Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our undergrad internship earnings
blog.fiplab.com
blog.fiplab.com
The perspectives are very interesting.
From a programming standpoint, I can pound out the code to just about anything, but when it comes time to create the awesome graphics for the game, well, that's where I either have to cut corners or pay a lot of money.
I liked the cliff-hanger he left us with too. Day 4: Disaster! And that it was Apple's fault ...
But what happened? Did the glitch get fixed? Did sales pick back up? Where's his Twitter feed so I can see when the next post comes out?
Maybe the perspectives change because if you're not good at something, but it's important, you need to make it priority #1 otherwise your project will fail. The thing you're already good at may still be important but since you could do it in your sleep, it's not priority #1.
I got the impression that they are bankers from the post, where do they say they are designers?
So, also interestingly, they found the process of having graphics designed easier than finding programmers. I've found it very difficult to find a good designer-for-hire when it comes to games.
As a programmer (teamed up with a designer) I consider marketing to be the most important part. We sank so many good looking (and well programmed) apps in the app store because our marketing sucked. And then I see crappy apps dominating the charts simply because their makers know how to get their marketing right.
Why not just write the whole story in one post?
I'll write up Part 2 over the weekend, which is going to be a lot more interesting, covering how we got mainstream media coverage for our 2nd app (London Cycle: Maps & Routes), including a large front page banner feature on the iTunes App Store itself.
The really good stuff is still to come, but we had to start at the beginning to add context to everything else.
http://www.appannie.com/copterkid/ranking/history/#start_dat...
they are nowhere to be found in the overall rankings, and even their rankings in the games category tops out at 700ish. Plus, they only sell the game for 99c. I've had apps that sell for 2.99 that are in the top 200 overall paid list on iphone, and I've never come close to 30K/month for a single app.
My most recent sales data (for an app that has gone as high as #97 on the iPhone top paid list) indicates that the #200 top paid app on iphone gets about 300 sales per day. If you factor in Apple's 30% thats about $210/day. So even if their app was in the top 200 (which they were never even close to), it would only generate $6300/mo in revenue at 99c.
It just doesn't add up. Unless the 30K/month is talking about a completely different app?
I hope they do well, but I'm predicting a future HN post "How I achieved a real $30k profit by creating an attention-grabbing series of blog posts about how I bootstrapped to a fake $30k profit."
everything is going to be explained in detail in the next few parts, we are not going to hold anything back.
He didn't explicitly mention that CopterKid did very well, but I'm sure he's wise enough not to give away where he's directly seeing his successes because who needs MORE competition?
Here's to not giving up - keep up the great work guys!
If you look at their "About Us" page it names who they have worked with.