How I earned $ 200K on the iOS app market
I want this article to coincide with the simultaneous release of the second version of my Word Wizard application and taking a new mark of $ 200,000 in the Apple AppStore. Next, I will try to share my experience and thoughts on the educational market, as well as tell my success story. I hope that this information will be useful to many independent developers. For those who create educational products on the iOS platform, my article will provide an opportunity to evaluate the application market in this area.
Actually I will start with sales and rankings , and then I will tell you more about my personal experience. I note that the data I give from AppFigures
')
I released my first product for iPad and iPhone more than one year ago, respectively, the Montessori Crosswords sales schedule starts from August 2010 (see picture above).
$ 200K is very good, considering that my second application in English and French brought me $ 90K from August 2011 (note the steep rise on the chart, the pace is much better than when I started with the first application). Let's now take a closer look at the four applications that allowed me to make this money. I must say that all my applications are universal - iPhone & iPad.
Price $ 2.99 , published August 2010 , sales $ 113,000 . ITunes Link
Montessori Crosswords is the first serious application that I developed. Until the end of September 2010, it was only for iPad. The biggest sales peak was at the time when the New York Times mentioned it (4th quarter of 2010). Closer to Christmas, having received feedback from users, I released a small update. Due to this, the results have improved. During the 2nd quarter of 2011, sales fell slightly, at that time I was working on the Word Wizard , but fortunately the Children's Technology Review awarded Montessori Crosswords and things went better. I realized that you can improve a lot of things, found 3-4 weeks and made another update. It was very popular with both ordinary users and teachers, so sales immediately went up (the end of the 2nd quarter of 2011). Further sales of Montessori Crosswords rose thanks to the popularity of Word Wizard . In the near future, I will release a new update, which, I am sure, will again increase sales dynamics.
This is the French version of Montessori Crosswords .
Price $ 3.99 , published November 2010 , sales $ 26,000 . ITunes Link
I am French, so it was natural to want to release a French version of my application. The French AppStore market is not that big, but I still decided to localize the application in French. For their children, for children of friends, etc., in the end, this decision was chosen correctly. Due to the fact that the quality of applications in the French AppStore leaves much to be desired, my application was immediately published in the main blogs of France. And France AppStore added French Words for Kids to the “Apps for kids” category and it was included in the first 10 apps. Honestly, I didn’t even do much promotion (only a bit in January 2011) and it didn’t go out of the TOP-10 due to little competition. In addition, there was a large increase in sales associated with the French version of Word Wizard
Price $ 2.99 , published July 2011 , sales $ 34,000 . ITunes Link
I worked on Word Wizard about 5-6 months, a lot of design, tests, graphics, etc. I really liked to invent various chips, I had to find the right balance. Separately, I would like to say “thank you” for feedback to my beta testers, they helped me a lot. After the publication, the Word Wizard was marked by teachers, people who are involved in educational technology, and other representatives of the educational industry. I understood that in order to become more visible the application needs to be actively promoted and promoted. And actually it went, the sales of the application began to gain momentum when the Children's Technology Review first awarded the Word Wizard , then wrote about it in the online version of The New York Times, after and in the paper The New York Times (on the graph the largest peak) in the Wired Geek Dad Blog, Apple mentioned it on its Facebook page and added it to the New & Noteworthy (iPad & iPhone) category in the USA App Store and in many English-speaking countries. However, after a month, sales naturally fell, since I was not engaged in promotion, and this was a good lesson for me. Even if everything is good, they write reviews about you and speak in the press - do not stop promoting! Most recently, I released the second version of Word Wizard , which included more than 20 changes based on user comments. Things have improved and in the near future plans to issue a paid press release on PRWeb.
This is the French version of Word Wizard .
Price $ 3.99 , published September 2011 , sales $ 11,000 . ITunes Link
It was amazing, in one day the application was included in the TOP-10 France AppStore by general rating (Overall) and remained there for two weeks. Peaks are linked to posts in French iOs blogs. Apple chose the French Word Wizard in the New and Noteworthy category, but the effect was really lower.
Back in March 2010, I released a small application Draw with Stars ($ 0.99) in order to try programming for iOs devices and to understand how the Apple AppStore works from the inside. Someone liked this application. Now it brings about $ 10 a day, that is, since the publication I earned about $ 6000 on it.
I also made the Montessori Crosswords app for the Mac AppStore , but it unfortunately did not go - about $ 6000 for 9 months of sales for the English and about $ 1600 for the French version. I tried experimenting with the French version of Montessori Crosswords French Words for Kids for Mac and offered it cheaper than the iPhone version, but it still didn’t work out - there were only $ 2800 in sales for $ 1.99.
I also developed a free application Hearts Extravavaganza - an application game for drawing hearts, made specifically for my daughters.
It would be interesting to see the ratio of sales of the application to its rating in the AppStore. This can serve as an indirect indicator of the volume of the market for educational applications (and maybe even the entire market). You can see that my applications usually did not fall into the TOP-10 (Overall or in the category "Education"). All my applications are universal (iPad & iPhone), the AppStore does not share the statistics on how many copies of the application are sold separately on iPad and iPhone. However, the rating data is divided by device - separately iPad and iPhone. Nevertheless, according to my feelings, the market of educational apps for iPad is bigger, even despite the total number of iPhones existing in the world. Another observation is that if your application is in the TOP-10 iPhone applications, then total sales increase faster than if your application would only be in the TOP-10 iPad applications. It would certainly be interesting to watch this addiction again.
Note: my goal is not to provide specific analytical data from the AppStore educational application market, but to improve your understanding, to give a general idea of ​​it, to show that this market is large enough (at least large for independent developers). Someone will be able to see and extract more information from the given figures and graphs - please.
The data below undoubtedly describes the largest market in the USA AppStore. Since we are considering a specific AppStore, the numbers here are somewhat smaller (than in the graphs above). By the way, this information may well be used to compare the world AppStore with the USA AppStore.
Word wizard
Interestingly, Word Wizard was very successful in August 2011. When the New York Times wrote about the application in the paper version, it reached the 2nd place in the iPad rating and the 5th place in the rating of iPhone applications in the Education category. , and in the overall rating (Overall) took the 30th and 326th lines of positions, respectively.
Let's consider the rating of the application by income (Grossing Ranks) for the same period, to the question of understanding the size of the market (unfortunately there are no sales on the chart, they could not be displayed and displayed on the same figure using AppFigures ).
It is interesting that after the publication in The New York Times, my application reached the 104th position in the overall iPad ranking by revenue (Overall Grossing), but I only made $ 2,000 a day, can you explain it when you are in the TOP-10 iPad rating on downloads ( in the category "Education")? And a few more thoughts will be further on the French version, which was in the TOP-10 (Overall, France AppStore), but with respect to this data from the USA AppStore, I could not compare them adequately.
Montessori Crosswords
Next, I provide data on income and positions in the ranking at a specific point in time on Montessori Crosswords . It is interesting to compare revenues for the same rating in the 2010th and 2011th years.
Of course, the French market is smaller, but it is quite good if the application has a good position in the rating. According to my ideas in the field of education (category "Education"), it is 7-10 times smaller than the US.
Interestingly, the application was in the overall rating on the iPad at the 5th position (Overall), these days sales ranged between $ 900- $ 1000 (by the way, at this time the app's rating for revenue (Grossing) was about the 10th position). If we compare this with the moment when the application was at the 30th position in the overall iPad rating (Overall) in the USA AppStore, then I earned $ 2000 per day. Now you can understand why I focus, with my products, primarily on the States market.
I think that enough numbers and it's time to tell you about my experience. As I said, I started by studying a very large number of blogs and other useful information. It was interesting, I really hope that my article will help you!
I took the decision to develop for the iPad literally a couple of weeks after his public presentation by Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, my first startup was unsuccessful, so I was looking for new projects. I was invited to a few startups, but I had a burning idea to develop for the iPad. After reading a few blogs, I realized that there are prospects in the field of education. In addition, it was interesting to do something for their children. My children are homeschooling and my wife and I have the experience of their education, this was also a plus. The project in this area allowed me to be closer to the family and communicate with children - indeed, my children were the first users and tested all my applications. The iPad seemed like a great device for kids, they already had experience and loved to play with the iPhone. I am sincerely convinced that children learn better during the game.
I started with the development of a small application, about which I already wrote, it took me about 2-3 weeks. This development made it possible to understand how the Apple AppStore works. I started working on the first serious application with several brainstorms, as a result of which I decided to create Montessori Crosswords . One of my children really liked this game and in general it was suitable for iPad. The idea was initially even more global than just an application, but I decided to start with the application. Already after the publication, it became clear to me that it would be enough to leave everything as it is.
After the release of the iPad version of my first product, I was creating a universal application - to work including. and on the iPhone. The release of this version has increased sales, but not by much (I think that this is because the price for the iPhone application was high). Then I began to think more seriously about progress, the first thing I found was a few tips on the MomsWithApps forum. My application was presented at the AppFriday event, which makes MomsWithApps - this led later to a note in The New York Times. I collected all the feedback and feedback from users and made an update. Next, I was promoting the application using all possible methods - I remember how I wrote an article in PRWeb for almost a week (it was not easy because I am French, and in the end I didn’t always know if what I was doing was useful and if it would bring results ). As for the French version of the application - I was going to release it as soon as possible, but there was a problem with fonts, and the voice recording of the wife delayed the process (now I understand that then it was really necessary to concentrate on promoting the already released product in USA AppStore!).
In January 2011, I started testing new ideas with new words. My idea was to make something similar to a game where people could enter their own words. I created 2-3 prototypes, but they seemed imperfect to me. Then I began to test the speech synthesis library, which would allow not to record the pronunciation of each new word with my voice, but immediately start playing with the speaking moving alphabet - that would be very cool! Children and adults played with the prototype, they liked it. But in the end, a small project stretched for 6 months. One of the reasons for such a deadline was that I wanted to make a product that is excellent in usability. In addition, the delay arose also due to the fact that I decided to add a quiz section to the application, the need for this feature was confirmed by my small marketing research. By the way, an important question was that the speech synthesis library, under the terms of the license agreement, took 20-30% from the product sales (it was impossible to simply buy it for a fixed fee), but it made the product more exciting and I certainly used it.
Fortunately, I managed to earn enough on Montessori Crosswords , and this allowed me to work on the Word Wizard . Although overall sales were not so good, I already received promising feedback on the new product, which of course was encouraging. In May, I still spent 3-4 weeks to release an update to Montessori Crosswords . As already mentioned, this decision was chosen correctly. At the end of July 2011, the English version of Word Wizard was released. I launched the French version of Word Wizard in September 2011. Now I have plans to update Montessori Crosswords and release the German and Spanish localization for Word Wizard .
I will try to summarize and analyze what is actually not so simple, the total time of my work. Perhaps my assessment will be somewhere approximate or very different from the labor costs of other developers. In addition, I have days devoted entirely to the development, and sometimes I spend all day doing only promotion.
Development of 20-25% For me, this is not particularly difficult. I have been programming for 25 years, and I started writing for Apple with 15 years. I studied for a long time, received a doctorate in technical sciences, worked as a developer and designer of software interfaces for 6 years in the same company. It was interesting for me to learn a new programming language and a new platform, I love programming! If to compare with my last work, it is easy and simple for me now.
Product development and UX 15-20% Conceptually, it was easy to come up with a product, I am a father and I understand what parents want for their children (of course, in order to improve the product you need to listen to your little users). As for the development of the interface and its usability, I have had a lot of experience with this before and I know all the “pitfalls”. In fact, it is very interesting - to design an interface for a child application for a device with a touch-screen (before that, I was more developing enterprise-software and websites). Creating a product with the right usability seems easy, but in fact there are nuances, and if you do not have experience in developing interfaces, then I would advise you to read at least a few books on this topic. They can find an explanation for the basic things - persons, user goals, tasks, tests, etc. Without a good interface and well-thought-out usability, it will be very difficult to get good feedback on the application and sell a large number of copies of the product.
Design 20% It was the most difficult for me, because I am not a designer by training. I like design, but it takes a lot of time from me. I can work with Photoshop and Illustrator, but of course it would be right to hire a designer and save time for it. If you have no experience with this, or you think this area is not interesting, then I advise you to hire or start a designer, because the design is also one of the important things - these include questions related to website design, icons, screenshots, advertising design, etc.
Promotion and marketing 15-20% As you probably already understood, this is one of the decisive success factors! If you are an engineer, like me, then it’s better to focus on this task (after you have finished developing the application as a whole, of course). I had a period when I dealt only with this issue and support for a whole month. By promotion, I mean the whole complex of works: preparation and publication of press releases (PRMac, PRWeb - for large projects), promo website of the application , work with reviewers, application page on Facebook , Twitter account , advertisements, work with forums and etc. It is very important to understand how to work with all this. When I started, I knew that marketing is very important, but I had no experience in everything connected with it. In fact, marketing is a process that is not so complicated, but very laborious. We must try to find different ways to promote your product. I recommend choosing your tactics, how to work personally for you most comfortably and effectively, and stick to it. Having learned you will continue to spend less and less time on this, you will already have some contacts, you will know where to find this or that information, etc.
To be aware, to participate in a get-together?% I listened to the advice of other developers, communicated in the community of developers in the educational sphere. The best advice I received in 2010 was recommended to me at the MomsWithApps Forum . This is really a very useful place where you can discuss any topic and any issue. You can even place your product promo on their Facebook page or website . At the forum, I met great people who helped me to understand those moments where I did not understand something and I really needed to learn something new. I also help other people just now when I find time for this. I tried to participate in discussions on other forums, but in my opinion this is the best!
Support 5% When you start selling a large number of copies of the product, of course, there is a question with user support. And it's very cool to support your users, because this is the easiest way to figure out how to improve a product. Of course a lot of letters come about some little things that are simply solved on the side of the user, but some will send really valuable suggestions! To get feedback, I advise you to build a button in the application itself that would allow users to easily and easily send you a feedback. I also consider it a normal idea to ask users to add feedback if they really like your application.
Other (rest) There is another job associated with the analysis of the AppStore, which applications users like, what they write in their reviews, and playing the guitar when there is no energy to work, reading blogs and news, and other small things. You should also not forget about the weekend - this year I had two weeks of vacation, but I took part in forums and was engaged in support. It takes me about 45 hours a week to work, but I never work on weekends (this is time for the family, and the family is holy!). I try to be productive, but when it fails - at this time I just do not work.
I hope the article was useful for you!
Original article: http://blog.lescapadou.com/2011/10/how-ive-made-200000-in-ios-education.html
PS We in our team Alex & Rovich loved Pierre's article and with great pleasure we translated it into Russian. We would very much like more interesting applications from our Russian developers to appear in the AppStore. We hope that the article motivates independent developers and small teams to work on their new projects, and you choose not only the development of a new toy!
Actually I will start with sales and rankings , and then I will tell you more about my personal experience. I note that the data I give from AppFigures
')
Sales
I released my first product for iPad and iPhone more than one year ago, respectively, the Montessori Crosswords sales schedule starts from August 2010 (see picture above).
$ 200K is very good, considering that my second application in English and French brought me $ 90K from August 2011 (note the steep rise on the chart, the pace is much better than when I started with the first application). Let's now take a closer look at the four applications that allowed me to make this money. I must say that all my applications are universal - iPhone & iPad.
Montessori Crosswords
Price $ 2.99 , published August 2010 , sales $ 113,000 . ITunes Link
Montessori Crosswords is the first serious application that I developed. Until the end of September 2010, it was only for iPad. The biggest sales peak was at the time when the New York Times mentioned it (4th quarter of 2010). Closer to Christmas, having received feedback from users, I released a small update. Due to this, the results have improved. During the 2nd quarter of 2011, sales fell slightly, at that time I was working on the Word Wizard , but fortunately the Children's Technology Review awarded Montessori Crosswords and things went better. I realized that you can improve a lot of things, found 3-4 weeks and made another update. It was very popular with both ordinary users and teachers, so sales immediately went up (the end of the 2nd quarter of 2011). Further sales of Montessori Crosswords rose thanks to the popularity of Word Wizard . In the near future, I will release a new update, which, I am sure, will again increase sales dynamics.
French Words for Kids
This is the French version of Montessori Crosswords .
Price $ 3.99 , published November 2010 , sales $ 26,000 . ITunes Link
I am French, so it was natural to want to release a French version of my application. The French AppStore market is not that big, but I still decided to localize the application in French. For their children, for children of friends, etc., in the end, this decision was chosen correctly. Due to the fact that the quality of applications in the French AppStore leaves much to be desired, my application was immediately published in the main blogs of France. And France AppStore added French Words for Kids to the “Apps for kids” category and it was included in the first 10 apps. Honestly, I didn’t even do much promotion (only a bit in January 2011) and it didn’t go out of the TOP-10 due to little competition. In addition, there was a large increase in sales associated with the French version of Word Wizard
Word wizard
Price $ 2.99 , published July 2011 , sales $ 34,000 . ITunes Link
I worked on Word Wizard about 5-6 months, a lot of design, tests, graphics, etc. I really liked to invent various chips, I had to find the right balance. Separately, I would like to say “thank you” for feedback to my beta testers, they helped me a lot. After the publication, the Word Wizard was marked by teachers, people who are involved in educational technology, and other representatives of the educational industry. I understood that in order to become more visible the application needs to be actively promoted and promoted. And actually it went, the sales of the application began to gain momentum when the Children's Technology Review first awarded the Word Wizard , then wrote about it in the online version of The New York Times, after and in the paper The New York Times (on the graph the largest peak) in the Wired Geek Dad Blog, Apple mentioned it on its Facebook page and added it to the New & Noteworthy (iPad & iPhone) category in the USA App Store and in many English-speaking countries. However, after a month, sales naturally fell, since I was not engaged in promotion, and this was a good lesson for me. Even if everything is good, they write reviews about you and speak in the press - do not stop promoting! Most recently, I released the second version of Word Wizard , which included more than 20 changes based on user comments. Things have improved and in the near future plans to issue a paid press release on PRWeb.
French Word Wizard
This is the French version of Word Wizard .
Price $ 3.99 , published September 2011 , sales $ 11,000 . ITunes Link
It was amazing, in one day the application was included in the TOP-10 France AppStore by general rating (Overall) and remained there for two weeks. Peaks are linked to posts in French iOs blogs. Apple chose the French Word Wizard in the New and Noteworthy category, but the effect was really lower.
Other applications
Back in March 2010, I released a small application Draw with Stars ($ 0.99) in order to try programming for iOs devices and to understand how the Apple AppStore works from the inside. Someone liked this application. Now it brings about $ 10 a day, that is, since the publication I earned about $ 6000 on it.
I also made the Montessori Crosswords app for the Mac AppStore , but it unfortunately did not go - about $ 6000 for 9 months of sales for the English and about $ 1600 for the French version. I tried experimenting with the French version of Montessori Crosswords French Words for Kids for Mac and offered it cheaper than the iPhone version, but it still didn’t work out - there were only $ 2800 in sales for $ 1.99.
I also developed a free application Hearts Extravavaganza - an application game for drawing hearts, made specifically for my daughters.
Ranking vs Sales
It would be interesting to see the ratio of sales of the application to its rating in the AppStore. This can serve as an indirect indicator of the volume of the market for educational applications (and maybe even the entire market). You can see that my applications usually did not fall into the TOP-10 (Overall or in the category "Education"). All my applications are universal (iPad & iPhone), the AppStore does not share the statistics on how many copies of the application are sold separately on iPad and iPhone. However, the rating data is divided by device - separately iPad and iPhone. Nevertheless, according to my feelings, the market of educational apps for iPad is bigger, even despite the total number of iPhones existing in the world. Another observation is that if your application is in the TOP-10 iPhone applications, then total sales increase faster than if your application would only be in the TOP-10 iPad applications. It would certainly be interesting to watch this addiction again.
Note: my goal is not to provide specific analytical data from the AppStore educational application market, but to improve your understanding, to give a general idea of ​​it, to show that this market is large enough (at least large for independent developers). Someone will be able to see and extract more information from the given figures and graphs - please.
US market
The data below undoubtedly describes the largest market in the USA AppStore. Since we are considering a specific AppStore, the numbers here are somewhat smaller (than in the graphs above). By the way, this information may well be used to compare the world AppStore with the USA AppStore.
Word wizard
Interestingly, Word Wizard was very successful in August 2011. When the New York Times wrote about the application in the paper version, it reached the 2nd place in the iPad rating and the 5th place in the rating of iPhone applications in the Education category. , and in the overall rating (Overall) took the 30th and 326th lines of positions, respectively.
Let's consider the rating of the application by income (Grossing Ranks) for the same period, to the question of understanding the size of the market (unfortunately there are no sales on the chart, they could not be displayed and displayed on the same figure using AppFigures ).
It is interesting that after the publication in The New York Times, my application reached the 104th position in the overall iPad ranking by revenue (Overall Grossing), but I only made $ 2,000 a day, can you explain it when you are in the TOP-10 iPad rating on downloads ( in the category "Education")? And a few more thoughts will be further on the French version, which was in the TOP-10 (Overall, France AppStore), but with respect to this data from the USA AppStore, I could not compare them adequately.
Montessori Crosswords
Next, I provide data on income and positions in the ranking at a specific point in time on Montessori Crosswords . It is interesting to compare revenues for the same rating in the 2010th and 2011th years.
French market
Of course, the French market is smaller, but it is quite good if the application has a good position in the rating. According to my ideas in the field of education (category "Education"), it is 7-10 times smaller than the US.
Interestingly, the application was in the overall rating on the iPad at the 5th position (Overall), these days sales ranged between $ 900- $ 1000 (by the way, at this time the app's rating for revenue (Grossing) was about the 10th position). If we compare this with the moment when the application was at the 30th position in the overall iPad rating (Overall) in the USA AppStore, then I earned $ 2000 per day. Now you can understand why I focus, with my products, primarily on the States market.
My way as an independent iOS developer
I think that enough numbers and it's time to tell you about my experience. As I said, I started by studying a very large number of blogs and other useful information. It was interesting, I really hope that my article will help you!
Start
I took the decision to develop for the iPad literally a couple of weeks after his public presentation by Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, my first startup was unsuccessful, so I was looking for new projects. I was invited to a few startups, but I had a burning idea to develop for the iPad. After reading a few blogs, I realized that there are prospects in the field of education. In addition, it was interesting to do something for their children. My children are homeschooling and my wife and I have the experience of their education, this was also a plus. The project in this area allowed me to be closer to the family and communicate with children - indeed, my children were the first users and tested all my applications. The iPad seemed like a great device for kids, they already had experience and loved to play with the iPhone. I am sincerely convinced that children learn better during the game.
I started with the development of a small application, about which I already wrote, it took me about 2-3 weeks. This development made it possible to understand how the Apple AppStore works. I started working on the first serious application with several brainstorms, as a result of which I decided to create Montessori Crosswords . One of my children really liked this game and in general it was suitable for iPad. The idea was initially even more global than just an application, but I decided to start with the application. Already after the publication, it became clear to me that it would be enough to leave everything as it is.
After the release of the iPad version of my first product, I was creating a universal application - to work including. and on the iPhone. The release of this version has increased sales, but not by much (I think that this is because the price for the iPhone application was high). Then I began to think more seriously about progress, the first thing I found was a few tips on the MomsWithApps forum. My application was presented at the AppFriday event, which makes MomsWithApps - this led later to a note in The New York Times. I collected all the feedback and feedback from users and made an update. Next, I was promoting the application using all possible methods - I remember how I wrote an article in PRWeb for almost a week (it was not easy because I am French, and in the end I didn’t always know if what I was doing was useful and if it would bring results ). As for the French version of the application - I was going to release it as soon as possible, but there was a problem with fonts, and the voice recording of the wife delayed the process (now I understand that then it was really necessary to concentrate on promoting the already released product in USA AppStore!).
Word Wizard, second application
In January 2011, I started testing new ideas with new words. My idea was to make something similar to a game where people could enter their own words. I created 2-3 prototypes, but they seemed imperfect to me. Then I began to test the speech synthesis library, which would allow not to record the pronunciation of each new word with my voice, but immediately start playing with the speaking moving alphabet - that would be very cool! Children and adults played with the prototype, they liked it. But in the end, a small project stretched for 6 months. One of the reasons for such a deadline was that I wanted to make a product that is excellent in usability. In addition, the delay arose also due to the fact that I decided to add a quiz section to the application, the need for this feature was confirmed by my small marketing research. By the way, an important question was that the speech synthesis library, under the terms of the license agreement, took 20-30% from the product sales (it was impossible to simply buy it for a fixed fee), but it made the product more exciting and I certainly used it.
Fortunately, I managed to earn enough on Montessori Crosswords , and this allowed me to work on the Word Wizard . Although overall sales were not so good, I already received promising feedback on the new product, which of course was encouraging. In May, I still spent 3-4 weeks to release an update to Montessori Crosswords . As already mentioned, this decision was chosen correctly. At the end of July 2011, the English version of Word Wizard was released. I launched the French version of Word Wizard in September 2011. Now I have plans to update Montessori Crosswords and release the German and Spanish localization for Word Wizard .
What do I do every day?
I will try to summarize and analyze what is actually not so simple, the total time of my work. Perhaps my assessment will be somewhere approximate or very different from the labor costs of other developers. In addition, I have days devoted entirely to the development, and sometimes I spend all day doing only promotion.
Development of 20-25% For me, this is not particularly difficult. I have been programming for 25 years, and I started writing for Apple with 15 years. I studied for a long time, received a doctorate in technical sciences, worked as a developer and designer of software interfaces for 6 years in the same company. It was interesting for me to learn a new programming language and a new platform, I love programming! If to compare with my last work, it is easy and simple for me now.
Product development and UX 15-20% Conceptually, it was easy to come up with a product, I am a father and I understand what parents want for their children (of course, in order to improve the product you need to listen to your little users). As for the development of the interface and its usability, I have had a lot of experience with this before and I know all the “pitfalls”. In fact, it is very interesting - to design an interface for a child application for a device with a touch-screen (before that, I was more developing enterprise-software and websites). Creating a product with the right usability seems easy, but in fact there are nuances, and if you do not have experience in developing interfaces, then I would advise you to read at least a few books on this topic. They can find an explanation for the basic things - persons, user goals, tasks, tests, etc. Without a good interface and well-thought-out usability, it will be very difficult to get good feedback on the application and sell a large number of copies of the product.
Design 20% It was the most difficult for me, because I am not a designer by training. I like design, but it takes a lot of time from me. I can work with Photoshop and Illustrator, but of course it would be right to hire a designer and save time for it. If you have no experience with this, or you think this area is not interesting, then I advise you to hire or start a designer, because the design is also one of the important things - these include questions related to website design, icons, screenshots, advertising design, etc.
Promotion and marketing 15-20% As you probably already understood, this is one of the decisive success factors! If you are an engineer, like me, then it’s better to focus on this task (after you have finished developing the application as a whole, of course). I had a period when I dealt only with this issue and support for a whole month. By promotion, I mean the whole complex of works: preparation and publication of press releases (PRMac, PRWeb - for large projects), promo website of the application , work with reviewers, application page on Facebook , Twitter account , advertisements, work with forums and etc. It is very important to understand how to work with all this. When I started, I knew that marketing is very important, but I had no experience in everything connected with it. In fact, marketing is a process that is not so complicated, but very laborious. We must try to find different ways to promote your product. I recommend choosing your tactics, how to work personally for you most comfortably and effectively, and stick to it. Having learned you will continue to spend less and less time on this, you will already have some contacts, you will know where to find this or that information, etc.
To be aware, to participate in a get-together?% I listened to the advice of other developers, communicated in the community of developers in the educational sphere. The best advice I received in 2010 was recommended to me at the MomsWithApps Forum . This is really a very useful place where you can discuss any topic and any issue. You can even place your product promo on their Facebook page or website . At the forum, I met great people who helped me to understand those moments where I did not understand something and I really needed to learn something new. I also help other people just now when I find time for this. I tried to participate in discussions on other forums, but in my opinion this is the best!
Support 5% When you start selling a large number of copies of the product, of course, there is a question with user support. And it's very cool to support your users, because this is the easiest way to figure out how to improve a product. Of course a lot of letters come about some little things that are simply solved on the side of the user, but some will send really valuable suggestions! To get feedback, I advise you to build a button in the application itself that would allow users to easily and easily send you a feedback. I also consider it a normal idea to ask users to add feedback if they really like your application.
Other (rest) There is another job associated with the analysis of the AppStore, which applications users like, what they write in their reviews, and playing the guitar when there is no energy to work, reading blogs and news, and other small things. You should also not forget about the weekend - this year I had two weeks of vacation, but I took part in forums and was engaged in support. It takes me about 45 hours a week to work, but I never work on weekends (this is time for the family, and the family is holy!). I try to be productive, but when it fails - at this time I just do not work.
I hope the article was useful for you!
Original article: http://blog.lescapadou.com/2011/10/how-ive-made-200000-in-ios-education.html
PS We in our team Alex & Rovich loved Pierre's article and with great pleasure we translated it into Russian. We would very much like more interesting applications from our Russian developers to appear in the AppStore. We hope that the article motivates independent developers and small teams to work on their new projects, and you choose not only the development of a new toy!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/131602/
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