

Sales figures for the #2 iPhone app - EtienneJohnred
http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/convert-1-0-1-in-review-holy-shit/

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pxlpshr
I think it's safe to assume that they'll ride the top charts for a while and
this product will definitely give them a really solid return. However, I wish
they'd paint a more realistic picture for AppStore publishers... but I doubt
I'm their audience in this blog post. :)

\- 4 team members (based on props in blog)

\- $5,999 promotional MacBook contest

\- high quality promo video, mkting material, etc. ($$)

\- tap into large MacHeist audience

\- TapTapTap was one of the first on the store, Classics and WhereTo? got them
a nice following of fans.

I'm not trying to sound negative here, I think TapTapTap deserves everything
they have coming for their amazing products. But this post is the tip of the
ice berg, so try not to get disillusioned that the AppStore is lush with $$$
for indie developers... a majority of the time it's the exact opposite.

What's worth noting about TapTapTap is how they approached the launch of
Covert and the level of polish in the 1.0 release. I really believe you need
to come out with a BANG if you want an honest shot at the Top 100. Trying to
get there with iterations is definitely an uphill battle.

~~~
pchristensen
They're painting a realistic picture of how high the bar is for AppStore
success. Step 1: Take an idea that would be useful to lots of people. Step 2:
Do it better than anyone has ever done it before. Step 3: Do it 3x better than
Step 2. Step 4. Make it smoother and prettier than anything you've ever used
before.

That, my friends, is what it takes to succeed at the App Store.

 _I really believe you need to come out with a BANG if you want an honest shot
at the Top 100. Trying to get their with iterations is definitely an uphill
battle._

You can thank the App Store review process for that. If each iteration takes
2-6 weeks, you'd better put a LOT more into each try.

~~~
pxlpshr
I'm very much aware of the quality of their products and I agree with your
4-step process, but that's not the end game for success in the AppStore and
that's all I was saying. There are plenty of gems amongst the 65k apps that
have not had a chance to see significant sales because they failed at
marketing, and/or hurt by AppStore economics.

ps. Games aside, there are more craptastic apps in the Top 100 than quality.

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andreyf
Interesting video of how their design evolved:
<http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/convert-design-evolution/>

~~~
frossie
I was more impressed by that before I bought the app and saw they had spelled
Celsius as Celcius... I mean if you are going to piss around with fonts and
colours for so long, you would think someone would get the names of the units
right (well you know, being a unit conversion app and all).

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skushch
Honestly I'm impressed that the app is so popular as a pay-for app. Definitely
useful, has beautiful UI but I fail to see why people don't just do a Google
query when you want to convert something.

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henning
I guess it doesn't matter that whatever weird font they're using is completely
unreadable on Windows.

~~~
oneplusone
Looks fine to me on Vista. It is just Georgia. Unless you have Fertigo
installed.

~~~
Freaky
Ugly and difficult to read in Win 7 in both Opera, Firefox, Chrome and IE8.
It's especially unreadable in Opera and Firefox, especially in the shaded Note
bits where half the font pixels appear to be missing.

Looks like a combination of suboptimal AA and an incredibly poor font colour
choice which massively reduces the contrast, which is made even worse when the
background is shaded in the Note bits.

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miguelpais
Unbelievable the difference between the 6500 downloads a day that guarantee
the second place on the rank and the 30 downloads a day that a guy in a blog
post shared on HN a couple of months ago said was making is app stay the
top30: [http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the-incredible-app-
store...](http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the-incredible-app-store-hype/)

~~~
stepherm
Convert is listed as #2 in the overall chart; that link is talking about an
app in the top 30 in the social networking chart. Two different charts (with
the overall chart being quite a bit more competitive) explains the
differences.

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hughprime
Sorry, I must have missed what's so "wild" about it.

~~~
brown9-2
I'm not very familiar with the app store and what it takes to be a top seller,
but selling 40,000 units in two weeks sounds like a pretty good success to me.

~~~
enjo
It depends tho. We've seen from other folks that unit sales drop off a cliff
from those top spots on down. Which means that they're making $20,000 a week
or so for the time they are at #2.

That's only a $1M a year or so (before Apple gets their cut). Which is
obviously good money, but it's not a huge win by any means (It's less than
your average hedge fund manager makes). That's before you divvy it up among
your team.

It's also unlikely they'll see that full amount, as some other app is going to
come along and displace them eventually. So your dealing with movie economics
here: You have to make all of your money in a month or so. Something along
those lines anyways. Given the way the app-store functions, building a
sustainable income stream seems rather unlikely. Certainly not at those
numbers.

I guess I'm actually a bit shocked by how low those numbers are. I guess it's
really an indication of how difficult it is when your forced to price apps at
a sub $1 price point.

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raquo
Of course, with such a great product and icon design, you can sell thousands a
day!

~~~
bonaldi
... and if you're at the head of the PR beast that is MacHeist and have a
personal fanboy army that's got to help as well.

