Ask HN: my Mac app is part of a bundle What do I do now?

[markchristian]

Heya, gang; I'm a relative Cocoa newbie, but after months of working away in my spare time, I finally got an app together that I'm truly proud of — DragonDrop. About a month ago, it got fireballed, and I got to talk about it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3946404 It was an amazing thread.

A few weeks ago, I read the Dropzone developer's account of their* day in the Two Dollar Tuesday deal ( http://aptonic.com/blog/my-sales-from-two-dollar-tuesday/), and it inspired my fiancée and I to try to get DragonDrop in, to.

The fun news: we're in today's bundle! http://twodollartues.com/deals/dragondrop/

But, so many questions! How do we promote it? How does the copy look on the TwoDollarTuesday web site? What do you gals & guys think? We're just stumbling around indie software publishing in the dark.

I'd love to hear what you think, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Plus, if anyone is interested in stats, let me know — I'd be happy to publish results here once the promotion is over.

* Using the grammatically incorrect "their" in favour of randomly picking a gender pronoun, since I can't seem the find the author's name on the Aptonic Software web site.

[gte910h]

> Using the grammatically incorrect "their" in favour of randomly picking a gender pronoun

Talk to Jane Austin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carrol, The King James Bible, and Shakespeare if someone convinced you "They" isn't a valid singular pronoun for indeterminate sex. It is. Some stupid Latin-based grammar school teachers do not get to re-design our language by looking at Latin (where the odd anti-They crowd came from) and making us say He/She everywhere or sound like sexist assholes.

"They" is a valid third person singular, just like "you" is a valid second person singular.

[dangrover]

I did something similar with ShoveBox in a MacHeist bundle a couple years ago. See post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=932338

Definitely take advantage of the mailing list if they give you access.

Copy looks great, and so does your app!

[markchristian → dangrover]

Cool, reading now! MacHeist is the only other bundle I've really had much interest in so far. I love the goofy narrative.

[gte910h]

I love the app and recommended in on HN earlier this week. It is great for moving things into Xcode projects and Skype, two of my most common, screen hogging destinations.

I'd promote it then in European business users forums, and to iOS developers, as both of those people use the app a lot.

[markchristian → gte910h]

Good point on Xcode as a good use case: I use DragonDrop all the time when I'm working on other projects, and miss it like crazy when I'm working on DragonDrop itself. :)

[Uchikoma]

Nice idea. Good to hear the app makes you money. I enjoyed the the way you could move cut&paste and drops to the side on a Newton, then change apps etc and move it back. Like storing it on the side lines.

[markchristian → Uchikoma]

Someone on Twitter once described DragonDrop as a "wormhole", which I found pretty delightful. :)

[Uchikoma → markchristian]

Hehe, yes :-)

[nkrode]

Hey mark - slight off topic, but why do you have to run through them, why not just offer it for 1.99 in the app store every day?

[tinylittlefish → nkrode]

I'm the guy who runs Two Dollar Tuesday (I'm also a Mac App Developer):

A few reasons why you wouldn't necessarily do it every day:

At $1.99, he would have to sell more than twice as many copies as he is selling now to make the same revenue. Plus, he'd have more support requests to deal with. $1.99 may not be the optimal price point.

The reason to participate in any "bundle" like Two Dollar Tuesday:

- Mailing list: TDT has a mailing list of thousands of Mac users who've asked to receive the deals each Tuesday. We have a phenomenal open rate (last week was over 80%). MacUpdate, MacZot, etc., all have the same kind of thing going. Thousands of Mac users eager for discounted apps.

- Cross promotion. Someone looking for a discount on a different app might discover your app through TDT.

- The "limited-time effect" -- people are more likely to pay $1.99 for something if they know they only get one day to get it at that price. Were the price always at $1.99, you lose the sale/impulse buy effect.

[markchristian → nkrode]

Well, we could, but $4.99 is the price point we're comfortable with. We're trying this promotion as an experiment — TwoDollarTuesday helps get the word out, so hopefully, we'll end up selling enough extra copies to compensate for the temporary price reduction.

[srik → nkrode]

To add to @tinylittlefish's reply here, it might also have to do with perceived value. To the user, it feels like she will be getting an app within the quality range usually associated with $5 apps, but is able to get it for only 2 bucks. Something like that.

[markchristian → srik]

Right. Plus, the benefit of the impulse purchase is that you may gain a very vocal fan who never would've tried the app for $5.

[pkamb]

Good luck with sale! Looking forward to reading the results (and those from the Fireballing!)

[markchristian]

Update: Aptonic Software is headed by @JohnWinter.