
$100K in 4 months: A niche app's path to App Store success - jawngee
http://blog.endloop.ca/blog/2010/08/12/100k-in-4-months-a-niche-apps-path-to-app-store-success/
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dazzla
_The single biggest weakness (or gap) in our ability to provide amazing
customer service is that a lot of people still use iTunes App Store reviews to
communicate their issues but there is no way for us devs to contact those
people to help them resolve it. Apple needs to fix this one-way channel._

This is very frustrating. I don't think users realize there is no way for
developers to get back to them and so many questions go unanswered. In the end
I wrote a script to pull all the reviews into my apps site so I can post
comments there and I let the users know that in the app. Plus now it's also
easy for me to send myself a notification for a new/updated review. Seams to
be working so far as some users have come back and added comments.

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megablast
Would love to get that script, Apple really needs to improve in this area,
although I guess for the big sellers it is not so important.

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dazzla
I based it of this blog post. The last comment is me with a slightly updated
PHP version [http://blogs.oreilly.com/iphone/2008/08/scraping-appstore-
re...](http://blogs.oreilly.com/iphone/2008/08/scraping-appstore-
reviews.html).

My site is Drupal 6 based and I wrote a module to do the scrapping and
populate a CCK content type that I display with a Drupal view. I configured
Triggers and Actions for the notifications.

If there are any other Drupal people out there I'm happy to share the code.
Just needs a little polish before I could submit it.

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alexro
I understand this isn't really comprehensive, but money wise, 2 people spent
about 1.5 years on the apps and finally made 100k. Seems like they are just
starting to get decent ROI and the battle for profitability is yet ahead.

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modmax
Technically speaking, we'd made about $40K in app revenue from our previous
apps before we launched iMockups. That $100K is just iMockups revenue, not
total for the company.

But you are correct that it was the best ROI so far for any of our apps.

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dangrover
My app Etude sold about $100K in maybe 8 months. <http://etudeapp.com>

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garryseto
All other marketing efforts pale in comparison to the dramatic effect that an
Apple feature has - at least that's how it was when we launched last April. In
some ways, this has diminished (more avenues for app discoverability) but I'd
say it still has the biggest effect.

However, it should be noted that iMockups has not been featured since June of
last year and still is able to maintain a Top 50-60 ranking in Productivity in
the US. As noted in the article, some of the key post-launch factors have
helped us keep iMockups in the rankings.

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stephenou
Are there any apps that aren't featured get as many sales as the featured
ones? Can any apps be considered "success" without Apple's promotion?

I found it interesting that almost all App Store success stories mentioned
their sales went up when the app was featured by Apple, which indirectly makes
me time that getting Apple's attention is the #1 priority for an app
developer.

~~~
kmfrk
Was the relaunch of Tapbots' Camera+ featured? I don't _think_ so, and it
would seem weird for Apple to do it, after they initially blocked it -
considering that it would look like a concession on their part - but I'm not
completely sure.

Tapbots is one of the really big guys on the app scene, and I wouldn't put it
past them to pull something like this off without Apple's help.

But people obviously shouldn't assume that they could follow in their
footsteps.

~~~
garryseto
I don't recall Camera+'s relaunch being featured and I agree, I don't see
Apple featuring it after they pulled it from the store.

However, Taptaptap (not Tapbots) has a massive mailing list that they leverage
whenever they have a product launch. That definitely helps!

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lordmatty
Great stuff. I've always thought that the way to crack the App Store is to
create a brand associated with a number of apps in the same segment. If you
can do this with Developer Tools or similar, then I'm sure there is money to
be made!

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Concours
Could you comment on how often you update your app and how this affects the
sales?

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stretchwithme
I'm curious how the app in the last five months not covered.

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modmax
Sales have slowed down as our niche market got a bit saturated. We've hit
almost $180K total so far.

~~~
stretchwithme
thanks

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faramarz
Congratulations are in order. You can are off to a good start, now you need to
build a sustainable model ontop of this successful deployment.

Are you guys based in downtown T.O? would love to connect and drop by the
office to say hello.

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fbailey
I think iPad Apps are difficult breed - I bought your app because I thought it
sounded interesting, but I didn't actually use it.

-do you know how many users start using it regularly?

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chanri
If the author is here, could you comment on how often people use your app? Are
these statistics commonly measured for iOS apps?

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modmax
Last time I looked it was averaging about a 1000 active users a day.

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chanri
Congratulations! $100k in 4 months is definitely a success. Also, thanks for
sharing your numbers and crafting an excellent writeup.

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lennysan
Thanks for sharing, very informative.

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rorrr
100K in 4 months is impressive. Keep in mind that that app was featured by
Apple though. It makes a huge difference.

~~~
nhangen
Still requires a decent app to be featured, and furthermore, to back up the
feature. I don't think it's fair to caveat every app store success story with
a comment about being featured.

