

Pocket Lists sales: $13500 in first 3 months - hrabago
http://www.1312.ru/blog/Pocket-Lists-sales-13500-in-first-3-months/

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cageface
When you consider that this took two people 10 months to write and that
lifetime app sales are usually heavily front loaded this starts to look like a
pretty poor value proposition, particularly when you consider how much money
people with the skills it takes to write these apps could have made consulting
in the same time.

 _No matter what kind of movie you are watching and how expensive the movie
was to produce, either it is a blockbuster or an art house film, the ticket
price is the same._

Indeed. And this means you're way better off consulting for somebody else
unless you think you can get an app into the top twenty. I've had apps in "New
& Noteworthy" and "What's Hot" and I can still make as much in a day
consulting as I do in a month selling my own apps.

~~~
amouat
> I can still make as much in a day consulting as I do in a month selling my
> own apps.

I suppose it's worth bearing in mind that the app will presumably continue to
generate money for a long time to come for little to no work, whereas you will
always have to do a day's work to get a day's consulting pay.

~~~
cageface
In my experience and in most of the reports I've read the "long tail" is
pretty thin. Unless you're continuously updating and marketing your apps sales
will trickle off. I'm sure some apps are an exception to this.

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ljf
It's been said before but this; "7. At the first hand, release the app for
yourself and your friends. If they don’t use and don't like your app, it is
hardly that everybody else will."

Hugely important! Congrats guys and thanks for a useful write up

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taroth
For clarity, are you saying friend test before releasing to the app store or
before advertising?

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ljf
I'm saying that you need to go beyond dogfooding - it's all well and god if
you like the app, as you have a market of one at least :)

But you really need to get your app out to non tech friends as soon as it's
workable and get their feedback. If they don't like it or get it, it's
unlikely customers who don't know you will.

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epaga
Thanks a bunch for this, very helpful stuff. And congrats on your well-earned
success!

I just launched an app a couple of weeks ago and am past that first spike on
your graph (we were reviewed on AppAdvice last week and on TheNextWeb
yesterday).

So following your formula for success, I need to add some iOS 5 features and
get Apple to feature it. I'll get on that right away. ;) It seems like every
single success story of app devs has that in common: they were featured by
Apple. That's the maddeningly frustrating part of it all because that process
is such a black box.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's not totally black box. Some sections (e.g. New & Noteworthy) aren't too
hard to get into. I've been featured in them a few times when I launch a new
app that gets a high number of sales in the first week. To get into the
section therefore you need a good app and good launch marketing.

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dnpmonitor
Its interesting that they broke down their earnings over the 3 months and how
certain review sites don't affect sales.

However it took 2 of them 10 months to build it full time? I can understand if
they didn't know how to code but it appears that can, I seriously don't get
how it took them that long. Sure the app does look great but, this has to be a
side project...

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pkamb
> _The situation changed when we released an update to version 1.1 ... the
> Pocket Lists app was featured in the New & Noteworthy section in both
> Russian and (hooray!) US App Stores._

So was it just blind luck that you were featured there? What will you be doing
with your next app to ensure you're similarly featured?

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technotony
Thanks for saving me a few dollars by avoiding paid reviews. The pricing
information/perspective was very helpful too.

~~~
technotony
And I'd love a follow up article telling how much hitting the front page of
HackerNews helps your sales bump!!

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james4k
Wow, not bad. I was surprised to see a new to-do list app do pretty well,
knowing how many are out there. Well done!

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franzus
Yet another "get featured by apple, make money" story.

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sparknlaunch
Thanks for sharing. Could you have achieved more/less with outsourcing the
development? Bulk of sales came from spike-can the exceptional sales be
maintained?

