AppStore Marketing
For those interested we have now been going since the 21st with our first app, Clubkit. The aim was to release an app to the Appstore to learn as much as possible about the market, and see what can be done to market. For this first phase we're not using any professional advertising, just word of mouth. Assuming it doesn't go mental, we'll probably do a second phase with paid advertising, as I'd like to see how that works too. This is our first experience with consumer marketing, so we really don't know what to expect.
Building the App was quite quick all things considered, and we have done one version update in that time and got a feel for that process too. One word of advice for people publishing to the AppStore: remember to use Apple's Zip program. It handles symbolic links in zips - though has the tendancy to screw up and start making 4K files for no obvious reason. 2.2 firmware seems to have fixed quite a few of the early gripes and can now see all the provisionings etc (though multiple distribution profiles of the same name still seemed to cause it a headache - I ended up removing all but the most recent).
The AppStore portal is functional. Not as polished as the front facing stuff (some of the screen have to be exited after saving by pressing "Cancel" - very un-Apple!), but clean and straightforward. It would be nice to see the screenshots you have uploaded, and the order they will be displayed, but I'm guessing such things will get fixed over time.
As a UK company we had to jump through some tax hoops to get paid - we signed up to the treaty between the UK and US under the Royalties article. Apple are really very helpful here with information like the phone numbers to call and tips on how to fill it in. Better than other US firms I have dealt with. The paperwork was complex but only took a couple of days to get us signed up all told, and was almost completely electronic. Hooray!
So how did we do?
First off the numbers:
We have made a truly awesome £31.50 in 45 units with cost to customer of £1.19
Not really very much. Don't even begin to ask how much it cost to produce!
The good news we sold 8 units yesterday, and more in the second week to the first.
Lessons learned, first our little website bit:
* The website got lots of hits from Digg. Don't create lots of new accounts and dig yourself, though you can probably do it up to about 10 ok (we tripped over at 13, and got reset, and accounts deleted - heyho).
* Stumbleupon produced the next most hits - and is now highest, though we are listed with other user generated sites
* Facebook has also provided some referrals, though I don't have the worlds best facebook profile to do it with.
* All others currently stand at 0
* iTunes produced a bit of traffic, but seems to not set the referer so I can only guess if the hits are coming from there.
* Total web hits are down to the 3-4 range already (from about 50 on the first day), and we are selling more than that on the same days on the AppStore.
=> Website not too important. This sort of figures as I think I'd never even looked at the suppliers website on iTunes (even when buying).
So on iTunes itself.
Week one was spent in the Lifestyle section. You only appear to get listed in one area, not two - though they ask for a subcategory, not sure where it gets used. Lifestyle is a very busy category, and we were double wammied by having the 2.2 update released along with about 20 other apps that week secondly another app (Signboard) was released at the same time more on that later. This meant we were only on the front page for about a day. Some apps have managed by luck to end up there for weeks, and I suspect this has a huge impact on sales.
Lifestyle had 20 pages of apps when we released, and we were ranked on the 18th page, then the 11 page then the 9th page, then the 10 then 11 again over the space of about 4 days. The ranks get updated frequently I'd say every couple of hours.
We have recently swapped to Socal Networking (our second category), and are on the front page of that category, (though on page 9 of the rankings - lots more free apps ;) ). This category seemed to be a better choice to me because though it was less obvious, it was also thinner with apps. The games category is busting with apps, so the bar is set quite high. Using this principle a weather app should be a good idea - only 2 pages of those!
To be honest the swap has made only a slight boost, and its possible its background noise. We will see if a trend beings to emerge.
We have never seen the front page of the store, or any of the top lists just off it - something much more normal for the (alledgely) 10000 apps on the store if the appstore tracker sites are to be believed.
I mentioned Signboard - this App released about 2 days after ours, and was 0.59p. About 24 hrs later it was free. This was handy as I got to see how far you leap with the free version - they went from page 18 to page 2 in a single bound. Strangely people like free!
So what other things have we found?
We released an update on the 26/11 and pretty much everyone upgraded on that day. I'm guessing everyone sees that little number on the AppStore icon and clicks on it. Our own copy updated quickly and easily over the web. We timed our release for the Christmas season (the theory being everyone will be playing with their new toy). The date of release and position hasn't really changed since the update, and with no new reviews I cannot see how people would notice the difference.
We did make one elementary mistake on the AppStore at the beginning, by creating a customized version of the UK page that had all the old information in it. This is easy to do if you poke around, but means your global changes (of course) aren't seen by anyone in that country. D'oh! Luckily a quick click and it was removed, but we probably missed out on some UK sales on the first day.
The Appstore aggregators show that there are lots of revisions going on to App's details all the time - probably subtle changes, but I'm betting that over time they will have an impact on rankings since the app is less "stale". We'll try and work out a way to analyse this data some time after christmas.
Anyway we're up and I've paid for my lunch for the week.
Some time after Christmas I'll post again to tell people how we got on...
Building the App was quite quick all things considered, and we have done one version update in that time and got a feel for that process too. One word of advice for people publishing to the AppStore: remember to use Apple's Zip program. It handles symbolic links in zips - though has the tendancy to screw up and start making 4K files for no obvious reason. 2.2 firmware seems to have fixed quite a few of the early gripes and can now see all the provisionings etc (though multiple distribution profiles of the same name still seemed to cause it a headache - I ended up removing all but the most recent).
The AppStore portal is functional. Not as polished as the front facing stuff (some of the screen have to be exited after saving by pressing "Cancel" - very un-Apple!), but clean and straightforward. It would be nice to see the screenshots you have uploaded, and the order they will be displayed, but I'm guessing such things will get fixed over time.
As a UK company we had to jump through some tax hoops to get paid - we signed up to the treaty between the UK and US under the Royalties article. Apple are really very helpful here with information like the phone numbers to call and tips on how to fill it in. Better than other US firms I have dealt with. The paperwork was complex but only took a couple of days to get us signed up all told, and was almost completely electronic. Hooray!
So how did we do?
First off the numbers:
We have made a truly awesome £31.50 in 45 units with cost to customer of £1.19
Not really very much. Don't even begin to ask how much it cost to produce!
The good news we sold 8 units yesterday, and more in the second week to the first.
Lessons learned, first our little website bit:
* The website got lots of hits from Digg. Don't create lots of new accounts and dig yourself, though you can probably do it up to about 10 ok (we tripped over at 13, and got reset, and accounts deleted - heyho).
* Stumbleupon produced the next most hits - and is now highest, though we are listed with other user generated sites
* Facebook has also provided some referrals, though I don't have the worlds best facebook profile to do it with.
* All others currently stand at 0
* iTunes produced a bit of traffic, but seems to not set the referer so I can only guess if the hits are coming from there.
* Total web hits are down to the 3-4 range already (from about 50 on the first day), and we are selling more than that on the same days on the AppStore.
=> Website not too important. This sort of figures as I think I'd never even looked at the suppliers website on iTunes (even when buying).
So on iTunes itself.
Week one was spent in the Lifestyle section. You only appear to get listed in one area, not two - though they ask for a subcategory, not sure where it gets used. Lifestyle is a very busy category, and we were double wammied by having the 2.2 update released along with about 20 other apps that week secondly another app (Signboard) was released at the same time more on that later. This meant we were only on the front page for about a day. Some apps have managed by luck to end up there for weeks, and I suspect this has a huge impact on sales.
Lifestyle had 20 pages of apps when we released, and we were ranked on the 18th page, then the 11 page then the 9th page, then the 10 then 11 again over the space of about 4 days. The ranks get updated frequently I'd say every couple of hours.
We have recently swapped to Socal Networking (our second category), and are on the front page of that category, (though on page 9 of the rankings - lots more free apps ;) ). This category seemed to be a better choice to me because though it was less obvious, it was also thinner with apps. The games category is busting with apps, so the bar is set quite high. Using this principle a weather app should be a good idea - only 2 pages of those!
To be honest the swap has made only a slight boost, and its possible its background noise. We will see if a trend beings to emerge.
We have never seen the front page of the store, or any of the top lists just off it - something much more normal for the (alledgely) 10000 apps on the store if the appstore tracker sites are to be believed.
I mentioned Signboard - this App released about 2 days after ours, and was 0.59p. About 24 hrs later it was free. This was handy as I got to see how far you leap with the free version - they went from page 18 to page 2 in a single bound. Strangely people like free!
So what other things have we found?
We released an update on the 26/11 and pretty much everyone upgraded on that day. I'm guessing everyone sees that little number on the AppStore icon and clicks on it. Our own copy updated quickly and easily over the web. We timed our release for the Christmas season (the theory being everyone will be playing with their new toy). The date of release and position hasn't really changed since the update, and with no new reviews I cannot see how people would notice the difference.
We did make one elementary mistake on the AppStore at the beginning, by creating a customized version of the UK page that had all the old information in it. This is easy to do if you poke around, but means your global changes (of course) aren't seen by anyone in that country. D'oh! Luckily a quick click and it was removed, but we probably missed out on some UK sales on the first day.
The Appstore aggregators show that there are lots of revisions going on to App's details all the time - probably subtle changes, but I'm betting that over time they will have an impact on rankings since the app is less "stale". We'll try and work out a way to analyse this data some time after christmas.
Anyway we're up and I've paid for my lunch for the week.
Some time after Christmas I'll post again to tell people how we got on...
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