James is a games-related software developer who has been doing iPhone apps since the end of last year. He has worked on two so far, though they haven’t been as successful as he’d like:

Vidsplit – a video puzzle game (around GBP2)

Anima8gif - a utility to play animated gifs full screen

Figures haven’t been great – some days he will sell ten a day. After making one app free for a day and got 300 downloads in that day.

What went wrong?

• Poor marketing
• Lack of focus
• People don’t read descriptions
• Should have made a fart app?

The Apple review process take weeks to review an app, two weeks minimum.

What went right?

• Price reductions work in the short-term
• Free apps “sell”
• Open sourcing of certain components provoked interest
• Didn’t give up the day job

Going down the route of external advertising across the web.

Version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system has in-app purchasing built in so this could be a another avenue to explore.

One example of a free app is a calorie counter/exercise one. It  gets users to log specific foods eaten, counts calories and then suggests exercise activities to offset what you have eaten. The app is free to download and the money is made when the (anonymous) data collected is sold on to supermarkets.

Recommendations:

• External marketing is very important
• Check out in-app advertising
• Regular updates of apps boosts sales

Look on forums for ideas from iPhone users for new apps.

Look on other non-saturated platforms – eg Nokia store.

As the iPhone app store has so many users,  you only need a small percentage of people to buy it.

Before you are paid by Apple you need to sell USD250 (per territory?). There is also a one off fee of 99USD per year.

Pricing model is crucial. 1USD/99p/59p seems to be the key price point.

There is a separate Enterprise app store where you can push apps to a base of users (eg employees).

Stanford has produced a free video podcast showing how to create iPhone apps.

Phonegap allows you to turn webpages into iPhone apps.

When producing an iPhone app, being a developer isn’t enough – you need a wider skillset. Worth collaborating to achieve this. Understand what the users want and give it them. Work on a small idea and build on it with a plan for how to support it after the spike in sales following its initial release.

James supplied an email address so users could contact him for support but he doesn’t get many emails. May be better to use a contact form within the app?

He plans to use what he has learnt so far and keep developing iPhone apps.

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