iPhone Apps. Any success?

mGrunin said:
Some good news. The people behind iPhoneAppCafe.com are willing to do a review post on my app. They aren't a huge app review site, but they still clock in 1k+ unique visitors a day that own an iPhone. Basically I'll have an extensive review on my app that will cover the pros/cons, all features and literally go from A-Z with the app. In addition the other 3-4 writers for the site will also download the app and put in their review in the comments. I'll also receive a site-wide banner spot and some other goodies. So this should bring some added attention to my app.
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How are you obtaining these reviews? Are these guys just noticing it and emailing you, or are you contacting them/paying them?

Tell us moar about how your currently/intending to market your app!

I also can't believe being featured only got you 10 downloads :|
 


o hai guyz said:
Why was the free version denied?
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It came off as a "trial" app Apple said. Since all I did in the free version was disable some of the features from the paid version, and I visibly showed them disabled along with throwing up a popup letting them know to buy the paid version to get all the functions.

Apple didn't like that so what I had to do was completely remove the disabled features from the app and remove the popup. Per Apple's recommendation I am now adding an IAP so they could upgrade within the app.

ebtek said:
keep up the good work man!

on a related note, i see some apps tend to be free for a few days, and go back to paid...or sites like "free app a day".

if an app is free, then switches to paid, do the number of downloads while it was free count towards the total downloads..if you're planning on ranking in the 'top apps'?
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It's actually a working strategy that many are utilizing. Works something like this: If you getting in solid and constant sales to your paid app daily and you decide to change it to a free app, then the momentum passes over, and your app will go up the charts very fast in the free section.

Once you have that strong momentum coming from the app now being free, you switch it back to paid and that momentum passes on again, so at the end of it all, your paid app will be higher up the charts then it was before making it free.

CitizenSmif said:
How are you obtaining these reviews? Are these guys just noticing it and emailing you, or are you contacting them/paying them?

Tell us moar about how your currently/intending to market your app!

I also can't believe being featured only got you 10 downloads :|
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I'm emailing the owners of the websites. I give them a description of my app, link to a video and ask nicely. They all are obviously requiring payment, but it's really a drop in a bucket. Literally like $100 for a review.

Yea, I was also pretty disappointed that my app barely saw an improvement from being featured. Especially considering that I had like 20+ 5 star reviews up on the day it got featured, so users should have converted well. The thing is, this featured section is only visible on iTunes and not via your phone. I'm not too sure what's the usual ratio between people purchasing apps on a PC and when they purchase apps on their phone. I believe a lot of people exclusively purchase on their phone.
 
Here is how my IAP (In App Purchase) will look in my free version. Gary (dreamache) just finished designing it. Pretty sweet.


331j9g9.jpg
 
mGrunin is all full of win.

great job dude. I hope you kill it.

try asking the owners of big apple sites/forums to review your app
 
Nice work so far! It will be interesting to compare the profitability of the paid vs. free versions once the free version is approved...
 
MediaBuysEyez said:
Nice work so far! It will be interesting to compare the profitability of the paid vs. free versions once the free version is approved...
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I'm excited to find out myself. The IAP for the app has been completed today and is 100% functional. In the next 2 hours the free app will be re-submitted into the app store. So I hope that by next Monday - Wednesday it will be approved and visible.

I really do think that I will be racking in serious downloads with the free version considering that people love to download mass amount of free apps that are Games, Entertainment related or Utilities. Since I have this IAP in the free app, it's fairly well monetized in case it does hit gold.

On another note, you cheapasses have been redeeming my promo codes hard for the last 2 days. I have had 13 promo code downloads in the next 48 hours. At least leave a review in this thread. :)
 
Added you on Skype -

I am not into generally releasing shit, but since I've raked in a lot from these forums in the past few days, I will generally go about posting vaguely off my earlier strategy. I use a totaly different approach these days.

To begin with, go to Symbian (Yes Symbian) download forums. Look for their App bundles and read threads with titles such as "Your favorite App" or search Google for "10 Must have Apps for your S60 phone".

This will introduce you to an array of applications that can be ported over to iPhone with creative inputs from you & your team.

The idea is to float a business (a website in the initial stage) and generate a brand. In the initial days, we gave away 3 free apps - 2 of which had to be ported over to android both due to public demand and to curb competition.

Then on, our first app netted in mid $x,xxx before the hype died a bit - and that was after removing my development costs.

The problem is, I do have access to lot of cheap & quality labor, but lack the resources as of now to invest in another app.

The idea is to subsequently launch Android, BB OS7 and if possible, Symbian Anna variations as soon as possible to gain a wider entry amongst the masses.
 
Does anyone know of a site were US freelancers hang out? I have another app idea that I am looking to start on and I am looking for another developer. My last app took 3 teams to complete and I really don't want to work with them again. When I dig though odesk and elance all I see are the same guys from last year and practically no one from the US. There must be a site where local talent hangs out at, they can't all have high paying jobs right?
 
BeerNuts said:
Does anyone know of a site were US freelancers hang out? I have another app idea that I am looking to start on and I am looking for another developer. My last app took 3 teams to complete and I really don't want to work with them again. When I dig though odesk and elance all I see are the same guys from last year and practically no one from the US. There must be a site where local talent hangs out at, they can't all have high paying jobs right?
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Why don't you look in Google for "State Name Mobile Development Company" for example ' New York Mobile Dev Company'
 
Another review that was done:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAR6RV1NHco]StealThis! iPhone App Demo CrazyMikesapps - YouTube[/ame]
 
I just launched my own personal app for fun called spinners exotics: App Store - Spinners Exotics
and
Spinners Free: App Store - Spinners Free
As you stated earlier its very hard to find something that hasn't been done before in the app store but if you can do it better than the previous version and market it better(KEY) than you have a huge advantage.

The idea and concept of the app came about in San Francisco earlier this year brainstorming business ideas and funny application ideas for the iTunes store and than out of nowhere spinners came up and next thing I knew we had the development phase underway.

We decided to go with a paid version with fancier cars and a free version with more common everyday cars that was ad supported. Development time took about 3 months longer than expected and like any other project there where/are a lot of tweaks even with an app that appears to be this simplistic.

In this case I still need to edit the free version to get it under 20mbs to have it downloadable without needing wifi(almost there).

As far as promotion I haven't started yet till I perfect the few tweaks needed aside from asking girls at the bar to download my application as a good opener (worth the price of the app in itself). With just word of mouth and such we are averaging about 20 downloads a day and once it is properly tweaked I will go on a small promotion on all of the car forums and hopefully Jalopnik will give me a plug along with some famous rapper down the road!!

If anybody has any questions about the building process, app ideas, advice and such or have advice for me I welcome any and all advice.
 
BeerNuts said:
Does anyone know of a site were US freelancers hang out? I have another app idea that I am looking to start on and I am looking for another developer. My last app took 3 teams to complete and I really don't want to work with them again. When I dig though odesk and elance all I see are the same guys from last year and practically no one from the US. There must be a site where local talent hangs out at, they can't all have high paying jobs right?
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You can do that on Elance and just select US-only before you post the job. I've also had bad experiences with overseas developers (buggy apps, late delivery, strange new bugs appearing after app has been released, etc) and it's not worth dealing with those guys.

Charto911 said:
I just launched my own personal app for fun called spinners exotics: App Store - Spinners Exotics
and
Spinners Free: App Store - Spinners Free
As you stated earlier its very hard to find something that hasn't been done before in the app store but if you can do it better than the previous version and market it better(KEY) than you have a huge advantage.
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Not trying to burst your bubble but there's a reason your app is the first in that niche ... because spinning rims went out of style 6 years ago and no one wants them anymore. You'd get more downloads if you focused your marketing more on regular rims and scrapped the entire spinners angle.
 
To keep you guys in the loop:

No worries! I haven't slowed down on this project, better yet I've been spending the better part of my day working on my app.

For the past week or so downloads have slowed down really badly, I'm talking about 3-6 downloads a day level. Not discouraging at all, but it does go to show what the majority of devs go through when they put out their app.

That being said, I am working on blowing up my downloads on a specific day, at least enough to get me Top 10 in Utilities. From that point, I hope that the quality of my app can propel my app further up the chart and high up in the Paid Overall.

I've been spending a good part of my time on an iPhone app dev forum, picking up a lot of information I didn't know about, so this is definitely a great learning experience.

Expect an update from me later this week. Peace out.
 
o hai guyz said:
That's for the paid version?
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Yes my paid version. My free version switched to being "In Review" earlier today, so I should see an approval/disapproval in the next 24 hours.

At the same time, with IOS 5 rolling out, I'm going to need my dev to make a compatible version that works under that IOS, so I'll have to put in updates again.

Also, iPhoneAppCafe put up a review of the app:

Steal This iPhone App Review
 
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