Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 4) | Hacker News Reader

Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 4)

blog.fiplab.com

163 pointsn9com20 comments

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Really enjoyed these posts/discussion. Here are the HN discussions to the first three parts of this series:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214 (Part 1)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965929 (Part 2)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978598 (Part 3)

Good for these guys for having hustle, working hard, and making a product people want.

Still, I can't help but think these "Facetab for Facebook" apps are kind of scammy; it's basically squatting on Facebook's name on the App Store. Try taking "Facebook" out of the app's title (leaving it in the description) and see how sales do. Overall, I'm conflicted.

Thanks for your comment.

Actually, when the app was No.1 overall on the App Store, it was just called 'FaceTab' - as evident in the screenshots on the blog post itself. We only added 'for Facebook' to the name in version 2.0 in response to competition.

The app is basically a Facebook client, so I would not consider it scammy to put "for Facebook" into the name. Other apps are doing that as well, e.g. "Twitterrific for Twitter" [1].

There might be a trademark issue, but I didn't check the Facebook ToS.

[1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitterrific-for-twitter/id35...

Since the only thing you see in search listings is the name, a descriptive title is extremely handy. The point is not to "squat" on Facebook's name (whatever that means), but to clarify for people searching "Facebook" that you are indeed relevant to that topic. It's similar to the reason why the built-in apps are named things like "Photos" and "Calculator" rather than "ZOMGVacationFun" and "CalculAWESOME" — the latter are significantly less meaningful at a glance.

I listened to the App Teardown[1] podcast the Fiplab team started with Colin Plamondon (of "Free Books" app and HN fame), and it drills down on some of the basics of App store marketing. Good supplement to this series!

[1]http://www.appteardown.com

The new age street market merchants. If you don't hustle, you don't make it. My favorite quote of the post:

"The App Store is a most vicious yet glorious technological battlefield, where your apps are your soldiers. One can either moan, shut shop and disappear when their soldiers are hit, or one can ruthlessly battle it out till the end with every last one of them."

I'd like to hear more about the development of these applications. Any chance you'll provide an interview with your developer?

Do you have any advice/insight into picking a category for your app? I've noticed that some of the rarer categories are pretty dead... is the easier path to the top-10 more advantageous than a 'properly' categorized app? How much leeway does Apple give you in picking a category?

It's all about visibility so try to pick a related category that is popular. Apple are pretty flexible with what category you place your app.

Interesting what a huge difference the category makes. In the US-music category it's enough to sell ~15 copies/day to enter the top 5.

That's not true.

The #5 paid app in US Music right now is I Am T-Pain, which is the 116th most popular paid app overall.

And at this point in the app stores evolution, that ranking is worth at least 500 sales a day and that's going on older sales-to-rank data.

I Am T-Pain is 125 in top grossing on the app store. You're contending that that ranking means $15k in monthly revenue (given their .99 price point)? In May of 2010, this ranking on the grossing chart would get you $2300/day. Presumably 1.5 years later, that ranking would get you considerably MORE revenue, no?

Ref: http://blog.iteleportmobile.com/quality-over-quantity-how-we...

pretty sure Leon_ is talking about the Mac App Store, not iOS.

Yes. I forgot to mention that as the original submission is about the Mac App Store.

Thanks for the info but that has nothing to do with what I said :)

To clarify: To enter the _MAC_ _MUSIC_ top 5 you need ~15 sales. Not overall. Storming overall with a music app is pretty unlikely.

Oh, you meant the Mac app store -- my bad, I was thinking iOS.

I know a lot less about sales in the Mac app store, but I'm still a little skeptical. The #5 paid Mac Music app today is MP3-Converter. It's #137 overall paid.

Is the Mac app store really so small that 15 sales per day gets you into the top 200 overall rankings?

> Is the Mac app store really so small that 15 sales per day gets you into the top 200 overall rankings?

Yeah, the volume is not that huge in the MAS. I just didn't know how bad the music category was.

I assumed the other categories wouldn't be much better - but as the OP writes in his post they were able to sell 900 copies/day. So I guess Mac users are just unmusical ;)

Btw. fun fact: I outgrossed Apple's Garage Band in India and China ... made me $3.50 and $7 ;)

Great read. As somebody else said: yay for hustle.

What I wonder is if these guys have a contingency plan for when this particular app fad dies out. With consumer-facing apps especially, this seems like a huge danger.

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