
Icon Driven Development on the App Store- how we make $350/day without marketing - colinplamondon
http://spreadsong.com/icon_driven_development_on_the_app_store_how_we_make_350day_without_marketing
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pxlpshr
Great success story on bootstrapping your business, and a big congrats because
it's very a difficult road and will surely challenge your nerves and sanity.
:)

If your app has only been for sale for ~1 month, I encourage you to be very
conservative with your spending — the AppStore is extremely volatile. While
the momentum is in your favor with the Top Charts, I suggest you keep your
eyes focused on improving the iPhone app and pushing updates. The other mobile
markets aren't mature enough yet to approach aggressively, and sales on the
AppStore could fall as quickly as they came.

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stingraycharles
_how we make $350/day without marketing_

Designing a logo which stands out compared to competitors around you: I would
say this is a textbook case of marketing.

Having said that, it is clever using a free marketing opportunity like that,
and, even better, being (one of) the first to realize there's a huge
opportunity there.

All I hope is that I won't be asked to punch any monkeys while browsing the
AppStore any time soon. :)

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quizbiz
perhaps he means $350/day without advertising?

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colinplamondon
Yup, my bad- $350/day without advertising would be more accurate. I think of
most of the icon/description/sales page work as positioning than as marketing,
but that's probably splitting hairs too much.

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BigZaphod
Was it really the icon's graphic design, or the fact that the word "free" is
positioned very prominently within it? It'd be an interesting experiment to
actually change the app icon for a month and test the results. Of course
that's risking real money, so it'd be understandable if you didn't want to
take the chance. :)

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colinplamondon
Good question- it's both, and the color scheme. If you pull up the Book
category, most of the icons suck- plain, generic, bookcase after bookcase. So,
a big red icon that also states FREE prominently is sure to get stand out.

Based on how we moved up the list, I attribute most of the sales growth to
increased visibility from our icon as we moved up the Top 100 list, assuming
that search traffic from things like 'Free Books' would remain relatively
steady.

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Derrek
Colin, congrats on the success! It's nice to hear an App Store success story
instead of the usual bad news.

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colinplamondon
Thanks Derrek! The App Store is definitely a great way to make money, though
it's of course up to developers to execute and position themselves well.

For us, the only issue is communication- we've now had a Kindle companion
application, Kindling, in review for _94 days_ , without any communication
outside of form responses from Apple.

We take the long view- the App Store is currently the best mobile platform,
but we're working on expanding our business to other platforms. I think it's
pretty crazy for any developer to be focused on one platform exclusively, and
have 100% of their revenue capable of being destroyed with a single click of
the 'Remove from Sale' button in Cupertino.

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credo
Congrats on the success. It looks like you're getting around 250 downloads a
day. That is great

If the 8th ranked app is getting 250 downloads a day, it looks like the Books
category is more lucrative than people may have thought.

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colinplamondon
A lot of our revenue actually comes from the rest of the world- Australia,
Canada, and the UK are all solid, and we've been in #1 Books for Canada for
solid stretches.

We're actually 25 spots away from being Top 100 overall right now in Canada,
so much of our revenue is attributed to the world, and not just the US. This
is something we're going to expand on a lot more moving forward, as it's
caught us by surprise.

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credo
Thanks for the additional info. You're right, I forgot to account for the fact
that the 250 downloads is a "world" total and not the "US" total. Do US sales
generally account for roughly half your sales. If so, 8th place at 125
downloads is still pretty good for the "Books" category.

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gojomo
Yes, nothing signifies "free books" like a Soviet hammer-and-sickle.

Who knows where the world would be today if the USSR hadn't kept the flame of
publisher freedom alive through the darkest days of the cold war, when
dissidents had to smuggle mimeographed copies of banned books into Paris,
London, and New York.

Wait, that's not how it was?

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mtts
Agreed. I find the fairly common appropriation of communist iconography to
look "cool" quite offensive.

And stupid.

Especially in this case: these guys are Hungarians and should really know
better.

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cabalamat
> Especially in this case: these guys are Hungarians and should really know
> better.

You seem to define "knowing better" as "agreeing with me". Since these people
are Hungarians, I'd guess they know more about Hungarian culture than you do,
particularly what symbols are considered offensive in that culture.

If most people wouldn't find the symbolism offensive, in practical terms it
isn't a problem. (Of course, anything will be offensive to someone).

