Congrats to Apple and all the developers for getting the App Store to over 10,000 apps.
View the full mosaic image (hi-rez, suitable for printing):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tap-tap-tap/3074199062/
View the source image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tap-tap-tap/3073359209/
A big thanks goes out to Arn Kim of MacRumors and AppShopper for getting us all the icons that were used for this.
I’m very happy to announce that we’ve found a buyer for Where To. We just signed the final contract and the app will start its second life shortly.
Sorry for being so vague right now but many more details will soon follow. Stay tuned…
Apple’s iPhone App Store has undoubtedly been a huge success so far. We’ve had great fortune with not one but two hit apps. But we’re getting to the point where the App Store is in jeopardy of getting destroyed because it’s being overrun with 99¢ shovelware, with an ever growing number of developers competing for a slot in the charts.
Some developers have been up-in-arms over this in recent days and the “shakeout” that they believe is on the horizon is pretty much a pipe-dream. It’s just not going to happen. Higher-priced apps aren’t going to rise and dominate the charts, even if they trounce the competition in quality. Very strong precedents have been set regarding what the market expects for pricing and it’s low.
But 99¢ doesn’t have to be the only option for getting exposure for your apps. The important thing to consider is that it’ll likely be impossible to change the current situation unless some reform comes from above.
If you develop your iPhone app as if it’s a Mac app (or Windows, Linux, etc… desktop app for short), it’ll be doomed to failure. Apple’s pretty explicit about what to do and what not to do when creating iPhone apps and the rules are very different compared to the desktop. This is well documented in the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines. Developers seem to grasp this concept just fine, for the most part.
Similarly, if you position and market your iPhone app as if it’s a desktop app, it’ll also be doomed. Again, the rules are very different here. But it seems like developers are jumping into this with outdated and inappropriate notions. Mobile markets in general are completely different from desktop markets and this is even more so with the iPhone.
And now the problem we’re starting to see is that many developers who’ve had success in the desktop realm are becoming very frustrated when their inability to repeat their successes in the iPhone marketplace. This is understandable, but the so-called solutions that are being proposed will most likely have the opposite effect than intended.
Thinking and acting like a “traditional” software developer simply doesn’t cut it in the App Store and this will almost certainly lead to failure, especially as the App Store matures. Granted, there’s still room for some traditional developers to exist in this market but success will probably be very, very limited and is more likely to happen in more niche and vertical markets.
The App Store is very hit-driven. Almost all of the sales from the store are driven by the apps in the Top 100 chart. Once your app falls off the chart (assuming you were fortunate to have it on it in the first place), it’s typically a matter of days before your sales numbers shrink down into the teens or even single-digit numbers.
Most App Store purchases fulfills the need of instant gratification, not traditional “need”, especially when that gratification can be had for a buck or two. How many times have you seen an app in the App Store and it was a no-brainer to just tap the “Buy Now” button because the risk was so low? It’s a crap-shoot and sometimes your gamble works out… sometimes it doesn’t. When it’s only a buck or two at stake the buyer’s remorse factor is minimal. Desktop apps don’t have this benefit, where they’re typically sold for $20 and up so impulse buys there are nowhere near as frequent as with iPhone apps.
Recently, Mac developer, Andy Finnell, wrote a post expressing his frustration regarding the state of App Store pricing as he’s about to enter the market with his own offerings:
“The fix for pricing too low is really simple: raise your prices. Most $0.99 apps should become $9.99, $4.99 apps should become $14.99, and so on. With a $9.99 app, you’d make $7 per copy and at 16 copies per day, you’d make about $40,000/year.”
A bunch of others (mostly developers) rallied around his cries. Now we hate to sound negative here, but arbitrarily suggesting that everyone up their app prices by around $10 just isn’t going to cut it here. How can one assume that charging more for an app will keep sales numbers the same, or even anywhere close to the same? The reality, because of the way the App Store currently works, is that taking this step will almost definitely drive you to obscurity about as fast as it takes your grandma to make the next great flashlight app.
iPhone apps are typically much smaller and more focused than desktop apps and as such, should be priced accordingly. In addition, you need to take into account the much larger market that you’re dealing with here… Apple is selling well over 10,000 iPhones per day and these are all potential new customers, plus all the existing iPhone owners and iPod touch sales.
This dollar store mentality even goes beyond the iPhone as most of the Mac developers we know have been experiencing significant downward trends in their software sales since the App Store opened. It appears that the “instant-gratification-on-the-cheap” factor has implications on the desktop, too. It’s going to be tough to compete with impulse purchases when you can get around 20 iPhone apps for what a typical desktop app costs.
Due to the direct relationship between an app’s chart ranking and the numbers of copies sold each day, developers on the store have given up the notion of a price as a marker of valuation, and now simply use the price as a means of competition and marketing, rather than as a cost relative to the value of their application. This is not against the rules. This is an expected reaction from iPhone developers to some inherent flaws in how the charts, and to a large part, the entire App Store works. Of course, the inevitable endpoint of this ongoing trend is the average price of any popular apps eventually flatline near 99¢.
The way things are going, it’s hard not to predict a future that is bright only for the small-scale, cheap apps that manage to hit it big. Where no one is crazy enough to dedicate the money, talent, or time on something truly exceptional. Where the shelves are lined with questionable chocolate bars and trinkets. It’s the future of the Crap Store.
And the hard reality is that the market is currently very hostile to anyone who tries to fight it.
But before everyone starts panicking, we think there’s a simple solution…
This model has worked at the box office for ages, and it’s even more appropriate in this situation since there’s a much wider range in app prices versus movie ticket prices.
Because the playing field in the App Store is currently skewed towards the cheapest offerings, unlike how it works in other “chart-centric” industries, this solution would take a lot of the pressure off of developers to keep trying to undercut each other. Developers who’ve been put off by the current atmosphere of the App Store would likely be giving things another look which means that we’d have a better chance of seeing higher quality titles come to the store. Everyone wins… well, except the shovelware creators and I’m sure few will miss them.
Think about this simple scenario for a second and it should immediately make sense to you… take an app that’s priced at 99¢ and is selling 1,000 units a day compared to an app priced at $19.99 and selling 999 copies per day. The way the App Store currently works, the 99¢ app would still be ranked higher than the $19.99 app, even though the $19.99 app would be earning over 20 times as much as the 99¢ one!
The charts as they are work as a simple measure of popularity in terms of number of customers. This would be fine, but as the only truly viable method of exposure offered to most iPhone developers, we think a chart based on how well apps are doing would at least allow for further price diversity and pricing that is more in line with a valuation of the product.
What’s important to consider here is that we’re absolutely not suggesting that we feel that there’s no room for 99¢ apps in the store. We have no problem with discounted software. The issue is that the current situation punishes most who feel that their apps are worth more than 99¢, while rewarding those at 99¢. And this shouldn’t be the case. The App Store is in danger of becoming the Crapware Dollar Store if something isn’t done to change the way it’s setup now. Our proposed fix would go a long way toward remedying this.
Also, bear in mind that what we’re discussing here pertains only to the 99¢ issue. Other issues like exposure for apps that aren’t in the charts, etc. are entirely separate issues.
We debated for months about how to price Classics. But as we watched countless apps make anemic chart climbs and quickly shuffle off the charts, our initial thoughts of a $9.99 price tag fell, and fell, and we eventually settled on $2.99. Did we price it below what we felt our app was valued? Yes. But we had two things in mind – reaching as many users as we could with what we felt was a pretty cool piece of software, while at the same time paying the rent check.
We held the $2.99 price for about two weeks, through Classics’s first run at the charts. Over the next week or so, the app burst into the charts at position #54 and rocketed upwards. The coveted top ten was in reach. Over the first two weeks, the app sold over 20,000 copies, grossing in excess of $60,000.
But then, something happened. iHunt, at 99¢ rocketed past Classics to #1. Then Wings, at an intro price of 99¢, and so on. After inching to position #12, Classics began to drop, slowly at first, but slipping faster and faster by the day, until we were just about to shuffle off the charts at a low of #92.
The reason that we’re noting the #12 rank is because it’s exactly the rank that our other hit app, Where To, peaked at in its first climb up the charts. And the same happened with fellow developer, Austin Sarner and his Pennies app. Definitely a strange coincidence. Note that all three apps launched at the same $2.99 price.
The obvious “what if” question of course is what would have happened had we launched Classics at 99¢. The interesting thing about the paid apps charts is that sales increase almost exponentially with each jump in the top ten, and apps that make it in there tend to hunker down and stabilize for a while. This seemed to be one (very risky) plan for some substantial business while still attempting to chart. The other option is to attempt to cycle back into the charts later with a price drop or heavy advertising. We’re now attempting the former with some of the latter.
We’ve dropped the price for now to 99¢, and we’ll see if the resulting chart climb (if any) warrants this decision. It was a difficult and honestly, personally painful decision to price this low for an app that we truly feel is worth a lot more. But as pragmatists, we know the decision is a realistic one for the situation we’re currently dealing with.
Our proposed “gross revenues rank” solution obviously isn’t one that we can do on our own and will take an effort on Apple’s part, but this isn’t unheard of. Even though Apple appears to move at a snail’s pace, that have actually fixed many of the issues plaguing the App Store in the beginning:
John sent many, many angry letters and made several phone calls to Apple when the free-to-paid exploit was going on. The exploit easily cost us thousands of dollars because we were continually pushed down the ranks by those taking advantage this loophole (for what it’s worth, had our proposed solution been in place, the exploit would have been rendered useless by it).
Even though it felt like John was spinning his wheels by continuously pestering Apple every time he noticed the exploit happening (whether or not it affected our app), he kept the pressure on and it actually resulted in not one, but two responses from Steve Jobs himself. The man. In the legendary terse Steve fashion. No BS.
He first took the opportunity to burn us a bit about the less than stellar reviews and ratings our app was getting but then assured us that change was on the way. Not warm, fuzzy Obama-style, but assurance, nonetheless.
Developers seem to be under the notion that if they challenge Apple they’ll somehow be “punished” for their actions. This makes absolutely no sense in this situation because Apple ubdoubedly wants to have the App Store, like everything else they do, be the best it can possibly be. So if you see something that’s broken, TELL THEM! And this goes not only for developers, but for Apple users in general. The more people, the better.
If enough people get behind this and put the pressure on Apple, things will likely change for the better. We’ve seen it with the improvements to the App Store we listed above and we’ve seen it with things like the abolition of the overly restrictive NDA for the iPhone SDK.
So call Apple, email them, shout it out on Twitter, blog about it… do your part to help this change if it’s an issue you care about.
What’s new:
Get it now at the App Store.
As many of you know, we’re currently in the process of rebuilding tap tap tap after our recent meltdown. We now have four all-new apps in development (we just hired two additional programmers to help things along, making a total of four programmers on the team now) but our home page has been looking pretty sparse.
Although we’re now operating more smoothly and efficiently than ever, we still have a ways to go before these apps will be released. Well, today I’m extremely happy to announce that we’re co-publishing what’s very likely to be one of the hottest, new iPhone apps, Classics.
Simply put, Classics is reading redefined. With Classics, you “escape into some of the greatest stories ever written and experience a revolutionary new reading platform”. You really have to try it or see it in action to appreciate revolutionary this app is. On the Classics page, we have a movie that shows it in action.
Classics was created and developed by my MacHeist partner, Phill Ryu and Andrew “Kaz” Kazmierski, the creator of the precursor to one of the most talked about Mac apps in history, Delicious Library. What’s most notable about Kaz’s work on the original Library was that he was just 13 years old when he developed it! I remember seeing Library years ago and I recall being really impressed/envious that someone so young was creating better apps than I was, even with all the years of programming I had under my belt.
Kaz is 18 now and he’s continued to hone his skills over the years and now he and Phill, after working tireless months, are proud to bring you Classics. Phill’s always been a very avid reader (he takes after his dad that way) so this app was truly a labor of love. Phill and Kaz are really into cool UIs and you can see that throughout the app. Once you try it, you immediately notice the attention to detail that’s been emphasized everywhere, from the realistic page turns… to the beautiful book cover art… and everything in-between.
Features:
Price: $2.99
More info: at the App Store
I’ve been following along with Classics’ development as it’s been going on and I knew right from the start that this was going to be an amazing app. And I knew immediately that I wanted to have it somehow be a part of tap tap tap’s portfolio. This app is right in-line with our vision for what an iPhone app should be and we’re working very hard to have our upcoming apps have the same level of quality.
Even though I’ve known and worked with Phill for a long time, it wasn’t easy to make this relationship become a reality. Kaz was concerned that he wouldn’t get the proper credit for his work (easy to see, given the past). So, I just want to make it totally clear that tap tap tap had no part in the development of the app (aside from reviewing the zillion mockups/movies/builds that Phill would incessantly send me 
).
What’s our relationship here exactly? We’re going to be co-publishing the app along with them. They have their own website for the app at ClassicsApp.com. Why are we doing this? Simple… we both benefit from it. They’ll get increased exposure, especially when we finish and release the apps we have in the works while we build our portfolio with a very solid, very sweet app. And again, since we’re currently app-less, there’s no better time to get this on our home page. We’re going to be testing this out for a bit and if it works out, we’ll continue the relationship.
Here are the books that are included with the first version of Classics:
Even though Kaz & Phill were responsible for the bulk of getting Classics to market, it wouldn’t have been done without the help of a ton of other talent. David Lanham, Sebastiaan De With, Kevin Capizzi, Daniel Goffin, and Karl Baron all had a big hand in making Classics the beautiful and delightful app that it is. A huge congrats goes out to all of them for getting this out and having it turn out so great!
Check out Classics at the App Store now.
Because of the split-up of the company, we’re selling our flagship iPhone app, Where To, which grossed around $200,000 over three short months in the App Store.
Last week, I wrote a post explaining tap tap tap’s future. In it, I mentioned that we’re looking to sell Where To and that I’d post the details of the sale. So here we go…
Before I get into all the details, I feel it’s important to go over a few things so that you’ll get an understanding of the type of app Where To is and its place in the market.
Basically, I see iPhone apps being split into two main types: apps that have big, corporate backing and hundreds of thousands of dollars as budgets, versus apps that are created by the rest of us. The big budget apps often have a brand associated with them… Super Monkey Ball, Spore, etc. The “rest of us” apps make up the bulk of the App Store and this is clearly the type of app that Where To is.
The big-budget apps are a whole different ballgame and unless you’re a Sega or EA, they’re simply untouchable by regular people as far as developing one goes, so I’m going to limit my discussion to the “rest of us” apps.
These apps can further be broken down into three main classes:
As for the the apps with the hook, a couple of examples are Koi Pond and PocketGuitar. Both of those apps rose to the top and stayed there for a long time. These apps are making several thousand dollars per day with zero or almost zero marketing budget. Hits like these are few and far in-between, but if you’re fortunate to have one of these on your hands, you’re obviously in good shape.
The last class that I listed consists of apps that, no matter how much you market them, stand little chance of success. The App Store has thousands of apps in it, and unfortunately most of them are in this category. So no matter how many success stories you hear about the App Store, never forget that probably 99% of the apps in it are only selling a few copies per day. Tipulator, one of the apps that we developed is one of these apps, so we know this from experience. And I know many, many developers who are, unfortunately, in the same boat.
So that gets me to the class of app that Where To is… an app that can make a solid, steady income with an appropriate marketing push. It’s definitely not an easy task to optimize several advertising campaigns but for the right type of app, it’s definitely worth it.
In all the years I’ve been a software developer, I’ve never had a “hit” app that just did very well on its own. Everything I’ve been a part of that’s had success definitely had its share of marketing to make it work. And that definitely includes MacHeist, too, which is pretty much one giant ball o’ marketing. I generally prefer dealing with these types of things because they’re more predictable and these types of apps have been, and will remain the focus of tap tap tap. But I’m definitely not against having a true hit on my hands if it ever happens. 
Keep in mind that both Where To and Tipulator were marketed exactly the same way when we launched them the day the App Store opened. Where To made it and Tipulator flopped. And this was confirmation that with a continuous push, Where To could’ve brought in a good, ongoing stream of revenue.
I have to admit that I was very reluctant to go this route at first. When I was approached by my ad manager from Macworld to start an iPhone app ad campaign, I thought he was on crack. I figured that the margins were just too low on a $2.99 app to make it work out. But I saw another app advertising there and rising the charts, so I figured we should throw a few thousand dollars at it, measure if it would work out, and then go from there. To say the least, for Where To it definitely worked out.
For those of you unfamiliar with Where To, it’s an attractively designed app that quickly and easily helps you find points of interest around you using the GPS of your iPhone.
Here’s the description we used in the App Store for it:
One of the best features of the iPhone is that it’s able to determine your current location, but missing is something that’s become a staple of most GPS systems: a quick way to find points of interest around you. Where To provides that in a slick, intuitive user experience. Find food, places to shop, fun things to do and much more with just a few taps.
Not sure what you want for dinner tonight? Tap “Surprise Me!” to make the choice. Take a chance and find something new and exciting!
Features
And here are the screenshots that we used in the App Store that show how Where To works (click on each for a full-size image):
As I mentioned, marketing and advertising were critical to Where To’s success. I spent weeks optimizing ad campaigns, with the bulk of them being Macworld and Google AdWords. We also did a couple of Daring Fireball Syndicated Feed Sponsorships which were helpful for quick boosts. Ad campaigns, especially AdWords campaigns often take a while to get them optimized and this one was no exception.
But thankfully, after a ton of tweaking and testing I was able to get it to the point where we were turning a healthy profit off all of the ads. They started running close to break-even but after the initial adjustment time, they were running very efficiently and whoever purchases Where To would be able to simply setup the same campaigns on their own and have them running as we did.
Here’s a sample of one of the ads we had running:
Here’s the part that held this post up for so long. We had a small discrepancy in our accounting but we needed to make sure our numbers were 100% correct here. The issue was that for one ad campaign, we had an invoice that was off by a couple of thousand dollars because not enough ads were served in the campaign. Thankfully, we were able to track this down finally and we’re totally confident in the numbers we’re presenting here now.
The numbers from October aren’t in this chart because we don’t have official numbers from Apple yet but it preliminarily looks like Where To did around 7,800 sales from October 1 to October 12, the day that we removed it for sale from the App store.
For the three months listed in the chart, Where To sold 66,335 copies, with most of them being sold at $2.99. We ran a couple of promotions where we sold it for 99¢ and this accounts for 3,746 of those sales.
The important thing of note in the chart is how the ad ROI significantly increased once we got the ad campaigns optimized after a few weeks of starting them. For September, we had $49,286.30 in net sales. $28,692.87 went to advertising and the profit for the month was $20,593.43.
And this was on the rise. Had we kept going with this, the monthly profits would’ve likely increased over time. At what point would they have peaked, we don’t know. We managed to get Where To as high as #7 in the Top Paid Apps chart and after going through the experience and knowing what I know about how the App Store works now, I’m confident that it could climb even higher in future runs to the top.
Looking at other months here, the initial month was clearly the best. We benefited greatly from having an app in the App Store for its launch and by having it climb the charts so quickly (it made it as high as #12 in July). We hardly did any advertising in July although we worked hard to promote it in general for the launch. So July was mostly profit for Where To, earning us $51,672.60.
August was our weakest month mainly because this is when we spent a significant effort optimizing the ad campaigns. Thankfully, it turned a profit still, although by comparison to the other months it was pretty meager at $6,802.99.
The following table shows the bottom line for the three months:
Again, we don’t have final numbers for October but the sales were approximately $8,500 for the 12 days it was available in the month. Note that all the ad campaigns ended in September and the app wasn’t being promoted at all while we were working out the details of the severance. So this accounts for the slowdown during October while Sophia temporarily took over the app.
Although I feel the overall risks are pretty small, for the sake of full disclosure, it’s worth pointing out the most significant risks, as we see them…
First off, there’s no guarantee that Where To will be able to maintain the sales levels it’s had over the long run. While sales were growing at a good rate until we pulled the ads, this may or may not be sustainable. While I’m very confident that it’ll be possible to continue grow Where To’s sales and profits even more over time, the App Store is just too new, there haven’t been many precedents set, and the future holds many unknowns.
Another risk is regarding the competition Where To has. The points of interests genre of apps is a pretty popular one and although all indications are that Where To’s done the best in terms of sales so far, it’s possible for other apps to take over its lead and eat into its sales.
Even though free competitors exist, they haven’t seemed to have much negative impact into how well Where To has done so far. My opinion on this is that many purchasers are wary over free apps and would simply rather pay a few bucks to ensure they’re not inundated with ads or potentially malicious things in freeware. I know it’s generally the case for me… I’m not saying that I’m against freeware but I typically feel much more confident in a payware app over its freeware alternative.
The following is a snapshot of the most popular apps in the Navigation category around the time that we removed Where To from the App Store. Even though free app downloads usually outnumber paid app downloads by orders of magnitude, it’s easy to see how well it’s fared even against its free competition:
Here are the apps that I regard as Where To’s main competition, based mostly on similar features and function, and the app’s popularity:
Now that the risks are out of the way, let’s discuss the positives.
I’ve analyzed Where To since it’s been released to try to figure out why it’s been as popular as it has. What’s made it so popular so far will likely contribute to its longevity.
The first thing is something that was pretty conscious on our parts… we worked hard to make sure the app looked great and that the UI was very slick. We’re doing this with all of our apps and it’s simply a carryover from our Mac apps. I’d much rather use a good-looking app with a well thought out UI than a mediocre one and we were confident that our customers would feel the same way.
The next thing is probably the most important thing to contribute to Where To’s success… its recognizability. The first thing you see when you run across Where To in the App Store, whether it’s on the iPhone itself or in iTunes is its icon. In the US at least, the icon is immediately familiar to just about anyone. It encourages the potential purchaser to get more info about it and you instinctively know that the app does something to help you find someplace you’re looking for. We had the choice to go with icons that had better graphic design but we chose to go with the exit sign for this reason (we knew it’d have an impact but honestly, I think we underestimated how much it’s actually seemed to have).
We worked hard to tighten up the description so that the user would immediately feel like they needed the app. And the great thing is that because Apple doesn’t have a feature like this built into the phone, most iPhone users do need it.
Of course, there’s the major marketing effort which I’ve already discussed that’s contributed to Where To’s popularity in a very significant way.
All of these factors have worked all along for the app and they’ll surely continue to work for whoever buys it from us. People want and need points of interest apps so Where To will very likely have a long, long shelf-life.
One thing that we feel is critical to Where To’s longevity is that development continues on it and a that some important features and functionality are added. The biggest criticism of Where To is its lack of fully integrated maps and this was one of the next things we were planning to add to it. In addition, overwhelmingly most of the Where To sales have been from US customers (around 90%) and adding localizations for other languages will go a long way to driving future sales. Sophia has done most of the low-level work for this for the unfinished version 1.5 and has most of the German localization working.
If you’re under the illusion that having success is the App Store is a cakewalk, you’re delusional. I can’t count the number of time’s I’ve read a success story about the App Store with the first naïve comment in the post being something along the lines of, “Well, I guess I’d better go download that SDK now!” I wish it were that easy.
Making this or any app be successful is going to take work. Hard work. Both in terms of marketing and future development of the app.
In my opinion, the most optimal buyer for the app is someone who has previous software experience either on a mobile platform or on the Mac. In fact, most of the people who’ve contacted us so far have been exactly this.
It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of VCs. And in this case, I feel that if someone with a wad of cash just wanted to throw it at this, it’s likely to fail. It’ll take dedication but I’m confident that with the right buyer, it’ll work out for a long time to come.
Once the app is sold we’ll transfer ownership of the copyright over, along with all the source code and artwork for the app. Included are all the marketing materials like ads and such.
You’ll also be supported by us for a reasonable time post sale. We want to ensure that you’ll be successful with the app so we’ll do our best to help get you rolling. This includes both some engineering support like explaining how parts of the app work and discussions about future features. And we’ll also be providing marketing advice so that you’ll be able to quickly get Where To up on the charts as soon as you put it live again.
There’s a chance that some of you who are interested in Where To may not have it installed on your iPhone for testing. If so, we’ll make an “ad hoc build” available to you so that you can fully test it.
Keep in mind that we’re looking for serious buyers and as I’ve mentioned in my last post, for you to be able to demonstrate that you’re serious and qualified to purchase the app, we’re requiring that you put some money in escrow. We feel that $5,000 is a fair and reasonable amount for this. So the risk on your end will just be the fee from the escrow service (around $150) if we’re unable to reach a deal. If we do work out a deal with you, the amount in escrow will serve as your down payment for the app.
So, to reiterate, the potential to do $20,000+ per month in a sustainable business is here with Where To (that’s $240,000+ per year… we’re talking Joe the Plumber levels here, people!) And as the iPhone gets more mainstream, which it surely will, the potential goes up with it.
If you’re interested in putting a bid in on Where To, contact us at WhereToAcquisition@taptaptap.com. Hopefully we find a good fit in a buyer with this method so that we can avoid the tacky “eBay exit”.
It’s been a pretty long time since our last post. For good reason… I’m just going to get to the point and let everyone know that we’re in the process of splitting up tap tap tap.
A few weeks ago, I was about to announce the addition of a couple of new members to our team. But unfortunately that post got delayed and delayed as Sophia and I have been having some severe arguments over the direction of the company. Although it was a very tough choice to make, we decided that the best thing for both of us was to divide the company, its assets, and have us both continue on separately. This way we were each able to run things the way we want to without stepping on each other’s toes.
Our arguments ranged from the amount of money and effort to put into advertising and marketing to the design of the apps themselves. Because we each had an equal stake in the company, it was a very democratic process but very often our visions were at odds with each other’s. Moreover, we’ve been friends for a long time before starting the business and the whole thing’s really hurt what used to be a very close friendship.
In the few weeks since deciding that we’d split the company, we went through several attempts at coming to an agreement as to how we’d actually do it. Unfortunately we had a very hard time coming to a complete consensus and this made things drag along, leaving the company in a state of limbo for too long. But thankfully we’ve finally reached a deal that we both think is fair and that we’re happy with.
Under this arrangement, Sophia will get Tipulator and the in-progress I’m Here and Groceries. She’ll be publishing the apps under her Sophiestication brand. She’s done all the programming on Groceries so far so it makes sense that the app goes to her. She’s a good UI designer and I have faith that she’ll put out a great app even if the direction she takes it isn’t exactly where I would’ve gone with it. I’m looking forward to it because I’d like to replace my current shopping list solution with something better.
As for me, I’ll retain the tap tap tap brand and a bunch of apps that we had in early development but we hadn’t announced as of yet. The great team that we’ve assembled is staying with tap tap tap so I’m really happy about that. This means that Wolfgang will be contributing his amazing designs (and he still also plans to work with Sophia on finishing Groceries), Scott will be continuing to handle web/server-side things/app design/etc, and the two new programmers who I’ll announce in a separate post soon will continue to develop our current and future projects.
Although our home page looks like a fancy ghost town right now, we’ll be filling this up soon with some nifty, new apps. It’ll definitely be difficult to basically be starting from scratch again but I’m always up for a challenge.
Sophia and I simply couldn’t come to a consensus on what to do with our big hit, Where To. After waaay too much back and forth “negotiating” we narrowed our choices down to two: euthanize the baby or put it up for adoption. We decided to go the adoption route for it… well, more like put it up on the black market.
Basically, Where To had gross sales of around $200,000 in the three months that it’d been available on the App Store. So instead of watching it slowly fade off into oblivion because we stopped marketing it weeks ago, we decided to pull it from the App Store. We’re now seeking a buyer for Where To and its assets. We’ll be selling it all to the highest bidder and Sophia and I will be splitting the amount we get for it.
I’m going to put out a post in the next couple of days detailing our plans to sell it off. Full details will be coming soon along with complete financials for it including the marketing costs, etc.
So if you’re looking to get your hand into the iPhone app game without having to start from scratch and you have some money and time to invest, here’s your chance. Where To’s a proven app, having been one of the top selling apps in the App Store since its launch, and the right buyer can easily make a very healthy, ongoing, steady income with it.
One thing, though… I simply don’t have time for questions from “tire-kickers” so you’re going to have to prove that you’re serious if you want to bid on it. Be prepared to put up a deposit in escrow to qualify yourself as a potential buyer.
So again, the details for the sale of the Where To assets will be coming very soon so stay tuned…
While I feel like everything’s been at a standstill for the past few weeks, that hasn’t been the case at all. We have three new apps in various stages of development and a fourth will follow soon after one is released. The fourth is actually an app that has a bit of history with me and one that I’ve gotten many, many requests to have revitalized.
But while development has been progressing, the blogging has definitely died down. I’ve been really looking forward to getting back into it and now that we have resolution on everything, I definitely will be. I have a zillion posts in the queue and one of the first ones coming up will be a post on marketing iPhone apps that I mentioned I’d write if there was enough interest in it, which there definitely was.
And there’ll be much more to follow. One thing I’ve enjoyed the most about tap tap tap is actually the blogging. I haven’t done much of it in the past and I don’t feel totally comfortable with my writing abilities but I’m slowly becoming at ease with it. It kind of seems like blogging’s fallen out of fashion in today’s 140-character world but that’s not going to deter me. I’ve built-up a lot of experience over many years of being a developer and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way. So if I could pass along some of what I’ve learned and help prevent people from making the same mistakes, I feel it’s all worth it.
Our own Wolfgang has just found out that Apple has approved his new iPhone game, Dashball. Congrats, Wolfgang!
Scott and I just bought copies of it and we got addicted to it right away. I think that Wolfgang’s going to have a nice hit on his hands.
For years, Wolfgang’s been working with others as a hired gun to help them realize their software dream. And now he has his first project where he’s his own boss. I’m sure he must feel great to have this finally out because I know it’s been stuck in the “waiting for approval” line for a while.
But does this mean that this is the end for Wolfgang at tap tap tap. Hell no! He’s still hard at work on our designs so no worries.
Check it out:
tap tap tap exists in somewhat of a virtual state… we have no central office and everyone involved is in a different part of the world. So how do we work efficiently on our projects?
Many things like coding and marketing can be done in a vacuum. The person responsible for his or her task can simply work on it and report back to the team when appropriate. There’s really no need for Sophia to go over every Objective-C line or SQL statement she writes with everyone else.
The way that we’ve worked with designers in the past has mainly been a lengthy, iterative process. We’ve all worked with our designer, Wolfgang, on various past and ongoing projects and we used to get things done with a mix of text chat, voice chat (using iChat and Skype), and email. If we’re all in an audio chat, having a group text chat alongside is handy for passing along links, etc.
We’d discuss ideas we’d have for UI, along with some variants to try and then Wolfgang would deliver the goods via email a day or two later… sometimes longer, depending on how busy he was at the time.
During the next meet-up, we’d go over revisions and repeat the cycle until we ended up with the results we were looking for.
Overall, it was generally effective but highly inefficient. Because of the lag time between meetings we’d sometimes settle for somewhat suboptimal end results. Things could’ve continued on for a long time if we kept tweaking designs using this system.
A while back, John was chatting with his MacHeist partner, Phill Ryu. During the chat, Phill was occasionally passing images of a project he was working on. John was fairly surprised that he was getting updates so frequently. He knew that Phill was working with Wolfgang on the project those days but he just assumed that they used the same process he was used to when working with Wolfgang.
Phill explained that he’d often hire Wolfgang for a whole workday interactive “session”. John was pretty skeptical about this method, mainly because he felt there’d be too much downtime for him between design iterations. But Phill recommended that he at least try this once with Wolfgang.
Before going on, it’s worth pointing out that there are several ways to go about turning an app from concept to reality. But two ways are the most common in practice among developers…
One way is to work on most of the UI, code it all up, then try to make it look good afterward.
Another common way is to do somewhat of the opposite… start with a fairly vague idea of the UI, refine both the way the app functions and the way it looks in one big step, then implement it all in code.
Granted, this is an oversimplification of the whole process because it’s rare that anything’s as cut-and-dried as this. Often, an app’s development will be a bit broken-up and it’ll be done in “chunks”. But one of these two workflows often still applies to how each chunk is worked on.
We tend to go with the later method for creating our apps. We usually start with a “programmer mockup” that intentionally looks like crap but simply shows the basic functionality. We do this because we don’t want to steer Wolfgang in any particular direction at this early stage. So, really, the worse it looks, the better it is at this point.
It’s important to note that this isn’t all about just making things look pretty. A good app has a balance of form and function. So it’s vital that at this stage most of the app mechanics and interactivity are worked out in detail, in addition to making it look aesthetically pleasing.
What we’ve found is that it’s much more effective for us to brainstorm UI designs when working alongside with someone who can make quality graphic designs.
When you have a mockup that looks exactly like what the final app potentially will be (the “pixel-perfect” mockup), you’re better able to notice flaws and usability issues much earlier in the whole process.
Also, at least for us, it’s much more motivating to have a sweet design worked out first… then turn that into a real app. Moreover, Apple themselves are known to use a method similar to this for their apps and it’s harder to go wrong if you’re following Apple’s lead.
As a result of Phill’s suggestion, John gave the collaborative method a shot in a past project with his partners involved at the time.
It definitely was different. But it was soooo much better!
Design iterations came almost immediately (Wolfgang has the mystical power of often providing a new mockup before one of us is even finished explaining the changes we’d like… yes, we’re dead serious… warlocks rule!).
The lag between meet-ups was mostly gone now so everything just flowed very nicely. And even when there was a little delay between design iterations, the time was usually used effectively.
John suggested that Sophia also try this system because she was also working with Wolfgang on CoverSutra before starting tap tap tap. She did and was immediately hooked, too.
But although the process had now improved significantly, it still wasn’t without its issues… the bulk of them having to do with Wolfgang passing new design revisions to multiple people at once. While it’s easy enough to have a multi-person text chat in iChat, one huge shortcoming is that you can’t send images or files in it the way you’re easily able to in a 1-on-1 chat.
So the obvious workaround is that Wolfgang has, in addition to the group text chat, an additional text chat for each other person in the session. It works, but it’s clunky… for every new mockup, he has to send it once for every person in the session. If we have four people in the session and he’s sending several different iterations to us in one session, it’s easy to see how this becomes a real pain for him.
In addition, it’s not so optimal for us either. An iChat window is not the best place to view images, especially if they’re large… for instance, website mockups. iChat was designed to mainly handle text, with the occasional image. So we have to make the chat window unusually large to view the images because iChat scales them to fit the window. And if anything else comes in the chat, we have to keep scrolling back and forth to keep up with new things and what we’re trying to evaluate.
So, for bigger things it would often make the most sense to have Wolfgang send us the image files, rather than inline them in the chats. But it’s easy to see how this could quickly get out of hand. Here’s a look at Scott’s Downloads folder to give you an idea…
And iChat has its share of reliability problems to compound things. All of the .iChatTransfer files you see above were failed transfers that had to be resent by Wolfgang.
Our take on Skitch was that it was pretty much a fun, little app used to add annotations to and draw little doodles on pics. Most of our experiences with it had been with Austin Sarner using it to torture his friends.
In one session a while back, not long after we started, Wolfgang passed us all a URL in the group text chat. It was a skitch.com URL. Nice… he must’ve drawn a mustache on a Sophia pic or something. 
We all clicked the link.
To our surprise, it was the first mockup of the session. Very nice… he just eliminated the issue of passing us images in iChat. The expense was that we all had to now click a link every time he created a new mockup… no more being spoon-fed for us. 
Wait… but was this the actual case??
A couple of minutes after the first mockup came through to us and we critiqued it, much to our surprise and delight, another one came through. Not a link in the group text chat but right on the original Skitch page, right under the first one!? Automatically.
We were all wowed.
This was a huge improvement to our design session workflow. In one fell swoop, Wolfgang managed to chop out all the shortcomings of image handling in iChat by using Skitch now.
So from a designer’s point of view, how’s this all work? Well, Wolfgang created a nice screencast to step you through the process…
Pretty simple, eh?
If you’ve been doing this the old-fashioned way, you really need to give this method a shot. We can just about guarantee that you’ll never go back once you try out this method.
Here’s the link to the Skitch page of the second design session for the tap tap tap logo where we finalized it:
http://skitch.com/bartelme/xyik/tap-tap-tap-logo
Although it’s one of the last things we expected it to be used for, Skitch has proven to be an invaluable tool for ultra-rapid design prototyping for us.
So what’s the whole design process like? It definitely varies.
For Sophia, when she’s working on CoverSutra, she usually has a clear vision of what she wants before jumping into a design session. She usually begins by designing interfaces and workflows using pen and paper.
She’ll draw the various buttons, boxes, etc. which help her to visualize the whole UI better than she can if it’s just in her head. For her, pen and paper, rather than firing up Photoshop, makes everything go much faster in the beginning.
After she feels comfortable with her rudimentary designs, she’ll schedule a session with Wolfgang where he’ll work with her by fleshing it all out in Photoshop. Because she usually has a pretty clear idea of what she’s looking for, Wolfgang typically works on his own without much intervention between mockups. She then reviews revisions and repeats until she gets the desired results.
With tap tap tap it’s definitely different because we need to find a balance of what we all like. So bouncing ideas among all of us and getting almost immediate feedback in the form of a design mockup is invaluable.
While brainstorming UIs without having a graphic designer around often works for vague, initial ideas, nothing beats actually having real, pixel-perfect mockups when fleshing things out. A big benefit of having the mockups is that it makes it much easier to maintain focus and helps us to imagine how the apps will actually function once implemented.
And as for the ultra-rapid prototyping, we’re able to try out many ideas and variations, even if some initially sound half-baked. What would’ve been impractical with the old method became completely with the new one. Since it’s so fast to try new things out we often test ideas that seem hair-brained to some at first. But after a bit of “discussion” and a few adjustments, some ideas turn out to be very effective UI and graphic designs.
We’re considering showing many of our Skitch sessions for our various designs (all of our apps, website, etc.) over time if you’re interested in more posts along these lines. We’d detail some of the significant points where the designs evolved. And we’d detail our reasons for making the design choices we did.
Without a doubt, our design sessions are one of the most enjoyable parts of our business (if not the most enjoyable). It’s always exciting to see how our ideas come to life, right before our eyes. When things turn out well, there’s that “BOOM!” feeling and not much compares to it. You can almost compare the anticipation of receiving a new mockup to the anticipation of Christmas coming when we were kids.
But it’s not all rosy…
We all have strong feelings about our ideas so we often have a lot of conflict. It’s really easy to get attached to an idea that you have. So we sometimes have a hard time letting go of a concept that’s suboptimal. It can be hard to do, but it’s important to at least try to keep an open mind, especially in the early stages of design evolution. Getting too attached too a bad idea can potentially kill an app. We know this from experience, unfortunately.
We also have conflicts regarding what we’re able to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. We’re not the quickest iPhone development shop by any stretch of the imagination. We try hard to make things as good as we can and it’s easy to bite off more than we can chew. Design sessions can make this even worse because when you see a really beautiful design, you quickly get attached to it no matter what the cost. But sometimes you just have to reject some ideas because they’re impractical to do in a realistic timeframe.
It’s also very important for everyone to communicate their ideas effectively. It’s easy for others in the team to misunderstand an idea you’re trying to convey to them. A really good idea has the potential to get rejected if others don’t “get” it. Often, even a quick sketch can help immensely in situations like this.
And one gripe we have with the Skitch workflow is that even though the web pages auto-update, there’s often a lag between when Wolfgang uploads until the time we all see it. A refresh button, or better yet, an “adaptive” refresh rate that adjusted itself depending on how “live” the page currently is would help make the whole experience much better.
But the pros definitely outweigh the cons. It’s taken us a while to fine-tune our design workflow and we’re very satisfied with it at this point. Design is just one piece in the big puzzle of our business but it’s undoubtably one of the most essential pieces.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more like it in the future, leave a comment below.
What’s new:
Get it now at the App Store.
I’m always on the lookout for cool, new iPhone and Mac related things. I frequently make the rounds at sites like digg, Ars Technica, Daring Fireball, and tuaw and they’re great sources for finding out about what’s hot.
But what about finding the hidden gems that have less of a chance of floating to the top? Sure, you could expand out to Technorati, delicious, etc. but you could easily spend your whole day on this.
Today, I stumbled upon a great site called Addict-o-matic that gathers information from many quality sources and presents them to you in a clean, simple layout.
Here are a few of my favorite searches:
Addict-o-matic isn’t limited to just geek topics. You can use it to search just about anything you’re interested in.
And with a mascot that looks like a cross between R2-D2 and the Michelin Man, how can you go wrong?
When I read about Mike Lee’s firing from Tapulous, it made me angry. Angry, not because I feel for Mike… he’s a big boy and I’m sure he’ll be fine. Angry because what we’re about to experience in the iPhone world is going to be a bubble along the lines of the one in the late 90s / early 2000s.
The vultures are out and and they taste blood. The iPhone’s one of the hottest things around right now and there’s little sign of its popularity letting up anytime soon. And the venture capitalists want in… badly. The fact that the iFund™ exists is overwhelming evidence of this.
Ever since my post discussing our sales stats we’ve gotten our share of VCs trying to court us. They desperately want a piece of the action and they’re pounding the pavement with full force.
Now don’t get me wrong… I’m all for a free market. If the market accepts the wave of their “free” stuff coming down the line, all with the hopes of getting as many people on board and getting money from their users through ads or whatever, more power to them. Just remember that you’ll pay for it sooner or later. If the market accepts a flood of their crapware, more power to them. But of course, I’m really hoping that the market doesn’t accept any of this.
The Mac has prospered because of quality. Both in terms of Apple themselves and 3rd-parties. The iPhone is at a dangerous point right now. It’s on the verge of becoming commoditized and so is the 3rd-party software on it. And the VCs are right there behind this and will probably drive it if the market lets them.
I can’t count all the times I’ve recently heard the terms “money-grab” and “monetized via advertisements” regarding iPhone apps. This pisses me off because I care about the quality of the things I work on. We’ve gotten a zillion emails regarding the availability of Groceries and although we could rush it out the door, we’re taking our time on it and doing it right. And the same goes for all the apps we’re working on and will create in the future.
Here’s a bit of a dialog I recently had with a VC:
And this was just the initial phone call. Imagine if we took funding from one of these firms!? I’m sure we’d be forced to become a churnware factory in no time. We refuse to go down this route.
I almost went the VC path myself in the early 2000s. Thankfully, the deal fell through at virtually the last minute. It left me literally in poverty for a long time because I’d quit my job to start up the company after everything was “locked in place”. But I stuck with it and in the end, I’m glad it worked out the way it did. It left me much stronger for having gone through the adversity.
In a nutshell, VCs will give you just enough money to get the ball barely rolling, but then repeatedly force your hand in later funding rounds (if you even make it that far). They’ll have you by the cojones and you’ll have no choice but to give up more and more of what you’ve built through your blood and sweat. And what’s worse, VCs typically bet on a large group of startups with the expectations that one will hit big (the 1 in 10 guideline).
So what about the ones that don’t make it? Well, the founders may very well care about their creations deeply. But the VCs will be quick to amputate and cauterize. They’ll cut their losses in a heartbeat no matter how this would affect the people who’ve poured their souls into their babies. I’ve known many people who’ve been in this predicament over the years and it’s unfortunate to say the least.
I’m serious. It takes hard work and perseverance. You most likely won’t have a runaway hit like a Koi Pond your first time through. But you’ll gain valuable experience. And you can’t put a price tag on that.
Plain and simple… the more you work at it, the more you’ll learn. And the more likely your chances for success down the line. There’s almost nothing better than the freedom of not having to answer to some suits breathing down your neck and assing-up everything you’ve worked so hard for.
But what about startup costs? Sophia and I started up tap tap tap for a few thousand dollars each out of our personal savings. And we’re not any kind of exception as this post shows. There’s no reason why you’d need more if you’re dedicated to your dream.
The way VCs think and act is very dangerous for the whole iPhone platform. My hopes are that the most successful developers that come out of this are truly independent developers and that the market does its best to support them.
Again, fuck the VCs.
In the App Store, one of the problems developers are facing is getting more attention for their apps. We’ve run into this and even though we’ve had some good results the past week or so through various efforts, we’re continuing to push things as hard as we can. A few weeks ago infamous Mac developer, Austin Sarner was brainstorming with me about how we could get more exposure for our apps, especially since he just released his Pennies budget tracking app for the iPhone.
One of the things we came up with was a co-operative advertising campaign. So we explored the possibilities and started a medium-sized campaign through Macworld to test things out. We gathered a few other of our developer friends and got a print ad, along with some banner ads going. And today the print ad comes out in the magazine.
We decided to put up a website and drive all the traffic there initially, then send people off right to the App Store for more info on the apps they’re interested in. That site is called App Store Gems and we just went live with it.
Co-operative advertising is a great way to limit your risk and expenses, yet still try to go for the “big splash” with something like advertising in the largest Mac magazine. The iPhone app thing is all pretty new to all of us so we’ll see how it all goes. I plan to report back with results as we get some info back on their effectiveness.
A couple of the things that I felt was very important for this was to work with developers I knew and trusted, and also to make sure that the apps I picked were of high quality and had a good mass-market potential. Some of the people included are Ollie Wagner, who I worked with on mission 6 of MacHeist I, Josh and David Keay of Insanely Great Tees and a bunch of other nifty, Mac-related things, and Jorge Llubiá and Pedro Cuenca, developers of Xslimmer, which was promoted in MacHeist. They’re a great bunch of people and I’m happy that we’ve all banded together for this.
One very nice thing about this is that everyone involved has been contributing in some fashion and we’re all thinking about other potential ways to co-operatively promote our products. The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts and this promotion is the perfect example of that.
And one important thing we all decided to do was donate all of our earnings for AppStoreGems.com’s debut today to charity. The charities we’ve each chosen are:
I’ve avoided the glut of beer apps, lighters, light sabers, and tip calculators (oh, wait ) that are cluttering the App Store, but I have to admit that I totally want this:
For the past several days, I’ve been wondering exactly which direction to take this blog in. I’ve been brainstorming what seems to be a million different topics that I’d like to write about here in the future. Many probably won’t make the cut, some will get merged into others, or some may even be split into multiple segments. I’ve grouped them into a few categories:
One thing I’m passionate about is design and I’m really looking forward to discussing our designs for all of our stuff… the apps, the website, our logos, ads, etc. We have virtually all of the iterations of our designs archived and you’ll be able to see how things evolved. I plan to discuss how and why the designs evolved. I’d also like to write about the way that we work, with every member of the team being in different parts of the world. That can be a challenge sometimes but we have a pretty effective system in place now.
And because interest for Groceries is so high, I definitely plan to go over its progress and evolution here in great detail. Groceries is undoubtably our most significant app and we’re putting a ton of effort into it. We still have a lot to do on it but I promise you… it’ll definitely be worth the wait. We haven’t even covered all its major features on its product page yet and there are a couple of features that’ll hopefully make it the killer app for iPhone. In a nutshell, our goal is to make the process of dealing with grocery lists dead-simple… enjoyable even. And from my point of view, none of the competition’s nailed it yet, not even close.
Some of the things I’d like to write about aren’t easily categorized. They’re not even remotely iPhone related. But I’m going to write about them anyway. I don’t want this to become a “corporate” blog so I’m going to try to keep it all loose and just have fun with it.
It seems like there’s a big demand for iPhone and/or Mac marketing info, based on the comments in my recent (Semi)Final numbers for July post. I’ve been lurking on the Mac Small Business mailing list for a while and I’ve always been surprised that marketing discussions often seem to be discouraged on it. What’s bizarre to me is that it seems to be acceptable to have a long discussion on it every few weeks about which method of payment processing is the best.
So if you feel like you have a taste for more marketing info, you’ll likely find it here as time goes on. I eat… sleep… breathe marketing. I spend much of my time preoccupied with how to get more exposure for the things I help create. Information on marketing seems to be pretty scarce, at least in terms of iPhone and Mac software marketing, and I feel like I can help that situation at least a bit.
The first post I plan to do along the marketing lines is regarding Where To’s recent climb back up the charts. We were as low as #77 and we’re currently at #28. To put it mildly, it wasn’t easy to get this far. And we still have a lot further to go. I’ve become absorbed, no… OBSESSED with the rankings and my goal is to get Where To in the top 10 (we made it as high as #12 last month)… and if possible, the highly coveted #1 spot.
Will it get there? Who knows but I’m working my ass off trying to and giving it my best shot. All I can say right now is that it’s been pretty stressful… seeing your app drop dramatically and having a very difficult time getting it back up is damn frustrating. Like I said, we still have a long way to go, but we’ve made some very good progress at least.
For the curious: our sales have shot up from around 250/day to around 750/day since the climb.
We have a lot of things in the works to try to push it higher and there’s something fairly big that we’re starting on Monday. I’ll try to have more details on that here over the weekend.
As for the post on what we’ve been doing to climb the charts, I plan to do it once Where To hits its peak and starts to fall again.
It’s worth pointing out that whatever I express here doesn’t necessarily reflect the rest of the tap tap tap team. There’s even a pretty good chance that whatever words fly off my keyboard are pretty much the opposite of the way they feel on any particular topic. So try to remember that and also try to remember that much of what I say will likely be opinion. Take everything I say with a grain of salt and always use your best judgement. Better yet, just ignore anything and everything that I say and you’ll be much better off, ok?
Yeah, I know what I want to write about but I’m also very open to suggestions. Post comments are a good indicator of what you all want. We’ve gotten a lot of comments on the sales figures posts so obviously you want more of that and we’ll deliver. So if there’s something in particular you want me to cover or just a general direction you’d like me to lean in, be sure to let me know in the comments.
What’s new:
Get it now at the App Store.
And if you’re a Where To user, let your opinion be heard by writing a quick review for it.
I was just checking our web stats in Mint and saw that we’re getting a lot of hits from a post by Scott Loganbill at the newly revamped Webmonkey (I’m glad Webmonkey’s back as it was a very useful resource in the 90’s and early 2000’s). The post, entitled ”Six Reasons iPhone Delivers Where Android Won’t”, discusses some significant reasons why Apple, with the iPhone, has a pretty serious leg up over Google’s Android mobile platform.
Some of the reasons are from a developer’s point of view and this is why the post is of interest to me. I’ve been following Android’s progress from somewhat of a distance and I’ve been relatively unimpressed so far. Of course, if Android proves to be a viable mobile platform, there’s a chance we’ll jump on board and develop apps for it but I have been, and continue to remain pretty skeptical.
Check out the post here. A lot of what’s discussed is totally in line with my thoughts on Android.
Granted, the openness of the platform can be a good thing. But from a business point of view, that openness may very well be the thing that stifles Android and prevents it from going anywhere.
What do you think of Android?
As you’re all aware, 4 out out every 5 iPhone apps that are released is a tip calculator. We totally predicted that this would happen as soon as Apple announced the App Store. And we definitely didn’t want to feel left out so we jumped on the bandwagon. Well, since we started ours before the store was launched, there wasn’t a bandwagon yet but you get my point.
Anyway, today Everything iCafe pulled together a sampling of around 1,200 tip calculators that are available on the App Store and did a shootout. And our little offspring, Tipulator, was included.
How did it do? Not bad at all. They rated it 5 stars and it tied for winner with BigTipper.
Here’s an excerpt:
Tipulator is by far the best looking tip calculator I’ve ever used. The attention to detail when they designed this app is stellar. It combines good looks with some nifty features and sounds.
Check out the whole shootout at Everything iCafe.
Things are going pretty well for us right now. Except for the fact that we have more ideas than we can handle with our current “engineering staff”. The staff is basically Sophia, who does 95% of the programming here while I take up a bit of the slack (I programmed most of Tipulator and I’m doing the programming on I’m Here!).
I’m looking forward to going into what’ll probably be my 5th programming retirement (I’ll admit it… I suck now and I’d much rather stick with app design and marketing). And Sophia’s swamped with all the work on her plate. It’s become obvious to us that we need to increase our engineering resources ASAP.
We’ve recently taken on a friend of mine who I’ve worked with in the past on Mac stuff. He’s really good at what he does and he’ll be a great addition to the team, but he’s got prior commitments until mid-September.
So in the interest of getting things done sooner, rather than later, we’re looking to take on one more programmer immediately. The ideal candidate will have many years of Cocoa development experience. A big plus will be some iPhone development experience, of course.
We don’t care about college diplomas or anything (I’m a two-time college dropout myself). But we do require that you’ve proven yourself by having good quality, shipping Mac or iPhone apps under your belt. And we definitely require that you care deeply about attention to detail and have the desire to make the best possible apps you can… we’re simply not interested in churning out half-assed shovelware.
You’ll be working as an independent contractor on some nicely designed and fun apps. We offer competitive rates and a killer work environment (meaning your home).
Interested candidates should apply via email at HireMe@taptaptap.com. Send us whatever you think is appropriate to evaluate you for this position.
We’ve finally received our financial reports for the month. At this time, we’re still missing some territories, such as Canada, but overall the US overwhelmingly makes up the bulk of the sales (>90%) so the final-final numbers won’t vary by much.
So the total sales for the month was $75,177.38 and after Apple’s cut, we ended up with a grand total of $52,815.
The sales are reported for the period of June 29th to August 2nd. But because the App Store opened July 10th, the period is actually 24 days. So over the course of those days we took in an average of around $2,200 per day.
As I mentioned above, I didn’t update my previous post. I had originally planned to fill in the missing bars on the chart in it with the missing daily figures. But unfortunately we never got those figures (and likely never will). It appears that we only have access to the previous seven days of sales numbers and the oldest rolls off each new day. So on that note, I present you with… the brick chart:
This is rather unfortunate because we’d like to assess the effectiveness of some of the ways we’ve promoted our apps. But it’s hard, if not impossible, to do this without good data. This is one of the downsides of putting all the control into Apple’s hands. As an admitted control-freak, it makes me a bit uneasy but I’ll learn to deal with it and compensate.
It’s worth pointing out that our sales have dropped significantly over the past few days. We were teetering around the 50th rank for Where To but then slipped under it. It seems that once you drop past that, you’re on a free-fall since the App Store on the iPhone only shows 50 in its top list, compared to 100 in iTunes on the computer.
I’m willing to bet that it’s a quick ride into oblivion once you fall off the Top 100 chart and I’m really hoping we don’t get to find that out anytime soon for Where To. This happened to Tipulator but it was a different situation since it never ranked very high at all to begin with.
We went from selling around 450/day when we were ranked around 50 to around 250/day when falling below. And we dropped like a rock… in just two days we fell to around the 75th rank.
So we’re now in “damage-control” mode to try to get it back up. If any of you are interested in hearing about the marketing side of running a software business, let us know in the comments and I’ll consider writing up some of the details of what we’re doing…
What’s new:
Get it now at the App Store.
We’ve gotten our sales reports from Apple for the iPhone App Store. And we’re going to take a fairly bold step and share our numbers with you.
But first I want to give you a little background about me and why I decided to do this…
For those of you who don’t know me, in one of my other lives I’m one of the people who runs MacHeist, the #1 Mac software promotion site. At MacHeist we’ve sold over $3,000,000 dollars worth of discounted software bundles in less than two years of existence and raised over $750,000 for various charities.
And one of the factors that’s helped the business do so incredibly well is because of our transparency where we make our numbers public. But tap tap tap is an entirely different kind of business.
On July 10th, the day before the “official” launch of the App Store, the store went live. It was both chaotic and exciting. We were kind of like pioneers and we were extremely relieved that we were able to get our apps out there for launch day.
We watched things like hawks as much as we could’ve throughout the day. Even though we’re veterans when it comes to Mac software, we’re now newbies in the iPhone app realm. And we did as most newbies do… we obsessed over our server stats and constantly checked the Top 25 list to see how we were doing. We weren’t expecting to get actual sales numbers for a month or so. So we knew we’d be in the dark for a while as far as actual, solid numbers were concerned.
But during the day, I noticed something… in the App Store on the iPhone itself, but not in iTunes: if you tapped on an app listing and scrolled to the bottom of it, there was a “download count” there.
This was actually pretty obvious for freeware… meaning it was, um, the download count.
But it was also listed for PAID apps! There’s no trial period for apps in the App Store so this could’ve only meant that Apple was making our sales figures public! Like WTF!?
The figures were bouncing around wildly that day, both going up and down. We just figured that Steve forced Phil Schiller to manually post all the updates and he was just having a hard time coping.
If I recall correctly, at around 10pm I saw that Where To had around 800 “downloads” while Tipulator had around 200. More interesting was that Super Monkey Ball, being in the #1 slot, had around 11,000!
But not long after this, something happened: all the download counts dropped to zero!
And they stayed there… no more fluctuations.
Apple must’ve realized that they made a huge blunder here. So they seemed to pull the plug as soon as they could’ve “fixed” it without actually shutting the whole App Store down.
There seems to be this taboo among developers regarding sharing sales figures. It’s pretty rare that one of us will make the figures public and the one person I can think of who’s done this is Jesse Grosgean of Hog Bay Software.
So why is this? The two reasons I can think of are envy and gloating… if you’re doing well and people know about it, it’s human nature that some people will become envious (trust me, I know this from dealing with MacHeist’s success).
And on the other hand, if you’re doing poorly and others know of it, some will tend to gloat over your misfortune.
It’s all unfortunate but it’s the way the world works. And it makes people reluctant to share details like the ones I’
