3 Lessons from 3 Years on the App Store
What I learned in the trenches on First Versions, MVPs, and Making Money.
Well, technically, it all started December four years ago, when I decided to start an app studio from my home office. It took me another six months to get to the App Store. At the same time, I was expecting the birth of my first daughter, which is why my first app Pocket Zoo is a kids app. A lot has happened since. Tiny Hearts has grown up and is now a real software company with an office and a small and talented team focused on making profitable products that people love. We’ve expanded beyond children’s apps; launched a major update to Wake, our beautiful and intuitive alarm clock app, and we recently submitted a new fitness app called Quick Fit.
I’ve survived over three years on the App Store with three successful apps and millions of downloads. It’s been a wild ride filled with extremely high highs, like features in The New York Times and Wired Magazine, as well as the trials of fierce competition, copycat apps and the constant struggle that is staying visible on the charts. I’ve been fortunate to have every one of my apps featured prominently by Apple on the App Store and a bunch of top blogs like TechCrunch, TUAW, Lifehacker, and Fast Company’s Co.Design. This list captures some of my key learnings over the past 3 years on the App Store.
Version 1 is Just the Beginning
Don’t launch an app if you don’t plan to invest at least one or two years of development after launch. Hitting the App Store with your V1 is just the beginning.
All of the hard work you put in upfront in terms of concepting, designing, developing and marketing your app only gets you to the starting line. After this, you have to hit the race — with bug fixes, updates, maintenance, support, tracking usage, tweaking and marketing. It’s a constant battle to stay on the charts and the only way to increase your chances of survival on the App Store is to continually put care and attention into your apps. Apps, much like Apple seeds (see what I did there?), only grow with ongoing maintenance and nourishment. Proper maintenance is just as important as a flawless app and perfect launch.
MVPs are Useless on the App Store
Make sure your app has maximum desirability, viability and feasibility, especially for version 1. That’s MDVFP. It’s not as marketable of a concept as MVP, but it will take you much further on the App Store. Challenge yourself to make the most polished first version in as little time as possible. V1 for Quick Fit took just one and half months.
Make it feature worthy. And most times this means spending half your time on polishing up the experience. Get to the prototype as fast as you can and polish your way to V1 from there. That’s our motto and it’s exactly what we did with Wake Alarm. What was supposed to be a 1 month side project turned into a 6 month masterpiece app. Making an alarm for iOS isn’t as easy as it seems, especially if your goal is to make the best (side note — this should always be your goal when making an app; if it can’t be the best in it’s category then why pursue it?). We had our first really barebones prototype a few weeks into development and subsequently we went through over 110 alpha and beta builds until we had something we were happy with. We obsessed over every tiny detail to get as perfect as we could. The thought and care we put into it showed in the final product. We subsequently got a call from Apple shortly after submitting, turns out they were fans of what we had built. Wake went on to be featured prominently on the App Store at launch and is still featured today. The care and polish paid off with a huge spike in revenue. MDVFP is the new MVP!
Most Apps Are Not Making Any Money
It’s true there is a lot of money being made on App Stores, but it’s also a fact that most apps don’t make much. Apple has paid more than $13 billion to developers but when you break that down between the top publishers and everyone else you get a graph like this.
The App Store is a hit-driven market where a few of the top developers earn the majority of the wealth. The media tends to sensationalize the extreme cases where you have an indie studio or solo dev with a breakout hit. That’s part of the reason everyone wants to get into the App Game, for the money. If that’s your only reason — then stop, stop now.
If you’re looking to get rich quick with apps, think twice. To succeed with apps, you better be in it for the long-term, because there are much easier ways to make short-term money.
It’s not cheap or easy to make an app. A typical app could cost tens of thousands of dollars. And the hard truth is most apps don’t even make enough to cover their expenses. The average revenue per app on the App Store is $4000. As TechCrunch highlights, it’s getting even harder for newcomers: “Only 0.25% of the total revenue from the top 250 applications goes to new iPhone app publishers”. The bar has been raised really high. This is great news for those who can compete at this higher level of quality and who are in it for more than just money.
BONUS: Use Videos to Promote your App
Have you noticed how Apple always debuts a shiny new ad at each of their new product launches? Most people don’t like to read. Take a page from Apple’s book and make a high-quality video to promote your apps. We would all choose to watch a short and slick video over reading a description.
Videos will help you communicate your product to not only customers but the press. The promo video was probably one of the most expensive components of our first app back in 2010. We submitted it to the App Star Awards and it helped get us some early attention and blog coverage before our launch. The judges included folks like Robert Scoble, Mike Butcher from Techcrunch, Zee Kane from The Next Web, Mike Rose from TUAW and Gary Tan. Sarah Perez covered the App Star Awards while at ReadWrite, which made it easier to get her attention when she began writing for Techcrunch. She wrote this great piece on our second app which ironically is the only one that doesn’t have a promo video (and was our least successful app). Wake, our most successful app also had the highest budget video. That video has gotten more than 100k views. That’s part of the reason we decided to create a second promo video for the launch of Wake 2 and Wake Alarm for iPad.
Clumsy Ninja is a great example of where things are heading. Apple recently set an App Store precedent by allowing Natural Motion, the company behind Clumsy Ninja, to use a trailer video within their App Store listing. Google Play already allows developers to use video as a way to sell apps; it is only a matter of time before we see it on the App Store as well.
Final Thoughts
Even though I’m going into my 4th year on the App Store and getting ready launch my 4th app I feel like I’m just getting started. It’s still very early in days for App Store’s and mobile computing in general and a lot is changing.
My goal for Tiny Hearts is to continue make great apps for many years to come. To accomplish this, we need to always be learning. Learning from the examples of others, learning from experience, learning from mistakes, learning from success and learning to love the craft of making apps.
You can follow me on twitter @robjama — would love to hear about your tales from the App Store or questions if you’ve been thinking about making apps.
Check out the Tiny Hearts blog for the complete list of 13 App Store lessons that this post based on.
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Robleh Jama is the founder of Tiny Hearts, an award-winning product studio. They make their own products like Next Keyboard, Wake Alarm and Quick Fit — as well as products for clients like Plantronics and Philips.
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