How I Doubled My App Store Profits in One Year

The App Store is a harsh mistress. For some, it unlocks a lifetime of riches and for others it swallows months of hard work into the dark oblivion. In between, there are those who make comfortable living or those of us who make enough to pay for a family vacation.

It's easy to forget that the mobile application market is in its infancy; it's also easy to forget what a 'smartphone' meant just a few years ago. While developers flocked to iOS and rapidly adapted their craft to deal with obsfucated method names and an endless stream of braces ']]]]', their skills only gained them entry into the App Store. As we all found out, building an App was the easy part...building a sustainable business is the hard part.

But I Just Wanted to Make An App

We all had reasons to make an App, mine was to help pick a name for our new baby boy. We ended up naming him Oscar. Ironically, Stork Drop wasn't finished until 3 months after his birth.

Building Stork Drop ended up involving a lot things that I never anticipated: lawyers, bankers, marketing, budgeting, finance, etc. It started out as a "hobby", but you quickly become more and more vested in the business of software development, not just an app developer.

Doubling Down on iOS

At some point, it became apparent to me that I was heavily investing in Apple and its iOS. I paid into the developer program, I bought a MacBook Pro, I bought an iPhone and iPod Touch. Most important, I was investing hundreds of hours programming Cocoa Touch. With all of this direct investment into iOS, I was also heaving vested in Apple's success as a company.

Indirectly, I was betting that Apple would maintain it position as the industry innovator and leader in iOS. I was betting that my investment of time, money and effort were for the long term. So, I decided to double down on my investment in iOS and invest my profits from the App Store directly into Apple stock. As the plot shows, this has effectively doubled my profits from the App Store. On the release date of Stork Drop Apple sold for $149, today it closed at $314.

The success of developers, on any platform, rely heavily on the success of that platform. Apple has made it very clear how it feels about its future when it rebranded itself as a mobile computing company. Shrewd developers who believe in the future of iOS can benefit from their success in the App Store as well as in the success of Apple as a company.

A Cold Place in Hell

For all you lapsed Catholics, fear not, for I have discovered that there is, indeed, a cold place in Hell. While you may spend your days slaving away amidst a pool of fire and brimstone, if you go all the way to the back of Hell (near the bathrooms), you'll find salvation. For it here that you will find rows and rows of refrigerators.

Saturday Mornings

There are many ways to be awaken on a Saturday morning. My least favorite is a swift kick in the balls. My favorites are my son babbling to his stuffed bear or the soft clanging of dishes, as my daughters try quietly to fix themselves cereal.

Last Saturday, I heard the girls get out of bed and sneak down stairs. I heard the chair dragging across the kitchen floor towards the cabinet with the cereal. I smiled as the door to the refridgerator open...then I heard "DAD! The frige is all wet!".
Purchasing a refridgerator is one of those things you just can't plan for in life. It ranks right up there with a water heater. When it breaks, you stop everything and go shopping. Unlike other major purchases, you don't have time to research and make lists. You have hundreds of dollars of food spoiling, you have a pool of water on your floor and you have 3 kids whose hearts were set on Lucky Charms and ended up with toast. This is why I am convinced that there is special place in hell, reserved for the most wicked of us, where you are forced to refrigerator shop with children under 5.

Refrigerator Shopping for Dummies

If you've never had to go refridgerator shopping (and I never had), you'll be surprised to find that you can spend anywhere in between a couple hundred dollars and a Toyota. At the cheaper end, they are white and black and barely hold enough food for a bachelor. At the expensive end, they are sleek stainless steel and could double as a bomb shelter.

We tried to convince ourselves that we needed a behemoth Sub-Zero fridge. After all it won't stain, we would only have to grocery shop once a month and we could rent it out as a small apartment to our kids after they graduate from high school (because there won't be any money left for college).

Beside the dizzying array of options (including the optional rust proofing), the large appliance sections is designed like a gigantic maze. Rows and rows of appliances with small passages connecting them. It is as it was built for nothing more than playing hide-and-go-seek. For lack of a better word, it is a playground.

Shopping With an iPhone

The good thing about shopping with an iPhone is that you can do quick product comparisons, maybe read a quick review and make yourself more comfortable with your purchase. The bad thing is that you have to look at the screen, meaning you take your eyes off your kids for just a second...

There's a lot of things that go through your mind while you're running up and down the ailses at an applicance store frantically opening fridge doors and front-loading washers looking for one of your kids. Of course, I should have realized that a 18-month old can't open a fridge door, but I was focused on imagining the worse. I also should have noticed the Electronics section immediately adjacent to the appliances. This is where I found Oscar, entranced in front of a wall of flat-screen televisions watching a DirectTV demo.

All of My Fears, Realized

The trauma of Oscar running off...the awful morning...the Lucky Charms...the colors...the depth...the width...the height...the energy profile...all but me in a very weak frame of mind.

I have spend the last 5 years developing a compelling "Dad" persona for my kids. I'm a fun loving dad who isn't afraid to play in the mud, but still is tough and makes your finish all your milk at every meal. My dad persona strikes a good balance between today's 2010 modern dad and 1950's dad. Thankfully, I leave out the dead-beat dad of the 1980-90's.

Well, it doesn't matter anymore, for I have been exposed. It didn't take long for me to loose all my dad credibility as all of my insecurities and uncertainness manifested in under 3 hours. And then, in a moment of utter weakness, for the children to see their dad succumb to pressure of buying an extended warranty. Well, I can barely look myself in the mirror.

The Best thing

Despite everything, we bought a new refrigerator that day. I say that like we really had a choice. Now as I enjoy ice cold beverages, crisp lettuce, and an overall good feeling that the meat I'm serving my children isn't ridden with E. coli and salmonella, I focus on the best thing about our new refrigerator.

It came packed in a spaceship.

In the App Store: A Week in Education New & Noteworthy

It was a dark and stormy night. The full moon, barely visible behind heavy cloud cover, cast shadows over the sleepy suburban town. Down a darkened street, a single house had a single light on. From the house, eerie screams could be heard, "Daaadddyyyy. Daaaddddy. I want a drink of water."

Awoken from a dead sleep, I fulfilled the hollow request. As I shuffled my way back through the kitchen, I grabbed my iPhone to check the status of my latest app. I was rewarded for my fatherly diligence by an email from Apple: "Zombies Vs. Literacy is Ready For Sale". It's alive...alive!

I returned to sleep, drifting off dreaming about the App Store successes that awaited me.

Zombies Vs. Literacy Arises

Zombies Vs. Literacy is a simple app to help practice early reading skills. I designed it for my daughter who is learning "sight words" for Kindergarten. The teacher had prepared notecards with the words printed on them for parents to review with their children at home each night. I scoffed, "Notecards? What is this 1998?" Nobody in the room laughed...especially my wife.

Why would you want to have printed notecards that cost $1.49 for a pack of 100, when you could do the same thing with a $300 iPhone that is extremely fragile, needs to be charged daily, and has enough distractions to practically ensure that your children will end up with Attention Deficit Disorder? Why...ummm...in retrospect, seems like it probably wasn't the best idea.

Either, way I developed Zombies Vs. Literacy. The app functions by swiping to advance through sight words lists (both Dolch and Fry) and tapping to hear each letter spoken. As you advance through the list, the zombie advances towards the brain. When he reaches the brain, he declares "Brain too big!" to eat. My daughter complained that it was boring, so I included a zombie mob that runs across the screen when you shake your iPhone. They rearrange the letters and you have to fix them before you can move on.

I Won't Be Coming in to Work Today, I'm New & Noteworthy

It probably wasn't until noon of the following day, that something different was happening with Zombies Vs. Literacy. I had received 10 support emails that morning about the app. For BabyBinks this was highly unusual, as we have received just over 50 emails in nearly two years in the App Store.

With cautious optimism, I opened iTunes on my MacBook Pro. With one eye, I looked at "New & Noteworthy", but alas nothing. Shouldn't have got excited. Then I switched the education store and (wait for it)...Zombies Vs. Literacy in the #1 slot in "New & Noteworthy".

Over dinner, I told my kids how daddy would be able to spend a lot more time with them, now that I quit my job. Ok, that really didn't happen, but that dream was still alive. I was still anxiously awaiting what "New & Noteworthy" meant in terms of sales. Well I have to say, that I wasn't disappointed. Other than a "Free Day" downloads of Stork Drop, this was by far my biggest day in the App Store.

I Will Be Coming in to Work Today, I'm New & Noteworthy But...

While the first day success was intoxicating, reality set in on the next day. There was a five fold reduction in downloads. This trend continues to this very day. The part that surprised me most, was that Zombies Vs. Literacy spent the entire week in "New & Noteworthy". Literally, Monday to Monday it was listed, but only the first day saw big download numbers.

What Did I Learn

1. Being featured is a great feeling. Even if it doesn't translate into fame and fortune, it does mean that someone at Apple liked your app...and they've seen a lot of them. This is probably the best encouragement you can receive to continue to spend your late nights coding away.
2. Have a special screenshot prepared in case you get featured. I like make fancy screenshots with text and combined iPhone images for my iTuness screenshots. These look great when you have the app open to its dedicated page, but are difficult to read in your app is featured.
3. The undead are marketing gold! The dirty little secret here is that Zombies Vs. Literacy is really just a themed version of one of my other apps Elephonics. Elephonics has the same features, but has an elephant instead of a zombie. This wasn't part of some masterminded marketing scheme, it was simply that my daughter became infatuated with zombies after watching an episode of Scooby-Doo. I had put significant effort into marketing Elephonics (watch the commercial) which was release a few months ago, but it never caught on.

Success, Anyway You Look At It

The whole point of creating Zombies Vs. Literacy and Elephonics was to help my daughter practice her sight words. Together, we have used both apps enough to more than justify the development time. Also, she played a very important role in the app development. Watching her interact with it and listening to her brutally honest criticism, helped me to fine tune the usability and features. She also provided the voice overs for the letter pronunciations and, more importantly, the zombie sounds.

So, she is learning to read, I got a small glimpse of success in the App Store, and we got to spend a lot of time together...I would say that anyway you look at it, Zombies Vs. Literacy was a success.

I just hope that we will be as successful working together defending ourself during the next zombie uprising.

Unrealistic Expectations in Young Women (or The Threat of 'Ace of Cakes')

There seems to be no end to the unrealistic expectation that the modern media creates for young women. While I initially thought it only applied to popularity, fashion, and dating and would manifest itself harmlessly in eating disorders, premarital sex, and low self-esteem, its reach is much broader and deleterious.

This weekend we celebrated Ava's fifth birthday and I, as I have done for each of her birthday's before, vowed to make her cake...from scratch...with love...and frosting. I have taken a considerable amount of pride in my cakes, from her first birthday duck cake to last year's (poorly received) princess cake. I felt that each cake, despite the questionable taste, was a reflection of my love for my daughter.

Of course, those were simpler times. When an inverted mixing bowl, layered in frosting, was believable as a formal ball gown. Those were times before....the Ace of Cakes.

As a family, we all enjoy the Ace of Cakes, however I did not realize the damage they were doing to my children's perception of what a cake was.  They have completely distorted their expectations on what daddy should be setting in front of them on their birthday.  And that leads to...crying (for me and them).

When Ava's finally announced (in early May) that she wanted a Scooby-Doo party, I have to admit that I immediately thought about the cake. Scooby-Doo provides a lot of options for a cake: the gang, the mystery machine, ghosts, old abandoned amusement parks.  Actually, I would be interested in seeing how the Ace of Cakes would recreate an abandoned amusement park complete with a disgruntled employee.

In the four months I had to plan, I finally decided that an extra large Scooby Snack would be the best.  "The best" of course being the hardest to screw up. It would be impossible to compete with the cakes Ava fawned over on TV, so I decided to keep it simple.

I am happy to report that, despite all of my worries, the Scooby Snack was a hit.  Of course, before I had a chance to enjoy the moment and bask in Ava's excited smile, my dad chimed in "Why did you make a giant dog turd cake?".

"Because last year's princess cake made her cry.", I replied.

Happy 5th birthday Ava!