
From 0 to 450k, an App Store Success Story - With Charts and Numbers - sp4rki
http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/#
======
stevenwei
The most interesting thing to me is that the app sat in relative obscurity for
4 months before being featured by Apple, at which point sales exploded.

And judging by the App Store, being 'featured' only meant that the app icon
was added to the New & Noteworthy section....not the giant banner you get for
being App of the Week (currently Nike GPS) or Game of the Week (currently Cut
the Rope)...unless I missed it earlier in the month?

~~~
dpcan
I'd consider that "featured" because you touch the little "featured" spotlight
icon in the bottom of the App Store to get to these apps.

I probably buy a game from these sections every week, or 2 weeks, but I almost
never scour the store for hidden gems myself.

I think this section of the App Store is a HUGE draw for developers because it
allows them to use their imagination when creating a new game and they still
have an inkling of hope that they'll get noticed or featured.

In the Android Market however - if you create something awesome but original,
you're pretty much doomed to obscurity unless you find some other marketing
avenue to drive traffic to your game.

Or maybe by some miracle Google will feature you, but they have pretty limited
space available for featured apps, and nobody seems to know how those are
chosen.

~~~
stevenwei
That's a good point, actually. The way the App Store looks and feels on the
iPhone itself is a lot different than the version on the iPad or in iTunes.

You get a lot more visibility being featured on the iPhone compared to the
other two.

------
mattparcher
Note that the 450k download number is of the _free_ version of the game,
Trainyard Express.

There is also an impressive sales graph for the paid version at the end of the
post, suggesting that the game has been rather lucrative since the beginning
of October: [http://struct.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/TheWholeShebang....](http://struct.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/TheWholeShebang.png)

~~~
mrbogle
The little bump at oct 2 is $240, so it looks like each major horiz line is
2k/day. It seems the day he posted this, it made just north of 9k/day.

~~~
dminor
Looks more like $1k per horizon line to me, but $4.5k/day is impressive
nonetheless!

~~~
MattRix
Hey this is Matt, without actually saying the total value, I'll just tell you
that the horizon lines are $1.2k ;)

~~~
spicyj
So that's a peak of about $4.7k.

~~~
random42
No, i think peak value is 1.2k * 4.5 ~= $5.4k

~~~
spicyj
Whoops, you're right. I'm guessing $5.6.

------
avgarrison
This is certainly an inspiration for developers that want to take the time to
make a quality game, instead of trying to "game" the app-store with
submissions like iFart, etc.

------
mashmac2
I was just reading about this article in relation to how the submission system
works here at HN...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808884>

~~~
alain94040
It's not just the title that was wrong: when I load the article, there is
nothing compelling in the first 3 pages of text! It takes scrolling a lot
before some useful data shows up here and there. No wonder it didn't get any
upvotes the first time.

~~~
sp4rki
Yeah when I first read it I thought the same, but you do have to admit that
the title made all the difference in regards to exposure. I even think i could
have made a better job of the title had I actually though about it more, but
since this was only a little experiment to prove the importance of titles in
HN I guess it proved a point ;)

------
Nemisis7654
This is awesome. The story, I mean; unfortunately, I do not have an iOS
device, which means I cannot play the game (I would if I could!). It gives me
hope knowing that there are great success stories out there like this still. I
know the chances are slim, but it's still really cool to hear these sorts of
stories.

Congrats on the success of your game!

------
andre
"always release on a Thursday" - never heard that one before

~~~
brown9-2
Anyone care to speculate or enlighten the rest of us on where this pearl comes
from?

~~~
Groxx
Enlightenment not implied, but here's my retrospective theory:

    
    
      Sunday: few people looking to start something new, languish for a few days.
      Monday: it's *Monday*.
      Tuesday: Still beginning of the week, things are still being piled on
      Wednesday: nothing wrong with it
      Thursday: early adopters try, advantage of full Friday + an extra day of users before weekend
      Friday: people finish / wind down / have more free time to start things
      Saturday: In the swing of X, or looking to start X.
    

With an assumption that you will _always_ have early adopters any day of the
week, at roughly level values (or increasing on Friday evening through
Sunday).

My final take from that: Thursday gives you part of a day with early birds to
find game-breakers ASAP, and Friday and Saturday are useful days to have early
to boost your numbers at the start. You're also sure to get _all_ of Friday by
starting on the day before. Wednesday gives little advantage over Thursday,
but costs you another day before bug-fixing weekend / next week. And early
week releases are, well, too close to Monday. Nobody likes that.

All of which is _wildly_ subjective, and is merely justification and not
reason. But it makes some sense in this light (to me, at least).

------
clemesha
I noticed the paid app was sold at varying times for $2.99, $1.99, and $0.99.
Anyone have more information about the physiology/performance/trade-offs of
those different prices?

Do $0.99 apps sell way more than other priced apps?

~~~
MattRix
Trainyard was at $1.99 at launch and for a while after that. I figured it was
a low introductory price, but not so low that I'd get careless users who
wouldn't put any effort into the game and would just give it 1 star reviews,
which was a bigger problem back a few months ago before Apple took out "rate-
on-delete".

These days, I feel like there are less tangible disadvantages to the 99c price
point, other than the fact that you make less per sale. There's still the
issue that users are willing to put more effort into a product they pay more
for, and will even go to further lengths to defend it, because they want to
justify their purchase and their taste.

On the App Store, it all comes down to perceived risk. If a user is unsure
about an app, they probably won't spend much more than 99c because they don't
want to overspend on a dud. Once a user sees an app in Apple's "featured list"
or has used the lite version of that app, they'll be much more willing to
splurge on a higher price, because they know what they're getting.

For Trainyard, I felt that there was no longer a big difference between the
$1.99 and $2.99 price points, because by the time a user arrived at the
purchasing page, they already knew they wanted it.

All that being said, there is a _large_ contingent of users that seem to only
buy apps at $0.99, but most of the time, your apps won't be visible to those
users. The moment I reached the top 50, I knew I would have tons of that sort
of user looking at Trainyard, so I did the price drop.

~~~
dpcan
I went the opposite route in the Android Market. When the lite version of my
game hit the top 20 in its category, I made a few nice updates, and I felt the
full version earned its higher price (~$4). After making the change, the
number of sales barely went down, but revenue went up.

But now you have me thinking. Are MORE people in the the $0.99-only crowd
seeing my app, and are there enough of those people to make DROPPING the price
more financially beneficial???

I suppose I could run a "sale", but once you start getting comfortable with a
nice daily income, taking risks becomes harder and harder.

~~~
MattRix
Yep, that was exactly my dilemma. I was making a huge amount of income, so it
was a pretty big risk to drop the price, but I knew I would only have the
opportunity during the week I was featured. It very well could have dropped
and failed.

I'm not sure how the Android charts work, but in the App Store, it's ranked by
units sold, not by profit. This is the _KEY_ thing that is crucial to how the
market works. Even if I make LESS money than I did the day before, I will be
higher up in the charts, which will get me more exposure, and eventually more
sales. Going high in the App Store is all about upward momentum. The volume of
sales doesn't change linearly with rank either, it's quite exponential.

~~~
dpcan
So, if you get high up on the charts, do you plan to put the price back at
$2.99 or stay/go back to $0.99 since everyday will be like you're featured?

~~~
gbhn
Looking at Gamasutra
([http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_App...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31045/Top_iPhone_Game_Apps_Trainyard_Cartoon_Wars_2_Debut_as_Big_Sellers.php))
it would appear that top-10 == $0.99. I'd guess this is because, as has been
speculated here, there is an enormous number of people who are simply going to
spend a maximum of $.99 on an iPhone game and that's that. Either you sell
yours for $.99 or they'll find something else for that price. The evidence
suggests to me that if you don't realize this, you'll simply be replaced in
the top 10 by someone who does.

Of course, next week when a $9.99 game is in the top 10 I'll have to revise
this opinion. :-)

~~~
MattRix
Part of the reason is just because these are GREAT games that are all worth
much more than 99c, but because of the fact that they are 99c, they're also
fantastic value. Why would a user pay $2.99 for a fantastic game when they can
get one for 99c?

------
maguay
I got Trainyard as soon as I got my iPod Touch recently just because of this
post on HN. Actually, it was the first (and only, so far) game I've
downloaded, just because of hearing about it here. Awesome game, and
definitely something I think most hackers would like as it makes you think
through the solutions. Great way to kill a few minutes between projects =D

BTW, just like PopCap does with their games, I think this one could live on a
Ton of platforms ... including PCs/Macs. That'd get in the people without an
iOS device...

------
sant0sk1
Well deserved success. It's an excellent game and I love seeing solo
developers at the top of the charts!

------
fondue
Your story is very inspirational and makes me want to get back to work on my
simple game!

Are you looking to bring this to the Android market, and if you do, would you
consider the 'free but with ads' style that is being offered by Angry Birds
producer Rovio?

~~~
MattRix
Yeah, absolutely. I've heard way too many stories about return policies and
all that on Android, so I think I'd try to do the same thing they did. It
really depends on the market at that point in time though.

------
brc
Trainyard express is showing #1 top free and Trainyard (full) is showing #2
for me. Trainyard is also featured #1.

I'm not much into games but curiosity got the better of me and Trainyard
Express is downloading.

------
p_h
I wonder if Matt is one of Toronto's "App Kings":
<http://www.torontolife.com/magazine/2010/11/>

~~~
MattRix
Nope. :)

~~~
p_h
too bad, sounds like you deserve it

------
d3bugging
Great story.

BTW, your dreamhost account was able to handle 100K submissions? not bad!

~~~
MattRix
400k now. Yeah pretty crazy, I've almost used 40 gb of disk space, and if the
traffic keeps up, it'll be a TB of submissions. That being said, it's also a
bit unreliable and users often have connections fail when submitting, but it's
really pretty solid. I've now switched to Dreamhost PS, so it's a little more
expensive, just to make sure it's a bit more reliable.

------
iampims
I just bought Trainyard to thank you for having written such an interesting
blog post.

------
pclark
Any examples of iPhone game developers who made a decent game but didn't make
six figure downloads?

~~~
jcl
It depends on your definition of "decent", but I wouldn't be surprised if
there are many. This very article would be an example, if the author had not
decided to release a free version and the Italian press hadn't picked it up.
Prior to that, the exact same game languished in obscurity.

~~~
MattRix
Exactly, but all it takes is the right mention from the right influential
person, and it can snowball. None of this would have worked if I hadn't made a
good game though.

------
andre
great breakdown, from start to finish

