How To Make An iPhone App That Actually Sells | Hacker News Reader

How To Make An iPhone App That Actually Sells

observationdeck.net

78 pointsrfelix212132 comments

I'm a co-founder at a startup called https://appstorerankings.net and I talk to app developers about this all day. The biggest problem with smaller app developers is that they do not spend enough time marketing their app or figuring out how their user-base will find them. The standard development path is to spend hundreds of hours on developing an app, then as an afterthought spend a couple hundred bucks on an app icon, release the app hoping that it will do well. Hoping!

There is a reason why companies like Flurry, etc with incentivized app downloads are doing well -- it's because they push apps to a point where they get discovered via organic search. If you really are going to want to launch an app, you'd better hope you have one of these two things: a $X0,000 marketing budget on incentivized downloads or the ability and willingness to slowly grow your app organically via long tail keywords, app store optimization, hounding app review sites to cover you, etc.

Heck, many apps' developers don't put a lot of effort in their screenshots, keywords, etc. There are thousands upon thousands of 'zombie' apps that are otherwise great but sit undiscovered simply because the developers thought that apps could market themselves.

Do you have any evidence that getting your app reviewed on one of these review sites make any difference ? If you were a "smaller developer" starting with an app today, how would you ensure that its successful?

Getting a good review in AppAdvice completely changed the fortunes of my app, especially because after that Apple started noticing it too.

However, AppAdvice is one of the biggest review sites out there, and reviews on smaller sites didn't have anywhere near as much impact. Also, getting that review was really lucky, and I haven't been able to recreate that magic since.

That said, as a single-person developer, I've found that I need to spend as much time and energy on hustle and promotion as I do on development and testing - and even with that I've only been moderately successful.

I've definitely had apps reviewed on AppAdvice and not seen a dramatic bump. I think it really depends on the app, what people are currently buying, and a lot of other factors. On the promotion part, I totally agree. What's worked for me on that front is to make friends with people in the press (on twitter, IM, email) way before I need articles written so when I need press it's really easy to get written up because they already know who I am.

Well, it was a very positive review. http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/01/remembary-great-ipad-jour...

But yes agreed on getting to know press people - although it's a balancing act to not seem too creepy while being friendly.

https://appstorerankings.net*
When you write about your site, you might want to refer to the URL as "https://AppStoreRankings.net. It's obvious to me now, but when I first read your URL, I took a few seconds to parse out the correct word boundaries - I read "apps to re-ran kings" or "apps to re-rank ings" before it became clear. Or maybe it's just me!

> Look at the top sellers, and build things that fall into those categories.
This seems counter-intuitive to me. Just the other day we had an example of what seemed to be a really well-executed Sudoku game[1], which seems to be exactly the kind of app that falls in this category: the top Sudoku apps have 10s of millions of installs and hundreds of thousands of reviews. It definitely seems like the advice here is to "build a better Sudoku, and you'll do great." and yet the author was seeing hardly any downloads and no income.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5067709

Being successful on the app store involves a bit more than making a great app. It's how you play the search ranking/rating game. There are quite a few things that need to be done right.
The way you get ranked in Search plays a huge part in your sales (Unless it's a top 50 app). Another huge factor is your screenshot. Your leading screenshot should not be a shot of the launch image. Here's more info on screenshots: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mobile-design-tutorials...
[1]: (App Store Optimization Cheat Sheet [PDF]): http://www.apptamin.com/ASO_Cheat_Sheet-v2.2.pdf

That's a huge part. I'll probably write an article just on that at some point.

According to this article the screenshots of a performant top office suite are bad and the screenshots of an admittedly beautiful but otherwise not too useful once-overhyped app are good. Uhm ... I don't know if I really care.

While he is completely correct, and I don't see this changing at all, I dislike that this is what app development has become.

Why? App developers look to what's selling and do better at it? Isn't that the usual software ecosystem at work, just like biological evolution. This is always how software has evolved, it's just that now, we have tools that largely do a product manager's job.

Oh don't get me wrong, I completely understand why developers do it and completely respect them for going that route. I just wish there would be more of an incentive to create apps that are more innovative and complex than quick-to-produce addictive apps.

In the end, its a big washing machine, the good apps will inevitably rise above poor ones, but sometimes it just takes a bit longer. I felt he's just suggesting ways to remove some of the initial obstacles to selling an app.

Exactly. Thanks!

The market won't bear it. $3 is considered robbery, an unthinkable, unforgivable amount to dare to ask as compensation for an app, no matter how much work was involved and who can tell how much was involved anyway? So multiply 99 cents by a small thought-leader/early-adopter market of 37 people and you've got dinner at Chili's as just recompense for all that effort and risk. The next stop, coming soon if we're not there already, is $0 and I really doubt we're ever coming back from that.

Me too. I'd much rather build something amazing that everyone picked up on immediately and that they thought was amazing, but that's not the App Store reality now. :(

Skipping the first note, the author makes a strong point about keeping it simple. You may have an amazing idea, but if the user can't jump in, perform <x> and then jump back out, it's not likely to catch on.
By only having one thing (add text to photos), you're really letting the users vote about whether they would use that functionality. Try to pack too much into your first version of an amazing idea, and you'll have a tough time parsing out which needs tweaking when you're not getting traction.

> Throw away your sexy idea
While I doubt very much that this advice is bad per se, it does seem to run counter to the spirit of HN. It's true that there's no inherent tension between pushing the envelope and being successful (read: making money), but I imagine that most of those involved in the startup world are there precisely because making money isn't enough for them.

I think that liking the idea is essential to success. You will give up much sooner working on an idea that you don't really care about.

Definitely very true.

I somewhat agree. I wrote this from the standpoint of someone who's released a number of apps, some which have done well, and some which have not. There's always the frustration that I spent all this time on this thing that I thought was awesome, but that no one cared about actually using. It's targeted at people who have built those apps, know that pain and just want to make something that people will actually buy this time.
I have definitely written a number of apps that were super awesome and pushed the envelope, but they didn't actually sell, because they were before the market was ready, or in the wrong market, etc.

All the time, I hear people with ideas and developers with apps where their plan is to put it in the store and hope it takes off. At best their plan includes making a video that goes viral, but they've never done that.
If you're targeting a big niche with lots of competition (puzzle games, todo lists, etc.) you must have some sort of compelling hook to stand out. A great endorsement / review lined up, an innovative UI, something controversial, etc.
If you're targeting a small niche (bassoonists, bingo card enthusiasts, etc.) you really should test that niche before investing a lot of time into building a product for it. Build the minimum app that can provide value and see how it sells. It's impossible to tell conversion rates for app store searches, but if your 99 cent app with 20 bingo card designs doesn't sell at least a couple a week, that niche isn't looking good. If it sells 100 copies a week, I'd go full steam ahead on the project. You can always pull your niche testing app later.

Is there a resource that ranks apps by sales numbers which might also include some idea of in-app purchase stats? It seems to me that there's a lot that isn't known from simple popularity or download figures.
The other item that could be interesting is to be able to drill down and have a view of the sub-categories each popular app "owns" and how it's competitors are doing.
To beat the Sudoku example to death, maybe Sudoku apps are popular at this point. However, what I suspect is that one might see a small handful of these apps doing very well and then hundreds starving to death.
This, to me, would be far more valuable data. If the money is spread around nicely among top apps in a sub-category it might indicate that users like to look at other options and experiment. If, on the other hand, you have five apps that are killing it and 200 that are starving, well, you probably want to stay away from that segment.

Not sure about IOS, but on Android, you can go to the Top Grossing[1] section to see which apps make the most money.
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/topgrossing?fe...

I think this is largely true, but sad.
There's an overabundance of "me too!" apps that just try to replicate what everyone else is doing. This is why there's such a lack of apps with the level of depth and functionality that you find on desktop systems.
I only really consider this a problem for the iPad though, since it currently has a lot of unrealised potential as a computing device for doing real work. Apps like OmniGraffle and Textastic stand out as examples of what developers should be building more of IMHO. The world only needs so many running games and photo sharing apps.

No credentials? It's a bit of a throwaway list without that. I'd like to know what successful apps he's made using these specific recommendations.

Here you go: http://shiftedfrequency.net/
I agree that we need to know who he is and what he's done, but it was linked at the bottom of the post, so...

I think it's a combination of having some experience with free apps and being a bit of a pundit. He doesn't just give his opinions, though, he gives his reasoning too.

I don't necessarily disagree with the article, just opening with "I’ve had a hand in quite a few successful and not-so-successful iOS apps" invites the question.

Not a bad article.
But why did you specify iPhone? This advice cold apply to Android as well.

I've only had tons of experience with iOS apps, (only have one Android app, and it's "free", tied to a paid web service) so I wasn't exactly sure how my knowledge applied across the board.

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