
How I've Made $200k in the iOS Education Market - PierreA
http://blog.lescapadou.com/2011/10/how-ive-made-200000-in-ios-education.html
======
shimfish
As a kids iOS dev, I'd also like to thank Lorraine of "Moms With Apps" for her
support. "My PlayHome" & "Pocket PlayHome" are just starting to be profitable
but at the start Lorraine really helped get things going and is still actively
helping me get the app out there.

Lorraine also gave me some advice which I think is really the "secret" of your
success: Make a really good app.

Tangentially, I've found Twitter to be remarkably useless for marketing. For
the most part on Twitter, nobody is listening. Everyone has thousands of
followers but nobody is actually reading. Thanks to bit.ly's public analytics,
I can see it's not just me either.

The biggest event for me on Twitter was when @glinner (Father Ted, IT Crowd,
_hugely_ influential tweeter) tweeted a recommendation:
<https://twitter.com/#!/Glinner/status/103123278650028032> ...and that
resulted in about 40 extra sales. 40.

~~~
dolbz
Wow that is interesting regarding Twitter. It might be more useful longer term
for customer engagement though?

Do you think it is specific to your market to suffer from this or is it a
wider problem?

~~~
shimfish
A lot of the problem is that many people seem to treat Twitter like a game
where the aim is to get the most followers. People agree to follow back if
you'll follow them. Therefore you get the ridiculous situation where people
have 5000 followers and are following 5000 and obviously nobody really gives a
damn about what anyone is saying.

Now when I'm deciding if it's worth pushing the app to someone on Twitter, I
check if they have a rational following to followers ratio.

Even when following a normal amount of people on Twitter, the sheer amount of
traffic means that your link will probably get lost in the feed.

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Jasber
Does anyone know if Education or Music is a bigger App Store category?

I have an app that could fit into both, but went with Music. I'm curious if
Education would be a better fit.

~~~
jcampbell1
The education section is typically dominated by apps for designed for the
owner's children. Parents go in there looking for stuff to occupy their kids
in a healthy way. Does your app fit that description? Apps that keep kids
quite in the car are very valuable to parents, and they will pay for them.

If your app is something that teenagers would want, then it should go in
Music.

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PierreA
Thanks Guys ! As I've said in the post, it's a pleasure for me to share after
all I read on hackers news and others places. if you have questions don't
hesitate to ask.

~~~
xiaoma
I noticed that you're aiming a couple of your projects at kids.

What are your thoughts about EDU platforms like SmarTots? Other than expanding
the reach of your app are there any sorts of features such as click analytics,
reporting for parents or achievements that are appealing to you?

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-
raises-750000-offe...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-
raises-750000-offers-mobile-apps-platform-for-kids/)

(Disclosure- I'm an early employee there and focus on dev support, so it's not
merely an academic question!)

~~~
mwidarto
xiaoma, I was really interested in smart tots sdk and really want to
implemented in my app but I was really having difficulty in trying to find out
what the sdk does. I created an account, downloaded the sdk, looked around and
I couldn't figure out what it does or how some of the stuff will show up in my
app. Because of that I didn't follow thru.

~~~
xiaoma
Right now the documentation is definitely lagging the features a bit.

This is what we offer end customers (i.e. parents): reporting on how much
their kids play which apps, breakdown by subject, feedback on how their
children are doing (if implemented by the developer), organization of
educational apps by subject and age level, and finally recommendations for
subsequent app purchases.

What developers get is the following: parents who buy more apps than the
average customer, a sales channel via parents looking for their next SmarTots
app, usage data of their app broken down by demographic, and a free evaluation
of their app by a qualified educator.

We're also offering a few more things on a beta-basis: a system for developers
add achievements for children to earn and "anti-achievements" that we call
areas for improvement. Parents have been very positive about this kind of
reporting. We've also the option of sharing the achievements on FB, which can
serve as another marketing channel for app-makers. Also in the pike is the
tracking of user data. This will be useful for app-makers in much the same way
as analytics are useful for website creators. If you can test what actions
users are making, you'll have more data to help you refine and improve the
app.

One thing I can offer is help getting the app integrated if you want to give
it a try. Either way, thank you for the feedback!

~~~
mwidarto
do you have contact info i can reach you at so we can take this off line

~~~
xiaoma
Sure. Email bill@smartots.com and we'll take care of it from there.

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afrael
Thanks for sharing Pierre!

These are the posts that encourage one to continue on, I strongly believe
that, as an Indie Developer, you need to laser focus on a niche and do the
best you can on it, sometimes it's best to have a small and concise goal
instead of a really broad one. It's all about baby-steps.

I hope to finish my app soon, also in education, a category that has a lot a
potential. As a parent you go to great lengths to enhance your child's
education.

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guynamedloren
Thanks Pierre!

Although it looks like you experienced very early success, I'm sure there was
a period of time where you questioned your decision to become an indie
developer (or you were at least unsure what to expect). When was the moment
when you realized that you really could make a sustainable living from
developing these apps?

Also, what do you find most challenging in being an indie developer? Is it
difficult to stay focused or motivated at times?

~~~
PierreA
Yes of course there is some risks but you cannot succeed if you don't try. I
just put some targets according to the money I've got in the bank. It was OK
because we (family) have had enough money for more than one year without
income. When my first app was mentioned in the NYT, I realized that there was
a market and it was possible to do a sustainable living. I also realized that
promotions was the key once you've got a good product - OK everybody know that
but when you are an indie with a software engineer background it's not easy to
do it because you are reluctant to do it.

biggest challenge : designing innovative apps and doing the promotions (then
artwork)

my family was a great help to stay motivated. My most important issue was
money and being able to feed my family, but My wife told me that it was better
if we didn't have a lot of income and I was happy with my jobs and stayed at
home with her and the kids. She was so right. Doing something that you enjoy
(and of course where there is some money) is the key to stay motivated (for me
and I think for a lot of people).

~~~
zrgiu_
what kind of promotions did you do ?

~~~
PierreA
please check the post. But actually everything is good to promote your app,
you have to try and see the result. The difficulty in promotion is that most
of the times difficult to evaluate to ROI and it is a kind of weird thing for
software engineer - you don't know if it works or not (except if you've got a
mention in a major blog/newspaper). But mentions in major blogs or newspaper
don't appear by magic, you have to make some noise about your product.

So You just want that your app is visible to everybody. If, by magic,
everybody was aware of my apps I would sell 100,000 units in one day I think !

~~~
epaga
You mention that Children's Technology Review gave you an award. Did you
contact them and pitch the app or did they find the app on their own?

~~~
PierreA
I just sent them a code to review the app as I did with a lot of blogs or
children's technology specialist

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epaga
Thanks Pierre, great stuff!

The common thread I keep seeing in app developer success stories is the app
being featured in NYT or on the App Store. What do you think most contributed
to you being discovered and featured like you were? What can "normal" devs
like me do to increase our apps' chances of getting noticed?

~~~
PierreA
Journalist in big blog or newspaper cannot be reached directly (I think they
should receive hundred of mails everyday!). So you need to have a nice app and
make some noise and perhaps they will hear about it. I was very lucky for my
first app (check the previous post on my blog), but for the second it was
easier because people knew about my apps already (it was through Children's
Technology Review that I've got an article for Word Wizard) For the App Store,
it is still a mystery but of course you need a great app and with great
artwork (I noticed that all the featured app have georgous artwork).

------
fourmii
Thanks Pierre for sharing your story. It proves that solo entrepreneurs can
indeed succeed, as can bootstrapping! The insights on how you broke down your
time were very valuable! You definitely serve as an inspiration to anyone look
to that same.

------
stevenwei
Thanks for sharing your figures, it's always great to see indie developers
succeed. I'm constantly surprised by how many hidden opportunities there still
are in the iOS market - you just have to be creative and produce really
polished stuff.

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cageface
Great info. Thanks for taking the time to post all this information in detail
and to provide some background. It's very helpful to those of us trying to
make a living in this market to see what works and what doesn't work.

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terrypot
Thank you for sharing your success... It is an insparation for a lot of us.

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robjohnson
It's interesting to see some concrete data about the size of the educational
market for iOS - and I only see this growing in the future.

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freshfey
I love the fact that you worked with your wife and kids when developing and
perfecting the apps. Congratulations on your success! :)

~~~
PierreA
actualy, it was great way to be motivated ! I always look for ways to do
things with my kids that they love and I love, and I also thought it was a
great way to show them what is "working"

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curt
Damn I really should have stuck with the education iOS market. Was in the top
ten for quite a while when the app store first launched and was making good
money, just could only ever manage to keep an app up in the rankings for a few
months. Focused on the physical product side instead of the mobile app side...
Wow that was a mistake...

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obaid
Very interesting article. We launched (are in the process of updating the
website) a kids educational app as well -- Alphabet Fruits which can be found
at <http://www.apps4tots.com>

We will definitely be tweaking our pitch and app after reading your insight.

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moreorless
I bought Word Wizard a few months ago for my 2 year old and he absolutely
loves it.

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Axsuul
Awesome Pierre! Thanks for sharing with us and giving back to the community!

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petsounds
way to go, pierre! if anyone is interested in the analytics he used, here's a
shameless plug: <http://www.appfigures.com>

~~~
chubs
Hi, Just wondering, with appfigures, do i need to include a library in my app
so that it'll send data to their servers? If not, it sounds pretty neat, and
i'm definitely interested.

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n9com
Great post, thanks for sharing and congrats on the success!

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SODaniel
Very impressive, fantastic breakdown and a great post. Congratulations on your
success and best wishes in the future!

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glaurent
Wow, very cool to see a post from you top-ranking here :-) Hope to see you at
the next Open Coffee Sophia :-).

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netlemurde
Cool!

It would be even more interesting if we would know how much money you've spent
to achieve this.

~~~
PierreA
I just worked hard (and time is money!) + some money for hardware and some
Press Release and ads (about $2500 I think). I've done everything myself so
far. I will add this to the post, thanks the comment

~~~
fictorial
Your time is not free is it?

~~~
stevenwei
I don't really understand comments like this. No, his time is not free, but
his 'salary' is the 200k he made while doing this.

You wouldn't say to someone who is making 200k with a cushy corporate salary
and ask "but what's _your_ time worth?" - it's redundant.

~~~
rorrr
$200K if you count all the benefits, insurance, and tax reductions, $150K base
on W2 is equivalent to bare $200K.

Many developers make $150K.

~~~
stevenwei
Indeed. So what?

He's able to do this while running his own business and working for himself.

I think most developers would rather take $200k running their own business
over $150k working for a corporation.

This is HN after all - we know many people here are taking _much_ less than
$200k in order to build their own businesses.

Not to mention with a corporate salary, that $150k _stops_ once you stop
working. With recurring revenue from selling products, it doesn't.

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geeniemart
Never tried creating any applications for iOS, It is a very good idea working
some similar idea, hope it works for me this time.

