Blipr: The Story of an iPhone App | Hacker News Reader

Blipr: The Story of an iPhone App

blog.return7.com

37 pointsivey12 comments

I would consider adding more sounds on a regular or semi-regular basis and promoting them as appropriate. For example, you could have a $2 Valentine's pack, which is cheaper than ANY Valentine's card option out there and packs some novelty value.

You have some way of reaching current users of the app, right? (It is for messaging, after all.) Spend an hour or two and a small amount of money creating a Valentine Pack (preferably something with "if you receive this, you'll want to show it to your friends" value -- "I love you" not so much, but something quirky/whimsical/hilarious probably), ping all your users with a free sample.

("This is a Welfare Valentine, for people who don't have somebody to give them a real Valentine. Happy Valentine's Day, you love-lorn person, you. Say, know someone who should be getting a REAL Valentine? We'll hook you up for $1.99, or alternately, you can send them a Welfare Valentine for free.")

Thanks for the idea. We added a Christmas sound pack. We probably should add one for Valentines day as well. :)

I can't get enough of these types of blog posts. The app store is a fascinating study of marketing, economics and good ol' bootstrapping. Good luck in your endeavors and thanks for sharing.

My pleasure. We initially sold the app for $1.99, subsequently lowered the price to $0.99 and eventually gave it away for free in hopes of building the user base then charging. We also hoped it would grow virally but that didn't really happen. It's still free right now.

It seems like marketing is king on the app store. I'd love to see some success stories that aren't taptaptap (and the MacHeist juggernaut and their 600,000 person mailing list) just to see how one can bootstrap themselves up some buzz.

Have you taken a stab at marketing? Do you have any insights in that area (either successes or failures)?

Yea, we definitely have. I think we spent between $800-900 (modest budget, I know) on ads in 2009. That includes advertising on various iPhone blogs as well as taking part in reddit's ad program beta. None of it helped. Sales stayed the same or went down.

Review articles on Macworld and TUAW helped boost sales temporarily (2-3 days) but the only sustained sales were a result of having our best seller, BillMinder, featured by Apple in "What's Hot." It was great (and appreciated!) but definitely not on the level as the awesome taptaptap or tapbots. :)

> It was also pretty fun to create.

I like how you described the rollercoaster of emotions that goes into making an app (from initial excitement to happiness having delivered something you are proud of).

Thanks. Looking at the quality of some "top 10" apps, it really makes one wonder how much of it (if you aren't taptaptap) is just dumb luck. I wish there were some way to quantify that.

If you compare iVideoCamera with Qik Video (both apps now allow non 3GS users to shoot 10fps video), I think iVideoCamera rose to the very top because it looked like a native app and functioned like a native app.

An amount of luck was involved as well (I imagine there is some kind of exponential time decay function for app store new listings - e.g. if sales are minimal, you drop)

Most users don't care how the app was written - they just want something to entertain. Qik missed an opportunity - they did not focus on making the videos easy to share. Bear in mind that the 3GS can shoot video practically forever (battery life is biggest factor) instead of the 30s or less limitation of these non-3GS apps. However, the ability to shoot video from a previously non-video phone is huge. Yes, jailbroken phones could do it but not until Apple opened the API to grab camera frames directly was the App Store opportunity for non-3GS video available (the timing, the luck).

Allow people to send by email and link back to your app.

The app doesn't currently attach sounds to email, but it does allow one to send an invitation with one's blipr id via email. Perhaps this is something we should consider as well. :)

It's not something you should just "consider". Adding that feature will make your app successful.

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