1- I knew that this was a crowded segment and had no illusions as to the high probability for failure. In fact, my assumption was that I would have to almost personally make every single sale until other aspects of the "plan" could start to generate them.
2- I also assumed that the app would not do well by itself and would require a family of related apps that could cross-market themselves.
3- The app was built with an SMS-based recommendation mechanism from the very start. In fact, the code is there to extend this to email and social, but I wanted to see if SMS would work well first. Testing is important.
4- Enhanced cross-marketing would be turned on as new apps are released in order to make parents aware of the expanded line-up.
5- The current thinking is that half the apps are going to be absolutely free. The working hypothesis being that they will drive traffic to paid apps.
6- Being that the target users are small kids you really can't have advertising and in-app purchases. Including these things can have viscerally negative reactions from parents. Probably not a good idea. Apps geared towards adults have huge advantages in this department.
7- Given the expectation of having to exist in an already crowded segment I also put forth another working hypothesis for the problem of getting eyeballs to the app. The idea is that, in some ways, it is far easier to market and test (A/B testing) on the Web than on the App Store. Therefore, a companion website was, so the idea goes, of crucial importance. The primary goal of the website being that of a conduit to the various app stores.
8- These days you have to consider strategies beyond iOS. That's why I said "various app stores". The website could also vector traffic to other platform's stores.
9- Website traffic would mostly consist of adults looking for learning tools for their kids. Here's an opportunity to also potentially generate revenue with other branded items and/or affiliate revenue.
10- A website for an app like this can also become a destination in and of itself. Porting these games so that kids can also play them online could be a great way to sell them on mobile devices. Parents might see their kids enjoy them online and want to have time natively on their devices for when they are out of the house. The jury is still out on this idea.
11- Once a few more apps are out I plan on issuing press releases and generally making the product far more visible to relevant sites and reviewers. My thinking here is that doing so with one app might not be the best investment of time and money right now. Multiple apps means more hooks in the water. Therefore, the probability for conversion might be greater.
12- Having one slow-growing app in the market is good in that it will help you identify issues and usage patterns with the app that you are never going to see in your own testing. I've already integrated user feedback and bug fixes into this one app that would have been a disaster to deal with in the case of having tens of thousands of downloads.
13- Analytics are important. Without this data you are blind. I understand my app's usage patterns far better today than I did in the few weeks that it has been out. This tells you where you might want to focus.
14- As I said above, being the my assumption is that I'll have to sell every single copy myself, I have acted accordingly. For example, I took one of my kids to get a haircut the other day. A woman was there with her little girl. They had an iPad. I handed her my phone with the app running and ONLY asked for her opinion. I left them alone and said absolutely nothing. When I got back from my kid getting his haircut she told me that she bought the app and had some interesting feedback. The moral to that story is: Get out there and show your app to everyone that might be in your target market. And, yes, while you are trying to sell, the most important thing you want out of the interaction is to understand why someone might NOT want to buy it so you can improve things.
15- Don't expect overnight success. It could take a year to get to the point where you consider the effort worthwhile. If you are not OK with that then don't jump into the mobile app market. Very few apps become overnight money makers without a significant (read: expensive) marketing push from every angle).
16- Don't give up.
I have hopes for the web+app model. The website has thousands of visitors per day due to my efforts. And the site isn't even finished or optimized in any way yet. I don't have solid conversion numbers yet, but I think that, with time, it could be a good driver. It'll be interesting to learn if the apps and brand can become more powerful as a web property than a mobile app. In other words, an inversion of sorts: start with a mobile app and discover that there's more money to be made on the web. Good question.
Sudoku is probably just as tough, if not tougher, than the children's segment. Get creative.