Xcode Keyboard Shortcuts
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Development
Just a quick post, I came across a very handy list of Xcode keyboard shortcuts that I found very useful, so thought I’d share it with you all. Hopefully you’ll find this as useful as I have so far.
iPhone App Marketing Thoughts
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Marketing, iPhone Apps
Over the past few weeks we’ve been quietly working away on a couple of new apps for the iPhone. So far we’re quite proud of them and we believe that 1) Theres nothing already available on the app store thats similar and 2) They’ve got the potential to sell a lot of units.
Now i’m sure that almost every developer has thought along the same lines at some point only to find dissapointing sales on their daily trend reports. However, thats no reason to give up!
Like any other product, marketing is a key component to its success. And so we have been putting some thought into marketing our new apps. Over the coming weeks i’ll publish a few posts with more details of our marketing plan but first i’ll run through a few thoughts that have been on our minds.
Twitter Time
Whenever you research iPhone app marketing you’re almost certainly going to come across websites advocating the use of twitter for your marketing, but like any other marketing it needs planning and thought.
From experience with other projects we’ve found that twitter can certainly have an impact on sales but you need to think about TIMING. With the sheer number of ‘tweets’ being made on twitter its easy for your message to get lost, unless you’re a popular user with thousands of followers and hundreds of them willing to RT your messages.
So, looking at your marketing plan, what region do you think your app will be most popular in? Try to time your tweets to peak times on twitter for that country/region.
How do you know what the peak times are? We try to use a little common sense with some trial and error. We found we got the most response between 6pm and 9pm in our target country, our second biggest response was between 7am and 9am. There could be any number of reasons these times worked best but we think it worked because this is usually when many people are relaxing either before or after work and are browsing around, checking emails, twitter, etc. Look at your own browsing habits and use that as a basis.
Generating Links
Just like promoting a website, you need to get backlinks from others to start to get traffic. There are a few things to think about before you embark on a link building spree.
1) Do you try to get links to your website or straight to your itunes app page?
This varies a little but in general we found spikes in our sales when we linked straight to our itunes app page. Thinking about it logically this makes sense.
- We’re reducing the number of clicks to purchase. Remember the old rule of thumb that a user needs to find anything on a website within 3 clicks? 1 Click to open itunes, 1 click to buy, thats 2 clicks used already. 1 Click to get to the website with your link in the first place and thats it.
- In a way we’re pre-qualifying our customers. If they dont have itunes then the link will be useless, if they have itunes then it will take them straight to our app. We’re not interested in visitors who simply cannot buy our product.
- iTunes and the app store are trusted whereas a developers website probably isn’t in comparison. By sending customers straight to the app store they know they’re safe. If they went to our website first we’d have to convice them of this before sending them to the app store.
2) Where are the best places to get links from?
Aside from the obvious iPhone app review websites (we’ll publish our list of sites to contact soon) there are many other places to try and get links from. In fact, depending on the nature of your app, you’ll probably do better with websites other than app review portals.
Try and define a category (outside of the appstore) or topic for your app, what groups of people will find it interesting or useful? Now search around for associated groups and pages on facebook, myspace, linkedin, wikipedia as well as looking for forums and communities dedicated to your subject. Providing you have an app that these groups of people will like then these places are probably the best places to get links from.
One word of warning! Dont just post a bunch of links and then leave, while your app is in review with apple (lets face it, you’ve probably got a few weeks) start spending some time on these groups, contribute to forums and get to know people a little. They will be much more receptive to your links this way and are more likely to post links other places for you.
Anyway, that was just a few things we’ve been talking about, I know it went on a little but hopefully some of you might have gleaned something useful from it.
App Store Payout Thresholds
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
Well today we’ve made some more progress. Pocket Napoleon has broken the $250 payout threshold for the app store in another two regions, which is great. On the other hand, there are a few regions, which at this rate aren’t going to break the threshold until well into 2010, but thats the way it goes I guess.
I’ll explain the iTunes App Store regions and thresholds a little more. Currently the app store is divided into seven regions
- United States
- Australia
- Canada
- Europe
- United Kingdom
- Japan
- Rest of World
As a developer you have to sell over $250 (after Apple’s 30% cut) in each of these regions to get paid your earnings from that region. So in Pocket Napoleon’s case, it has been selling well in the first five but as you can imagine, has not been as popular in the Japan/Rest of World. So until we sell $250 worth of product in these two regions (even if its $249 in each) we wont get paid.
I haven’t looked into exchange rates in these regions so thats something I’ll have to research in the next day or two and post my findings.
Pocket Napoleon - Ninth Day Sales
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
Apologies for not updating sooner, we’ve been busily working on two new iPhone applications, which we’ll update you on shortly.
Anyway, Pocket Napoleon has been steadily selling itself and has now risen to #28 in the app store. We’ve sold over 700 copies so far and have broken the $250 payout limit in 2 territories. As you’d expect most of the sales are coming from the UK and the US but there are a fair few coming from Australia too.
We’re working on a little report that will cover the first months sales, promotion, etc for you all to have a read of, hopefully you’ll find it interesting.
Pocket Napoleon - Fourth Full Day Sales
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
The fourth full day has passed and the sales seem to be back on the way up, as well as its rank in the entertainment category. Friday saw Pocket Napoleon receive 62 sales and rose to #42. So it seems as if its on the way up and will hopefully keep on rising.
It looks as if its rising in the ranks even more today, currently sitting at #39, fingers crossed it keeps on going.
Pocket Napoleon - Third Full Day Sales
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
Well, the third full day of sales for Pocket Napoleon on the iPhone App Store has been very interesting. Even though its received less sales (53 in fact), it has risen almost 10 places in the entertainment category to #53. All I can assume is that the other apps are selling less too.
Being our first app to be published we’ll be very interested to see what happens to sales over the weekend period. We’ll keep working on promotion and try and get a video posted to youtube as well.
Keep checking back for more updates!
Pocket Napoleon - Sales figures for second day
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
Well sales for yesterday (24th June) were back down to where i’d expected them to be for the first day. I sold 68 copies of Pocket Napoleon but still rose in the entertainment category to #62. The graph above gives you an idea of distribution between countries.
- United States - 66%
- United Kingdom - 27%
- Australia - 2%
- Canada - 2%
- Japan - 2%
- Germany - < 1%
- Sweden - < 1%
I’ll keep updating this each day to give you an idea of how Pocket Napoleon has been selling, hopefully you’ll be able to use this to predict your own sales.
Pocket Napoleon - First full day sales
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone App Sales
On its first full day, Pocket Napoleon, sold 137 copies and 11 copies the night before. I was originally aiming for 40-50 copies on the first day so this came as quite a shock, let hope the trend continues… although I am slightly doubtful.
This places Pocket Napoleon at #65 in the Entertainment category. Just over 75% of these sales came from the United States, a further 10% from the UK and the rest from all over the world.
I just wish that I had installed some tracking software before I submitted so I could see more upto date stats, as it is I have to wait a day for updated stats.
As it comes to the end of the month i’ll try and post some more detailed stats for all of you that are interested.
Pocket Napoleon released on the App Store
Posted by admin | Filed under iPhone Apps
Pocket Napoleon has finally, after weeks of waiting, been released onto the iTunes app store. Although a very basic application, we think its a lot of fun and well worth the £.59 or $.99 price tag.
If you’d like to see any extra features for an update or have any comments then please get in touch. So why not give the app a whirl and give us a nice review.
DESCRIPTION
That’s right, your favourite TV geek Mr. Dynamite is now available on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Pocket Napoleon features twenty classic catch phrases for you to play with, prank your friends or just amuse yourself for hours.
Pocket Napoleon is an easy to use, single screen, soundboard. Simply press the appropriate button to play its sound.
IMPORTANT! - Users experiencing no sound must make sure that all sounds in the general settings menu are enabled. Also make sure you have system sounds set to either headphones/speakers or both. If the problem persists please contact us using the links provided on iTunes. Thank you.
**DISCLAIMER**
Pocket Napoleon is intended for novelty use only. We will not be held responsible for any inappropriate behaviour carried out whilst using this product. The price charged for Pocket Napoleon covers development costs only. All sounds and character names are copyrighted and trademarked by their respective owners.
**DISCLAIMER**
