iPhone Apps. Any success?
- Thread starter mGrunin
- Start date
Your sig, I've been on androidforums before. Is that you that runs it?
mGrunin, nice method. Unfortunately it can't be mimicked on Android due to once you release an app for free it must stay free forever. To be honest, Androids method is better for the consumer.
I'm still dreading the day they implement reviews on every app submitted.
I just added you on skype - mportercmg
I actually just decided to jump into the app game two days ago. Trying to find a solid local dev. team down here in Irvine.
I'm down to network/mastermind and I have some rescources you might be interested in as well hit me up.
I actually just decided to jump into the app game two days ago. Trying to find a solid local dev. team down here in Irvine.
I'm down to network/mastermind and I have some rescources you might be interested in as well hit me up.
I have gotten about 1,000 downloads and 3 revisions since the start of Spinners Free & Spinners Exotics. Still finalizing a few bugs and than I can start promoting it. The best part of the app is talking to random strangers about it!
App Store Insight
Hey guys. I joined this site because I am interested in learning more about affiliate marketing. I know nothing about affiliate marketing. However, I am quite accomplished in the iPhone app store. My paid apps have made over $300,000 in the last 18 months. I design and code my own apps. I was a Mac programmer before the app store took off so my barrier to entry was low.
Here are a few things I learned about app marketing:
1. Getting an app noticed on the app store is very hard now. Apple used to just feature apps on the iTunes homepage. Now they feature apps with-in sub-categories. Getting featured in a sub-category does not boost sales.
2. When you are featured in a sub-category, your app does not get featured on the device itself. This means no sales boost.
3. Review blogs do not boost sales at all. Unless a publication like Techcrunch writes about your app, don't bother with review blogs. People buy apps on a whim. The people who read geeky review blogs are not your audience.
4. I suck at marketing so I had zero luck with external app promotion. The app store does not have a marketing mechanism. Hundreds apps are submitted and forgotten on a daily basis.
5. Your app has to offer something original and of significant value to get noticed by Apple. It also has to have a kick-ass design. App has featured two of my apps on the device. One of which was featured simply because the reviewer loved the design.
6. Once you get featured by Apple, it's all up hill. Getting featured on the device will usually get you into the top 10 of a category and top 500 of the overall store. My app at number 302 was doing around $1,600 a day.
7. The app store is still in its infancy. There is a ton of money to be made on the store. I just helped a friend launch an app last week and he is making around $70 a day. That's not a huge number but it's also not horrible.
8. Free apps and paid apps have completely different rankings in the app store. You cannot make a paid app free to build momentum. When a paid app is made free, it loses its ranking. I tried this exact thing on one of my less successful apps. The paid version was only getting 19 downloads a day so I made it free. The free version got over 1,000 downloads a day. However, making it paid again did not help sales at all.
9. If Apple does not feature your app and your app does not take off, you should focus on increasing your app's search placement with-in the app store. I have a few techniques I use to successfully increase the search placement of my apps.
I could go on and on. But I'll just stop here. I would love to learn more about affiliate marketing and in return offer my insight into mobile apps.
P.S. - I can't believe your developer was going to charge you $150 to change the app's display name on the device. It literally takes one second to do this. I would go crazy if someone did that to me. The friend I mentioned above first used Elance to get his app developed. The developer was some guy in India. Apple rejected the app three times because it kept crashing. He lost $1,300 on it before asking me for help. It took me two weeks to fix that mess. I have a hard time trusting Elance type sites.
Good luck with your app!
Hey guys. I joined this site because I am interested in learning more about affiliate marketing. I know nothing about affiliate marketing. However, I am quite accomplished in the iPhone app store. My paid apps have made over $300,000 in the last 18 months. I design and code my own apps. I was a Mac programmer before the app store took off so my barrier to entry was low.
Here are a few things I learned about app marketing:
1. Getting an app noticed on the app store is very hard now. Apple used to just feature apps on the iTunes homepage. Now they feature apps with-in sub-categories. Getting featured in a sub-category does not boost sales.
2. When you are featured in a sub-category, your app does not get featured on the device itself. This means no sales boost.
3. Review blogs do not boost sales at all. Unless a publication like Techcrunch writes about your app, don't bother with review blogs. People buy apps on a whim. The people who read geeky review blogs are not your audience.
4. I suck at marketing so I had zero luck with external app promotion. The app store does not have a marketing mechanism. Hundreds apps are submitted and forgotten on a daily basis.
5. Your app has to offer something original and of significant value to get noticed by Apple. It also has to have a kick-ass design. App has featured two of my apps on the device. One of which was featured simply because the reviewer loved the design.
6. Once you get featured by Apple, it's all up hill. Getting featured on the device will usually get you into the top 10 of a category and top 500 of the overall store. My app at number 302 was doing around $1,600 a day.
7. The app store is still in its infancy. There is a ton of money to be made on the store. I just helped a friend launch an app last week and he is making around $70 a day. That's not a huge number but it's also not horrible.
8. Free apps and paid apps have completely different rankings in the app store. You cannot make a paid app free to build momentum. When a paid app is made free, it loses its ranking. I tried this exact thing on one of my less successful apps. The paid version was only getting 19 downloads a day so I made it free. The free version got over 1,000 downloads a day. However, making it paid again did not help sales at all.
9. If Apple does not feature your app and your app does not take off, you should focus on increasing your app's search placement with-in the app store. I have a few techniques I use to successfully increase the search placement of my apps.
I could go on and on. But I'll just stop here. I would love to learn more about affiliate marketing and in return offer my insight into mobile apps.
P.S. - I can't believe your developer was going to charge you $150 to change the app's display name on the device. It literally takes one second to do this. I would go crazy if someone did that to me. The friend I mentioned above first used Elance to get his app developed. The developer was some guy in India. Apple rejected the app three times because it kept crashing. He lost $1,300 on it before asking me for help. It took me two weeks to fix that mess. I have a hard time trusting Elance type sites.
Good luck with your app!
It seems like I can't reply to private messages because I am a new member. Sorry to all who sent me a PM. You can find me on Skype at ebookbusiness.
Bump Bump
My first app I made personally in a weekend to learn Corona, it was denied by Apple. It was a simple joke app and it seems the jokes were to lude for them. Fuckers.. Android took it and it managed 9 downloads for 0.99 in like 6 months. I just remembered it and made it free.
My second app released on 2/28 and is a niche travel guide for my home town Key West, Fl. From the 28th to the 3rd I had it at 0.99 and got about 20 downloads overall. Since I need established reviews and some big numbers to get advertisers I made the app free on 3/3. The 3rd I got 40 downloads, the 4th I got 195 downloads so my strategy is doing great. Once I get established reviews and start my advertising campaigns the app will go back to 0.99. So far things are doing great, though I wish more people would write reviews. I may have to add a review me popup to get them though.
If you guys want to check it out its at Key West Local Guide
My first app I made personally in a weekend to learn Corona, it was denied by Apple. It was a simple joke app and it seems the jokes were to lude for them. Fuckers.. Android took it and it managed 9 downloads for 0.99 in like 6 months. I just remembered it and made it free.
My second app released on 2/28 and is a niche travel guide for my home town Key West, Fl. From the 28th to the 3rd I had it at 0.99 and got about 20 downloads overall. Since I need established reviews and some big numbers to get advertisers I made the app free on 3/3. The 3rd I got 40 downloads, the 4th I got 195 downloads so my strategy is doing great. Once I get established reviews and start my advertising campaigns the app will go back to 0.99. So far things are doing great, though I wish more people would write reviews. I may have to add a review me popup to get them though.
If you guys want to check it out its at Key West Local Guide
Yeah it took quite a while for me to complete. But that was because the 3rd party API's were still very young and a whole host of other problems. If I was to start a new one today it would only take 2-3 months.
I just released the Android version today which has taken some work to get on par with the iPhone version. I would rather work with iOS since the apps are really easy to make pretty, but you do what you got to do. The android version is locked at 0.99 since you are not allowed to EVER charge for a app if its free once. So you can not make it free for periods of time, if its free just once its locked at free forever.
iPhone version has about 305 users now, but I now have 5 reviews and a 5 star rating. Still free until the end of march.
Was that app also built in Corona? How did you find the framework? Is there anything it's seriously lacking in? These multi platform app frameworks look nice but I can imagine one small feature might fuck you right up due to them 'making things easier'.
I.E here - Corona SDK Code Comparison with Objective-C: Display an Image in OpenGL #CoronaSDK @ansca
Although it only takes one line with Corona, are you able to modify the underlying C or Java if you have some tweaks you need to make?
I.E here - Corona SDK Code Comparison with Objective-C: Display an Image in OpenGL #CoronaSDK @ansca
Although it only takes one line with Corona, are you able to modify the underlying C or Java if you have some tweaks you need to make?
The app was made with Titanium Appcelerator. Corona is more for games than normal data driven apps, but it is easy to learn. All frameworks use either Lua, HTML5, or JavaScript. Titanium uses JS, SenchatTouch uses JS and HTML5, and Corona uses Lua.
It takes some work and research before you start the project to make sure the platform can handle what you want to do. I tried making a simple data/sql app in Corona and it was a POS. Corona is for games only really. Titanium is really nice and makes great data driven apps but horrible games.
I did run into one problem like you mention though. The iPhone version has the ability to draw lines on a map (connect the dots style) which I used for the Tours section. On Android there was no way to do this. So when we created the Android version 5 months ago it could not be released. This past week I asked the community if any new methods were found to do it and it turned out a guy made a module that worked. So $30 for his addon and finally the app was able to be released. Without that guy though I would not have been able to release a android version. There is no eta on the android maps ever getting the map polyline support. Everyone has some sort of workaround.
So in the end even if you pick a platform that may not be 100% what you want you may be able to hack that capability into it. Just be good at problem solving.
Now a days you see so many apps coming out everyday but unfortunately most of them are worthless piece of shit.
