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Preface

Theres currently an interesting discussion about App Store experiences in the cocos 2d forum, so I thought I’d share my experiences too.

Shortly before Christmas 2008 I published AutoWiFi in the App Store. Quick blurb: AutoWiFi is an auto-login tool for WiFi hotspots employing captive portals (WiFi networks which redirect you to a web site where you have to log in to actually use the hotspot) frequently used at cafes, schools, universities, hospitals, etc.

Submitted for review...

I programmed AutoWiFi in my free time because I was annoyed with having to type in my username (25 characters!) and password at the Vienna University of Technology every time I wanted to use the WiFi network. So it’s a utility I created for myself. But once it was done I thought, why not, publish it on the App Store for 1.99 US Dollars and see what happens… My goal was: Sell one copy of AutoWiFi to a complete stranger!

The Beginning

24 hours after I published AutoWiFi I checked in to iTunes Connect to see if I had sold a copy. To my amazement I had sold over 90 copies world wide! In just one day I had made back the money I had spent on joining the development program and reached my goal of selling 1 copy!

AutoWiFi climbing its way up the App Store

Things went very well in the next days: by pure luck my app was one of the very last to be reviewed before Christmas, so during I was at the very top of the new utilities page, allowing me to sell between 200 and 400 copies in the next 5 days. During the first month I sold around 4000 copies of my app; an amazing number if you remember that my goal was to sell just 1 copy! After Christmas sales started dropping, they went from 200 per day, to 100 per day, and then started level pegging in the 50+ range. AutoWiFi is 2 US Dollars, which, after Apple takes its share of 30% equates to roughly 1 Euro I get per sale. So in the first month I made roughly 4000 Euro.

Business as Usual

After the first two months sales dropped to around 50 per day. Whenever I released an update, sales would jump back up to 200-300 for a day or two, and then quickly start dropping down again. Releasing updates used to be a viable method to increase sales, however Apple changed the App Store layout a few months ago, and updates no longer count as “New Releases”, hence old apps are no longer bounced to the top of the pile when they release an update, and updates have little effect on sales numbers.

After being in the App Store for 3 months I decided going multilingual and added French and German to AutoWiFi. Since then sales in countries using these languages has increased by around 10%. It’s pretty easy to do if you’re not using pictures containing text and worth it if you have multilingual friends.

Now

In the last 3-4 months (so 10 months after I published) sales have dropped down to around 20 (so 20 Euro) per day. Here are todays exact figures (and today is representative for the last months):

1 year and 2 months later I have sold over 12000 copies of AutoWiFi, a figure I’m very happy with, especially considering the details below. I can no longer live off the income of AutoWiFi alone (around 10-25 Euros a day, between 250 and 600 euro a month, but the money I make is a nice bonus at the end of the month. AutoWiFi has made roughly 12000 Euro in 14 months, a good amount of money for the time invested, and especially considering I initially programmed it for my own use.

Website Reviews

AutoWiFi has never been reviewed by any website. I sent out promo codes to all sites I knew and read myself at the time (ModMyI, 148apps, iphone-atlas, ipodtouchfans, etc, etc, etc). Some of them put the apps into give aways (a good idea I think) but to this date no site has reviewed AutoWiFi. These sites receive huge amounts of apps for review, and so getting a mundane utility app reviewed (which uses iPhone’s standard UI because I want it to be functional and load quickly) when the reviewers are receiving great games and fun multimedia apps to review strikes me as nearly impossible. I do get the occasional blog mention tough, and when I do sales numbers do jump then (A blog in Russia mentioned AutoWiFI, sales numbers went up from 90 to 180 for the next 4-5 days. A blog in Italy did the same, as did France). Google is your friend here, set it to 24 hours and search for your app name to find out why your sales numbers are jumping.

The upside of this is: through pure word of mouth I have managed to sell thousands of copies of my app, something worth considering when your app is not getting the attention you would like it to have.

‘Lite’ Versions

To allow users to be able to try before they buy I released AutoWiFi Lite, hoping to improve customer satisfaction and improving sales numbers. What I learned was AutoWiFi Lite did improve customer satisfaction levels (people no longer bought AutoWiFi by mistake thinking it was some WiFi stumbler or similar). It however had little or no impact on sales numbers, my guess is that while a few more people did buy it due to being able to try it out, I also lost customers due to people trying it out and realizing its not what they were looking for. Still I prefer people buying my app because they really want it, and not by mistake. AutoWiFi Lite has 10000s of downloads per month just to give you a comparison with actual sales.

Advertising

I tried advertising with Google. I created ads and submitted them for approval with Google, only to get a message back saying im not allowed to use the words “Apple” “iPod” or “iPhone” in my advert. Seriously? I’ve created an App for the iPhone, how do I create a TEXT advert for an iPhone app without using the word iPhone? I don’t want non iPhone OS users clicking the link as that will cost me money. Hence I canceled my adsense account.

I put up a few ads on Facebook (hey guess what, I’m allowed to use the word iPhone there!). I set the budget to 2 US Dollars per day and had thousands of impressions per day. Unfortunately 8 clicks on an ad would consume those 2 Dollars. So that didn’t help sales numbers either.

I have stopped advertising.

Disasters

Apple announces WiFi auto login (courtesy of engadget)

Don’t quit your day job! Never forget that Apple has full control over the devices and the App Store. Back in March 2009 Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 which introduced their own mini AutoWiFi (which frequently doesn’t work as it should) and which broke AutoWiFi. I won’t go into the details but you can read them here. During the months I worked with Apple to get AutoWiFi to work again sales numbers dropped to 1-10 sales per day, and my customers were leaving 1 star reviews because AutoWiFi no longer worked for them. I was lucky that I managed to sort things out with Apple and am back in business, but many others (e.g. here, and here) have not been so lucky and have found themselves suddenly income-less. Always consider this when planning your future.

Piracy

There are pirated versions of AutoWiFi available on the internet. Thousands of copies have been downloaded illegally (many of the illegal sites have download number trackers). So here are my thoughts on this. When I found the first pirated copy of AutoWiFi on the net I was proud! I’ve actually programmed something that a pirate considered worth purchasing and cracking! Does that mean I support piracy? No. I’m a developer, I mainly live off what I earn through sales. But have you seen the anti piracy adverts lately? Have you read what companies such as Ubisoft are doing to their legitimate customers to fight piracy? Lets not blow our socks off here. If someone pirates a copy of AutoWiFi then he’s not taking it away from someone else. Its information. It can be replicated for free. So comparing it with hard crime is crazy if you ask me. No-one has stolen thousands of dollars from me, what they have taken is the potential of me making that money, but thats still not the same as physically stealing money off me.

AutoWiFi is 2 bucks. The price of a flavored coffee. If someone _really_ can’t afford that then he needs more help then I do anyway. I’m not for piracy but its something that we developers have to live with and not go crazy about.

Summary

Without the App Store I don’t think I would have been able to publish an app that sells, as such I am glad there is an App Store. It has its faults, but it has its opportunities. Things to take along that I have experienced:

• Your app will sell the most copies in its first week. Once that is over your numbers will drop significantly (in AutoWiFi’s case from 200-400 sales (200-400 Euro) per day to 10-40 sales (10-40 Euro) a day).
• You will have sales jumps whenever you manage to get yourself mentioned in blogs (doubling or even quadrupling your sales for a week)
• Adding languages to your app is a good idea, but don’t expect miracles from this.
• Getting your app reviewed by a website, especially if its a non multimedia/game app, is extremely difficult
• Advertising didn’t work for me. A higher budget may help, I would’t know.
• A good app can generate sales without reviews or advertising – just by pure word of mouth
• Be nice to Apple, they are in full control of your app, they can pull its plug at any time.
• If you want to improve your chances of having your app featured in the app store: make it look great. The people who decide which apps to feature are very into aesthetics (I learned that during Apples Tech Talk World Tour)
• Lowering the price of your app will increase your sales for 3 or 4 days, but in my case always by the same amount of the actual loss due to the lower price. Its only worth it for very short periods.

I hope this will give some aspiring developers an insight to life in the App Store. Questions, comments and feedback are welcome. Good luck with your apps!

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