What I learned about the iPhone AppStore over the last 2 months
But learning about the AppStore piqued my interest and I set up a little private project. This is my humble story & what I learned.
# THE STORY
After brushing up on my Objective-C, I set out to build the minimal viable iPhone App. A flashlight was out of the question because I wanted something that: 1) makes people smile 2) uses some native iPhone functionality (accelerometer) 3) tests the AppStore approval process. Oh, and I like irony.
$DRUMROLL: My application named 'Reject' was APPROVED last week after two months in purgatory. $BADABING
Granted, the app is fairly trivial like many of the other apps in the CrappStore. This is due to the very nature of said store. Building complex apps is actively discouraged by the approval uncertainty and huge waiting times. As a beginning developer you minimize risk, pump out a few silly things while you are learning & once you are more confident you tackle a bigger project. After 2 months, I've only now started my first big project.
If you could all buy the app to help me recover my dev-license and dev-time, that'd be grand. If you're too poor I've reserved the 50 promo codes exclusively for HN users surviving on ramen noodles, screw the press ;-)
# WHAT I LEARNED (CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG)
Here are a few dirty tricks & ideas that I hope will make life in AppStore purgatory easier:
Use the 'Easter Egg' field to plead directly to the reviewer. It's a free-text field that every reviewer will read and a little social engineering will work wonders.
If the app name is important to you, reserve it by submitting a dummy app without binary. You'll need dummy 512x512 and 480x320 artwork in order to be able to fill out the form.
Phone contacts at Apple are pure gold. I consistently got on the line with the same reviewer. Depending on their mood reviewers can expedite things. But it's still pretty random.
Set your app price low ($0.99) while it is in the review queue & jack it up immediately on release date. I got an app rejected because the reviewer did not like the price I set.
It pays not to be a bottom-feeder. Maximize revenue, not units of sales. Often a slightly higher price will give you more revenue. There's more than the $0.99 price-point. At a higher price point you can also afford to pay higher CPM/CPC for initial customer acquisition.
Count on doing your own marketing. The time when you could solely rely on rankings to boost your sales is over. The AppStore UI is so broken right now that you have to assume that your customers will not find your app without some effort of your own.
Expect long approval times. I've started thinking in development/update cycles of at least one month. Agile is not the mindset at Apple. Work on new apps while your other apps are in the queue. I wish Apple would crowdsource the approval process or look into setting up community-managed 'repositories' like Linux.
App Complexity is a good predictor of approval time. This is a big problem because it does not reward taking on the risks of building better apps. It took me 2 months to build up the confidence to start a more complex project.
Private API calls are an absolute no-no: even if you were approved before, your next update will be rejected because Apple started using automated tools to inspect your code.
If you give unlimited access to the internet through a UIWebView, your app will be pulled unless it has a 17+ rating.
There's no (easy) way to measure where your app sales come from. This makes traditional SEM/SEO difficult. You have no conversion numbers so your marketing funnel is broken.
Don't mention Apple products in your description. Don't use images of Apple products. Don't mention real-life persons in your description, I got an app rejected for that last one.
Don't count on being able to schedule a release date. Once you do get the approval mail, go into iTunes Connect & set your release date to $NOW. Remember, this can work both ways: I got surprised by an early release before my marketing materials were ready.
Yes, you will be pushed back to the queue upon rejection, even if you have the reviewer on the line and beg him to make an exception.
In all fairness, not all is bad. Apple seems to have started picking up speed lately. My experience with App approvals has been that it got faster in the last 2 weeks, at the same time when the AppStore itself went in disarray (wonky rankings, wrong release dates, ...). However, take care and remember "Correlation, Causation et Al.". Also, once I was in contact with Apple over the phone they were very courteous and professional in resolving issues. Slow & polite.