couple apps in the works (one done and ready to
submit, one in development), the issue I see with that is that it _seems_ to
be higher risk. What if I pour so much time into this super-premium app and
then it doesn't sell? Whereas I can do five .99 or 1.99 apps in the same
amount of time.

But then I think about how crowded the app store is and how bad
discoverability is, and maybe going after a super-small niche with a high
price is actually the only low-risk strategy left (long tail). And maybe since
it's so niche, you win just by showing up, not by building a super premium
app. Which then begs the question of how you find ideas like that.

I'm rambling, but I'd love thoughts from those who have dabbled in the tiny-
niche-but-high-cost model on the app store.

~~~
sumukh1
> What if I pour so much time into this super-premium app and then it doesn't
> sell?

The advantage of being able to set the price dynamically will let you
experiment. What I've found is that holding the quality of the app constant,
you can experiment with the pricing. You might get 10 sales at $5 or 50 sales
at $1. If you believe your app really does provide $5 worth of value, it will
probably sell. If it doesn't you can experiment with the pricing. It's only
"super-premium" if users think it is.

>> Whereas I can do five .99 or 1.99 apps

I'd discourage going this route. For most people this will make more money ...
Wait! Don't stop reading. What it won't do though is increase the quality of
the applications you put out. You'll end up with 4 or 5 mediocre apps in most
cases that roll on getting a few bucks a day. You might get lucky and have an
app with better sales, but it's not the same as a rockstar performance by one
app. OP's example is a good illustration of this.

>> win just by showing up, not by building a [great] app.

Nope, that's unfortunately not how it works. Sorry. You _can_ win by executing
on idea that you have validated. It's much like a startup.

>> how you find ideas like that

You see a need and you fill it. I think that's the best way to put it. Since I
can't really help you find an idea, I can tell you this much, you should
validate your idea first if you want to reduce risk.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Thanks for your comments. I just wanted to clarify something:

 _win just by showing up, not by building a [great] app_

This is explicitly NOT what I said. I don't think you can _win_ in the long
run without creating something great, but great and super premium aren't the
same thing. I've bought apps for $1.99 that were great that I would never have
paid $19.99 for because they just didn't provide that much value. So what I
was trying to say was that if you're going to try and create something worth
$19.99 in value, you can either pick a saturated area and try to be the super
premium offering, OR you can pick a completely underserved but hungry niche
and create something good that solves a need.

------
karpathy
A lot of success can come from creating simple apps for undeserved niches.
I've made about $10,000 over last two years selling an app that is literally 5
images in a tab view. It took me one weekend to make. I know it's not too
much, but it feels good in the pocket, the money flows steadily every day no
matter what and requires absolutely no maintenance or additional work on my
part, ever. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in the long tail of the
distribution.

~~~
itmag
Very interesting. Tell me more :)

~~~
markrickert
A quick google search for his username will pull up his website and you can
find his app there.

Great job on the app, and congrats on the success!

------
ryanwaggoner
Thanks so much for posting! I think the real key here is that you went after
an underserved niche, instead of trying to build something with mass appeal.
The app store is crowded for sure, but there are still tons of underserved
niches out there just waiting for a good app.

~~~
markrickert
Definitely. I'm not trying to build the next Cut THe Rope or Angry Birds here.

My wife is my muse and I try and make her life easier. In turn I make others
lives easier.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Completely offtopic: You are using cloudflare. Please Don't!! They use an IP
blocklist and block legitimate readers like me. See this screenshot.
[https://img.skitch.com/20120110-xfpmpw5rww8fajf13a73hm1k3u.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20120110-xfpmpw5rww8fajf13a73hm1k3u.jpg)
I use a mac and I'm blocked because there could be a virus in my computer or
network??

~~~
aymeric
I have used CloudFlare for several months on several websites and I concur:
they are often offline or they block legitimate users.

I am in the process of moving back to my previous DNS manager.

------
Gertig
Handing out business cards for the app at the convention was a smart move.
It's amazing that doing something so simple can be so effective yet I find
myself getting stuck in the mindset of trying to fix things digitally. Get out
of the house!

------
chubs
Thanks for posting that. I'm in a similar situation with a couple of apps that
have done surprisingly well, and am hoping to replicate their success on other
apps.

I especially like your marketing idea: qr codes on business cards handed out
at a conference. Glad it worked for you!

~~~
markrickert
Thanks! (original author here). Incidentally, there's ANOTHER industry
conference this weekend. I got 500 business cards printed up (double sided
with both my apps) to hand out. Other than that, Facebook is the only other
real "marketing" I've done.

~~~
sumukh1
I've always thought that personal marketing/hawking of apps doesn't do much to
drive sales.

The best marketing you can get is through reviews and word of mouth. In my
mind, that money is better spent on improving the product.

~~~
tstegart
I've found it can do a lot, especially if your app is for a niche market like
the OP's. When you go to a conference or a trade show, you're surrounded by
people who will buy your App. It doesn't get any better than that when it
comes to marketing. Good reviews only help if people find your app on the app
store to read them.

------
coryl
Thank you for sharing, its appreciated by people like me who are new to mobile
development.

Question: Can you disclose any information about your in-app sales? You
mentioned you sold customizable background art, what was the price point? How
many did you sell? Roughly what percentage of app owners end up doing an in-
app purchase?

Thanks

~~~
asmosoinio
The OP answered this on the blog:

\---- No problem. Those are some pretty complex stats, but I'll try and
simplify them for you.

Total In app purchase revenue to date: $460.73. That came from 545 total
transactions averaging out to about $0.85 per transaction ($1.22 before
Apple's cut). I have some art that's $0.99 and some is $1.99, but nothing over
that. You can see the percentage of the whole by looking at the last graph.
Anything at the bottom of Sept-Dec that isn't that large maroon color was an
in-app purchase.

During that same time frame, I had 3,007 purchases of the app, which means on
average, 18% of my users made an in-app purchase (not taking into account
users that purchased more than one item or users that upgraded from previous
versions and then bought an item). If I take into account my total user-base
of 4,748, then about 11.5% of users made an in-app purchase so far.

As I understand it, the in-app purchase for a game like Jetpack Joyride hovers
around 1% or so (read that somewhere, can't remember where). So 18% and 11.5%
are pretty dang high in-app purchase numbers. \----

------
phil
I wonder if the author changed the title or keywords when he shipped version
2. That's one of those hidden factors that can make a big difference in sales.

(Not to minimize the importance of word of mouth and a great product, of
course.)

~~~
markrickert
Hey Phil, I don't remember WHAT exactly I changed in the keywords from version
1->2, but I'm pretty convinced that making the app prettier and easier to use
was a key factor in the growth in popularity.

Keywords are one of those things you don't think about right away, but they
can have a HUGE impact on search results in then end.

~~~
brc
I'm curious - if the UI has changed - are people just picking this up from
screenshots? With no trial mode, I'm interested in how you think improvments
in the software improve sales. Note that I totally agree with this position,
but I'm curious as to how this plays out on App Store purchases.

~~~
phil
I agree with markrickert on this. Apps that look prettier and work better
(usually) have more sales. And improving those things (usually) improves
sales, as far as I've been able to tell.

Screenshots are part of it. Word of mouth is also a big factor. If people
actually do like your app you'll have positive reviews -- it's commonly said
that reviews/ratings don't matter, but for some apps they seem to matter quite
a bit.

------
signalsignal
Congratulations. If you don't mind me asking, what do you use for data storage
in iOS? In other words do you use Core Data, SQLite, or something else?

~~~
markrickert
Most of the apps I write use transient data loaded from a server, so I
download and cache the JSON from my server locally and build the tables, etc.
that way.

I haven't delved into CoreData just yet. It looks daunting, and I've only been
doing this for a year, but it's next on my list to learn.

Check out my github account for some of my iOS stuff. (my username on hn = my
username on github)

~~~
signalsignal
Thanks, but I am a little lost. I take your answer to mean the Checkout Helper
app uses JSON to read from a database for the column of prices and discounts,
but how is it cached locally?

I am just wondering how to do something similar in an app I have built,
calculates a column of numbers, but in a different knowledge domain from your
app.

~~~
markrickert
Ahh, that app doesn't actually use any web services other than for the in-app
purchasing.

The numbers that are calculated are from direct user input, but the things
that are stored like shipping and tax rates are stored using NSUserDefaults.

Caching data locally is fairly easy... just put the downloaded JSON file into
the application's sandboxed /Documents folder for easy retrieval later.

~~~
signalsignal
Ah-ha! I just assumed the "Your Items" list was saved, but it obviously isn't.
I write my apps to saved the input lists. My assumption is that the user wants
to preserve the list items for future usage. Maybe it is more than needs to be
done.

~~~
markrickert
I _am_ in fact saving the list so the user can have history of what was
entered and then they can name the transaction, duplicate and restore
transactions. I'm just using JSON to save the history. I tested up to 100k
records and didn't see a slow-down in performance so to deter me from doing it
that way.

Best possible solution in a perfect world? No. Works? yes. Works _well_? Yes.

------
ifearthenight
Thanks for sharing. Always interesting to read through challenges others have
faced/are facing.

------
mapster
Could this realistically be scaled to 10 such apps per year for a 100k income?

~~~
markrickert
That's a good question. I guess the answer depends on if you can find enough
underserved niche markets that you know enough about to create something
unique and special.

And remember, that $10k was in 6 months. So potentially, we're talking about
$20k/yr for this app. 10 apps would be a potential $200k a year.

Right now, I'm content with this being supplementary income, but I never
imagined that when I paid that $99 developer fee that I'd do so well.

~~~
mapster
Congratulations on your success. Shows the market is ripe for attacking niche
markets. But you also did some smart marketing as well.

