Congratulations! I went through a similar process with my first app as well. A few things I'd recommend:
- Use appfigures.com and appannie.com to track your sales and rankings. They provide much nicer reports than those provided by Apple. Also, they'll tell you if reviews come in, and even translate them for you. I'm personally addicted to the hourly ranking updates from AppFigures.
- Never stop promoting. Do something (even if it's something small) every day to raise awareness. Getting on the front page of Hacker News is an excellent start! But don't stop there.
- Get a 'press kit' of screenshots and descriptions to send to popular app review sites and tech writers etc. Many will ignore you, but the hits are worth it. A great review in AppAdvice completely turned around my app's fortunes.
- Don't bother with AdWords - at least at the start. Generally the price per click and the conversion rates won't support the revenue you would get from an app sale. Some people spend big on AdWords to push their rankings, but that's not a reliable way to make money.
- Expriment with pricing. Price changes are quick and easy to make. Don't be afraid to raise your price. You might be pleasantly surprised by the result. And if it doesn't work out, you can lower it again. I found I got fewer cranky reviews when my price was higher. but YMMV.
- Continue writing honest reports about your app's progress. We see so many news items about huge successes and huge failures, it's a good corrective to see how a 'normal' app fares.
- Work on your next app. I just launched my second app in the store and while I'm still not making enough to live on, it's great to get twice as much money coming in.
- Have fun. Building something of your own and selling it is great. You might start resenting your day jobs, though.
Just a note on the pricing changes thing. As a user, if I see an excessive number of price changes or clear price manipulation in AppShopper (which gives you a history of the pricing changes of any app) I mark the app as suspect in my head and typically move on.
I would prefer a dev be confident in the value and price of their app than to constantly be changing it. In my personal experience, most devs that are constantly meddling with the price have an app that's barely worth 99c on their hands.
The other thing it possibly indicates is that they change the price frequently to show up in apps like AppShopper as having a reduced price, which I find to be shady practice as well typically only done by mediocre devs.
It's just one of those respectability things, like reasonable in-app purchases. I won't use or respect your app if you don't respect me as a user, and charging $12 for an app one day, 99c the next and $5 the day after that isn't respecting me.
Obviously this is all my own personal opinion and experience, but I don't think I'm the only one out there who feels this way.
Ugh. This seems a perfect example of why selling to a market composed of people you'd find on HN isn't worth it. No offense, I'd probably use AppShopper too and feel similarly, but let's face it, the vast, vast majority of iOS buyers aren't going to scrutinize the price history of your app before purchasing. Why are we programmers the whiniest group of users out there when it comes to buying something that costs less than a cup of coffee, and probably literally is worth less of our time than what it took to look it up in AppShopper?
(a) This is great. I've been using Maps+, which is a really impressive little app, but it's complexity often makes it cumbersome. Yours is very barebones, but in playing around with it, that's an asset.
(b) With (a) in mind, there really needs to be a way to plot to/from somewhere other than (what the iPhone thinks is) your current location.
(c) It would be great to be able to see bike lanes, but I understand how much extra effort that would require; so don't sweat it, but if this does rise to the level of a business...
a) Glad you like it. Simplicity was a goal.
b) Yes, totally agreed & in the works.
c) This will be in the next release.
d) We actually have a ticket in with Apple to get this fixed. There's nothing we can do on our end. Terrible.
Probably made the same mistake I did with iOS 5 and the icon. You have to define in the root level Custom iOS target properties: Icon already includes gloss effects BOOLEAN YES
You've probably only set it under Icon files -> primary icon
You can tell if you did it right if it shows up without the shine in itunes connect when you upload.
Thanks for the link to distimo.com analytic, I'm looking into it. My marketing suggestion: contact blogs that a cyclist would read, blogs by/for cyclist or even a blog by a boutique bike shop. Perhaps some will write about your app.
I love postmortems! Could you give more details on the app...how long did it take to develop? How many people worked on it? Did you outsource parts of it? Any ongoing costs (eg, APIs etc.)? Any interesting side stories?
Also, what would you say is your total estimated cost for making the app from start to finish?
We're a team of 2. I do all the development. All the work was done in-house... no outsourcing. The app, icon, and website were all us.
It took 3 months to get to version 1.0. We worked on it part time, nights and weekends. There were some big gaps as life and work got in the way. It was my first iOS development experience, and I had only dabbled in Objective-C previously, so most of that time was getting up to speed with the language and framework. I primarily work in Ruby.
There are no real ongoing costs. The website is completely static, so hosting is negligible. We use Google's local search and directions APIs. Both of them are free at our usage levels.
It cost $99 for the Apple developer license. That's all the capital all we invested. The rest of it was just time.
Awesome, thanks for the details. You mentioned only dabbling previously, any tips on learning iphone app programming quickly? What tools/things did you use to learn? Any recommendations? Did you use any books/guides?
Finally, did you use a mac pro or imac? and if it's relevant, does the glossy screen cause eye strain when programming for extended periods?
I still remembered a decent amount of C from high school & college (I'm just old enough to have snuck through before Java took over CS). I brushed up on the ol' K&R and then read about 2/3rds of O'Reilly's Programming iOS 4 book.
Apple's documentation and sample code is excellent, and really nicely integrated into XCode. Once iOS 5 came out, I learned almost exclusively from there. Of course, Stack Overflow is great for very specific gotchas and questions.
I did all the work on a MacBook Pro, with glossy screen, usually plugged in to a 27" Apple display (also glossy). The gloss doesn't cause me any problems unless I sit in very bright sunlight, but all things equal, I would prefer matte. Xcode is a bit of a pig, so it definitely does best on a big display.
I second this. I added 'AppiRater' (https://github.com/arashpayan/appirater) to one of my popular apps which users weren't reviewing. As soon as I added AppiRater the number of reviews increased a lot. I also noticed that it didn't increase the number of negative reviews which was a surprise.
As you can do with pirater. You can also set a time limit, a combination of both, remind the user again, or give them one change only. AppiRater is very flexible, not sure what iRate offers over that.
My hunch is that the main app page would convert better for getting star ratings. Have you tested both?
The potential problem with the reviews page is that it makes it seem to the user like they have to write a review in order to give a star rating. On the main app page, however, they can just provide a star rating.
Nice. Congrats on getting your live app in the store. It is a great way to get hobby projects out in the open. Plus I get nice sense of completion when the app goes live.
Sometime soon I'll post a sales breakdown for my latest app. For me getting reviews written on sites like MacLife and AppAdvice made all the difference for sales.
The review from App Advice generated enough sales to push Commit (http://thinklegend.com/commit) into the top 25 productivity apps. Which got it even more sales.
Unfortunately I can't tell how many came from App Advice, only the total number of sales that day (600).
Congrats on your app launch! I’ve been sharing it with all my biker friends. :) Thanks for sharing this info it is very valuable info! You mentioned the disconnect when someone transitions into the App Store. I was wondering if you are signed up for Apple’s Affiliate program and using your unique affiliate link on your websites App Store button. Would that give you any more idea of what is going on inside the App Store?
I do not. I’m in the process of getting my own app developed and in my research I found that if you sign up for the iTunes Affiliate Program (www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/) , use your unique link where ever you send people to the iTunes Store or App store and you get a commission on anything they buy within a 24 hour session or until they click another affiliate link. So even if they don’t end up buying your app if they buy anything you’ll get a commission! So, make sure you include affiliate links inside your app too.
I’m not sure what type of analytics they provide back to you for any purchases or activity but hopeful it’s something to overcome the data disconnect once inside the App Store.
I don't really like your website. Specifically the image of the iPhone. It's a good size but most of it is the iPhone bezel. There is no way to understand specifically what the app does and how by looking at it. Make it the full iPhone height and add obvious arrows to let the user manually progress through a 3 step "this is what it is" in the form of images.
Pardon me if someone else mentioned this but... have you thought of a free version with ads? You can use IAP, In App Purchase, to go to the paid version without the ads. This skips the App Store "no information" wall by not going to the App Store at all.
Congrats with the app :) And thanks for sharing your experience. You're high up on HN, so your marketing skillz are improving. Just keep marketing your app and work on the next one.
You mentioned you're using google's directions API, what is this doing differently than the walking directions in maps? Doesn't that include bike paths, passages etc?
Google uses different algorithms for walking & biking. For example, you can walk in either direction on a one-way street, but you can only bike in one direction.
The bike directions prioritize streets with bike lanes and low traffic bike boulevards. With walking, really any street with a side walk will do.
We're currently #46 in the Top Paid apps for the Navigation category, so I think it's safe to say that the influence has been substantial. We won't get to see actual sales numbers until tomorrow morning.
We were interested in Distimo their reporting on rankings. Unfortunately, you have to be in the top 200 (it seems) to get ranking info. Appfigures is better for this. They do hourly rankings (thanks to ajlburke for recommending it, we just signed up today).
They do have a nice dashboard and the site is easy to use.
Thanks. So, we had a $100 credit from Google to use on adwords. That was interesting but not something that would work if we had to actually pay for it. In terms of other marketing, Apple gives you 50 download codes so we handed those out to local bike businesses & nonprofits.
Our experience is that people rarely redeem the download codes, but will often reciprocate kindness. Our biggest sales came when we gave some promo codes to a bike courier company, and they tweeted about the app to their 3,000 followers.
Aside from that we comment on some of our favorite cycling blogs with our url. That's it. Suggestions?
A small press kit with some screenshot of the app that you can send to blogs and biking websites. I would use your promo codes with bloggers rather than bike businesses, unless they have large followings like the courier company.
Very good example of why developers are dumb for writing mobile apps. It makes zero business sense with the exception of the very few who sell hundreds of thousands.
Apple screws the developers and we all bend over. What a joke!
- Use appfigures.com and appannie.com to track your sales and rankings. They provide much nicer reports than those provided by Apple. Also, they'll tell you if reviews come in, and even translate them for you. I'm personally addicted to the hourly ranking updates from AppFigures.
- Never stop promoting. Do something (even if it's something small) every day to raise awareness. Getting on the front page of Hacker News is an excellent start! But don't stop there.
- Get a 'press kit' of screenshots and descriptions to send to popular app review sites and tech writers etc. Many will ignore you, but the hits are worth it. A great review in AppAdvice completely turned around my app's fortunes.
- Don't bother with AdWords - at least at the start. Generally the price per click and the conversion rates won't support the revenue you would get from an app sale. Some people spend big on AdWords to push their rankings, but that's not a reliable way to make money.
- Expriment with pricing. Price changes are quick and easy to make. Don't be afraid to raise your price. You might be pleasantly surprised by the result. And if it doesn't work out, you can lower it again. I found I got fewer cranky reviews when my price was higher. but YMMV.
- Continue writing honest reports about your app's progress. We see so many news items about huge successes and huge failures, it's a good corrective to see how a 'normal' app fares.
- Work on your next app. I just launched my second app in the store and while I'm still not making enough to live on, it's great to get twice as much money coming in.
- Have fun. Building something of your own and selling it is great. You might start resenting your day jobs, though.