ISBN: 978-0-557-51427-4 Copyright © 2008 Carla Kay White and Happy Tapper™, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved. Please do not distribute this book in any way. Please do not sell it, or reprint any part of it without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Always include a link to www. iphoneappsecrets.com. Please note that much of this publication is based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. Although the author has made every reasonable attempt to achieve complete accuracy of the content in this guide, she assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Also, you should use this information as you see fit, and at your own risk. Your particular situation may not be exactly suited to the examples illustrated here; in fact, it’s likely that they won’t be the same, and you should adjust your use of the information and recommendations accordingly. Finally, use your own wisdom as guidance. Nothing in this guide is intended to replace common sense, legal, other professional advice, and is meant to inform and entertain the reader. So have fun with your iPhone and iPad app creation!
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Dedicated to my Dad
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Contents Welcome 5 Is anybody out there?
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GreatApps 6
About GreatApps & iSteam 6 An interview with Vassilis Samolis, Co-Founder GreatApps More about iSteam & GreatApps 8
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TapBots 9
About TapBots & Weightbot 9 An interview with Mark Jardine, Co-Founder Tapbots
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Tap Tap Tap 12
About Tap Tap Tap & Classics 12 An interview with John Casasanta, Founder Tap Tap Tap 12 More About Tap Tap Tap 14
Blimp Pilot 15
Blimp Pilot & Koi Pond 15 An interview with Andy Skirvin, Blimp Pilots More about Blimp Pilot 18
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MindTapp 19
Blimp Mind Tapp & Photonest 19 An interview with Shelby Meinzer, Mind Tapp More About Mind Tapp 22
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Broken Thumbs 23
About Broken Thumbs and Emily’s Girl Talk 23 An interview with Emily Maples, Broken Thumbs 23 More About Broken Thumbs 25
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Welcome Is anybody out there? Embedding myself into the iPhone developer network was a major challenge because as far as I know, I’m the only app developer in a 300 mile radius (my town is a little remote). Thankfully everyone whom I’ve reached out to over the Internet for advice has been very supportive, always taken the time to respond, even if it’s just letting me know they’re a little too busy at the moment. The app developer community is excellent and supportive. The developers I selected for these interviews have two things in common. First, their apps look great. They’re slick, easy to use, and have unique features. The second is that they are all best sellers on the App Store. They enjoyed the success of being in the top 25, some almost as long as the App Store has been around. I asked all four developers the same questions. Each of them came back with amazing answers providing superb insight into their creative process. So without further ado, let me introduce these wonderful apps and their incredible creators.
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GreatApps About GreatApps & iSteam iSteam caught my eye when it was available for free. I was instantly impressed. iSteam turns your device into a foggy surface just like your mirror after a hot shower or your window on a winter day. Blow on your mic to haze the screen, then use your finger to draw just like on a foggy window. It’s so simple and unique with an excellent design. iSteam was released on the App Store on December 29, 2008. By January 7th they were experiencing 14% daily growth and hit over 1 million downloads.
An interview with Vassilis Samolis, Co-Founder GreatApps How long does it take to create an app? The time it takes to develop an application is not fixed; it depends on the nature of it & the commitment of the team. iSteam took us only one week to develop. Other apps (more complicated ones) like our Christmas game GoSanta usually require more time. Do you have a development process? Yes. Once we have decided the core concept of the application, Kostas (our Chief Engineer) starts the development and delivers us two versions per day. Me and Bill
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Rappos do the Betta Testing and a week of work around the clock begins. Do you outsource any of the work? No, for our first three applications all the development was done by Kostas! What is the average cost of creating an app? It depends. Usually the cost is insignificant for the development per se, but some times promoting the app might cost. Our policy is to develop low budget applications that we promote by ourselves. An average price would be 1k $ per app. How much are you earning on the app store? Apple gives us 70% of the total earnings. It is generally our policy not to give out our financial information, but to give you an idea: iSteam (while it was 0.99$) and only in January sold more than 50.000 copies... How do you promote an app? Ah... Big story! In fact we use all means one can imagine. We use facebook (you are welcome to join our group), twitter (you are welcome to follow us) & youtube. We try to reach out as much publications as possible. Also we are very professional with our users, so when they’re happy we invite them to spread the word. Our main goal is to create something viral enough that, with good customer service, promotes itself. How do you determine price? The price depends on the nature of the application, the competition and the invested resources. For example iSteam was a simple app with insignificant competition (since it was a novel idea) and it took us little time to develop; thus we decided that 0.99$ was a fair price for the app. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? We believe that the biggest surprise so far was the media buzz created by iSteam! iSteam was featured in many major publications like: gizmodo, mashable, digg (three times front page) and we have more to come. What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? We believe that there is an x-factor for iPhone applications. The idea must be
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unique! People are unaware of the existence of most apps. With 20k applications in the AppStore you need to have something different to stand out.
More about iSteam & GreatApps iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/isteam GreatApps Website: http://greatapps.co.uk/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/iSteam Facebook: iSteam on Facebook
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TapBots About TapBots & Weightbot Chances are you have a TapBot app. You probably downloaded it simply because it’s so incredibly beautiful. TapBots apps are some of the most eloquently designed apps available. Starting with their first app, Weightbot, the simplicity and functionality have set their apps apart. They’ve been awarded best design app, and has hit well over 100,000 downloads. Weightbot lets set your goal weight, record your weight each day, view your BMI, and see your progress on a beautiful graph. TapBot apps are a great example of how a slick design can take a simple concept and turn it into a best selling app. There are other weight apps available, but none enjoyed as much success as Weightbot. TapBots also have two other apps, ConvertBot and PasteBot, and about to release a fourth.
An interview with Mark Jardine, Co-Founder Tapbots How long does it take to create an app? Around two to four months depending on complexity and how long it takes to come up with a solid design solution. Do you have a development process?
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Of course! It’s pretty loose though. Our apps start out with a pencil and paper. Once we get a basic design and functionality worked out, there are probably three to four iterations done in photoshop. Once we are fairly happy with the design, the images get sliced and exported for Paul to start building the app. Everything is versioned in SVN so I’m able to build the app on my side and make changes to the artwork as needed. We basically work in sync, pushing each other updates and Paul sends me an updated build for my phone almost every day. That is an important step as things tend to look a little different on the device. After functionality is completed, we work on animation, sound, and then spend a lot of time optimizing and making sure everything in the app looks and feels right. Do you outsource any of the work? Not yet. We are both somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades in our roles so we enjoy the variety of work that needs to get done. What is the average cost of creating an app? That’s a tough one. There’s not much overhead at all in what we do. If anything our time is the only significant cost in creating an app. But we enjoy it so much that it hardly feels like work. How much are you earning on the app store? We haven’t released earnings, but we have crossed the 100k unit sales a little while back. The app has sold between a $.99 and $3.99 range. How do you promote an app? Having a website is a given. We blog and twitter about releases, post screenshots and videos right before release, and just try to get as much coverage on blogs as we can. Then we pray hard that Apple features us in any form on the app store. I have to say we’ve had some good luck with Apple. Aside from some front-page placement on the app store, Weightbot is a featured demo at the Apple Retail stores and we were in an email blast once. We’ve recently started testing ad placement on a few sites, but it’s still too early to say
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how successful it’s been. How do you determine price? First we look at competitor pricing. Most utility apps are under $5. We really don’t have a formula of some sort. But I think many iPhone users are craving for beautiful looking applications so we make sure to price it low enough that people would buy it on impulse even though they have no need for the app. That’s been the case with Weightbot. We’ve had quite a few people tell us they didn’t need Weightbot, but bought it anyways because it looked great. At $5-10, they probably wouldn’t have. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? Probably the success we had with Weightbot. Our intention was to put out a little app to test the market. We had no idea it would sell as well as it did (considering the type of app and its simplicity). What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? Keep it simple. It takes discipline and restraint to keep an application focused on the task it was designed to do. Don’t add features just because customers demand it. Customer feedback is very important, but in the end it’s your application and your job to make sure features directly support the purpose of your application. Less is more, especially on a portable device.
More about TapBots iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/tapbots Tapbot’s Website: http://tapbots.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/tapbots Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tapbots
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Tap Tap Tap About Tap Tap Tap & Classics Tap Tap Tap’s team is comprised of the guys from the popular MacHeist. So they’re no strangers to Mac development or promotion. They got in on the game early and continue to be one of the top app developers. When I spoke to them, they had recently released Classics, a revolutionary new reading platform for iPhone and iPod Touch. Classics is another award winning design that has sat comfortably in the top 50, achieved over 100,000 downloads, and is also feature in an Apple TV ad. Interesting enough, the iBook app that comes with the iPad and most recent iPhone and iPod Touch release, looks very similar to this Classics bookshelf.
An interview with John Casasanta, Founder Tap Tap Tap How long does it take to create an app? This can vary from a few short days for something like Tipulator to several months for something more substantial like Classics. Do you have a development process?
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We generally like to include graphic design very early in the process. Once we have a basic idea outlined in our heads, we’ll work out both the UI design and graphic design simultaneously. Once we’re happy with the design as a whole we’ll then implement it. And of course, there’s constant refinement of the design along the way during the implementation process. Do you outsource any of the work? Yes. Mainly for the programming. We work with various programmers to help us get our apps implemented. I’ve pretty much given up on programming myself as I’ve slowed-down considerably the older I get. I used to really love it but I’d rather focus on other things these days and leave the programming to more capable people now. What is the average cost of creating an app? I’d say that an average is around $20-30k. It can be much lower for a tiny app and much, much more for a more substantial one of course. How much are you earning on the app store? The biggest hit that we’ve been associated with is Classics, which has sold over 200,000 copies to date. I don’t have exact sales figures handy but it’s sold between 99¢ and $4.99. How do you promote an app? I could write a whole book on this question! But for the sake of keeping it to a reasonably-sized answer, I’ll say that it’s been most effective to use a combination of traditional marketing techniques (ads, etc) and more modern things that help spread via word-of-mouth like blogging, etc. How do you determine price? It’s really whatever the market will bear. I tend to prefer pricing my apps toward the lower end but for more substantial apps, I’m open to charging more. With the higher prices, you can always put the app on sale to increase exposure but when you’re at 99¢ you’re at the bottom and there’s no going any less if you’d like to. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? The biggest surprise for me was that getting into iPhone development got me enjoying app development in general again. I honestly haven’t been into development the
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past couple of years since starting MacHeist as that’s kept me busy with more of promoting other people’s apps and creating online games for members. But once I got started with iPhone apps, it was hard to pull me away and MacHeist 3 actually started later than we were planning to because of it. What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? Do it because you love it. Don’t do it because you see stories of people making zillions off iPhone apps. The financial success stories are the exceptions, rather than the rules and if money is all that’s driving you to do it, your time may be better spent on other things. But if you’re passionate about it, jump in with everything you got and enjoy the ride. The iPhone market has been an amazing experience for me and I couldn’t be happier that I took the plunge.
More About Tap Tap Tap iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/classics Classics Website: http://classicsapp.com Tap Tap Tap Website: http://taptaptap.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/taptaptap Apple TV Ad: http://www.apple.com/iphone/galeri/ad/#read.
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Blimp Pilot Blimp Pilot & Koi Pond Like so many people, Koi Pond was the first app I ever purchased. It turns your phone into a mini-aquarium complete with ripple effects when you tap the water and spook the fish. Koi Pond was the most downloaded app in 2008. It’s rested nicely in the App Store’s top 50 since it’s release, so it could very well be the most downloaded app of all time. Koi Pond even made prime time TV with an appearance on the show E.R. The creators, Blimp Pilot, have since released two other apps, Distant Shores and Name in Lights. They also release an iPad version of Koi Pond.
An interview with Andy Skirvin, Blimp Pilots How long does it take to create an app? It really varies based on the complexity of the application, your background, and your team size. Our development team consists of two programmers, an artist, a sound designer, and a creative director. For us, although we didn’t know Objective-C, we did know C/C++ and stuck to using that as much as possible, which made the transition to iPhone development easier. We also have a strong background in 3D graphics and sound, which is how we ended up choosing Koi Pond as our first application. The initial release of Koi Pond only took about two weeks of working in our spare
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time. With the many updates we’ve released, it’s now probably been about 4 or 5 weeks of our time. Distant Shore, on the other hand, took us about 4 months to finish, again working in our spare time. Do you have a development process? As a small group, our development process is really simple. We have brainstorming sessions before starting an application to all come to a general consensus about what we’re building. Someone then does a more formal write-up/design of the various features of the application. That design is used to determine asset lists for art and sound and feature lists for programming. We distribute in-progress builds to the team as the application develops so people have the chance to give feedback early and to tweak the assets they’re responsible for after seeing them in use. For final testing, we’ve been doing most of it ourselves while also relying on friends to install Beta builds and give us bug reports and last-minute feedback. Do you outsource any of the work? No, since the overall skill set of our group covers everything we’ve needed so far in our applications, we haven’t had any need to outsource. It would be something we would consider if we wanted to make a more involved application. What is the average cost of creating an app? There’s the initial startup cost of registering as a developer with Apple ($99) and also the cost of getting a Mac to develop on (if you don’t already have one). Other than that, the only cost is the time you’re spending on it. How much are you earning on the app store? Koi Pond has sold over 750,000 copies so far at $0.99 and still manages to sell ~1000/ day many months after release. That’s definitely not normal, though - somehow that application has a lot of staying power! How do you promote an app? We didn’t do any promotion for our first two applications (Koi Pond and Name In Lights). However, for Distant Shore we did our best to send press releases and promotional codes to all the relevant websites and connections we had made
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through our first two applications. We also revamped our website, added a Facebook group for our company, and sent out notifications to our mailing list. More importantly, we did our best to make sure fans of Koi Pond were aware of Distant Shore’s release by adding a newsfeed tab to the Koi Pond UI. That’s what really drove Distant Shore’s initial sales. Additionally, Apple has contacted us at various times and asked us to provide relevant materials for them to promote our app. Their promotion includes banner ads and custom app pages on the App Store, the installation of our apps on Apple Store demo phones, and poster displays in Apple Stores. How do you determine price? We’ve just paid attention to the price of other successful applications and what the App Store market seems to be supporting. Unfortunately, the way the App Store is organized and presented to the user, it’s very difficult to charge what the true value of your application probably is. Complex 3-D games (which could sell for $15-20 on Nintendo DS) are selling for $0.99 right alongside soundboard programs and tip calculators. We felt $0.99 was the right price for Koi Pond but would have liked to charge a bit more for Distant Shore. However, we didn’t believe the impulse-buy driven App Store market would be able to support a higher price. Some games and certain niche or utility apps seem like they are the only ones able to sell well while asking for a higher price than $1-2. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? Our biggest surprise has been that anyone has bought them at all! We really expected to sell only a few hundred copies of Koi Pond when it came out. To watch it climb up the charts and sit at number one for almost two months was completely unbelievable, and drastically changed how serious we were taking iPhone development. What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? The barrier of entry is so low for the App Store that it really is possible for almost anyone to release an application. However, that also means there’s a lot of really horrible stuff on the store. I think users are becoming increasingly frustrated with the overall lack of quality. That being the case, anyone wanting to create an app needs to focus on releasing a polished product that has a chance at standing out
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among the 20,000+ other apps. I think a good recipe for success is to keep your scope fairly small - focus on only a few things but do those things really well. If the app is a success, there’s plenty of time to add more features in updates.
More about Blimp Pilot iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/theblimppilots Blimp Pilots Website: http://www.theblimppilots.com/ Facebook: Blimp Pilot on Facebook
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MindTapp Blimp MindTapp & Photonest Photonest was given to me for free by Shelby Meinzer of MindTapp as a thank you for my Inside Secrets book. To be honest, I would have happily paid for this very cool app. As an avid Twitter user, I find it rather frustrating that I have to click a link to view a twitpic. Photonest solves all of that in style. It only shows tweets with pictures. So very clever! Apple recently listed Photonest as a featured app, making it a top selling app. I’m so excited for Shelby and his team for their huge success!
An interview with Shelby Meinzer, MindTapp How long does it take to create an app? The time it takes to create an app depends an awful lot on what the function of the app is. Obviously the more complex the app the more time and money it’s going to take. Generally the apps that I have made have taken anywhere from 2 to 5 months to get the first version into the store. But then it’s not over. This is where the real work starts. Between marketing, keeping your app up to date with the OS and any API’s that you are using, squashing bugs, and trying to add features to improve the value of your app, it’s a decent amount of work, but it’s very fun work!
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Do you have a development process? When I get an idea for an app the first place I go is paper. I have a notebook that I write all the things that I want the app to do in. From there I organize the way the app will flow. I use an app called MindNode Pro (www.mindnode.com) for this, they have a mac version as well as an iPhone app and they work great together. This gives me a good idea of how the app will work and what screens and buttons I will need. At this point I organize all my information and contact my developer and get a quote for the work. I also begin to work on the design now as well. As the app gets written I make the graphics for it and send them over as I finish. After the app is all put together we test it as thoroughly as possible trying every combination commands and taps we can think of and take care of any bugs that still exist. After we have everything just how we want it we submit it to the store. From here it usually takes a week or so to get approved and then we start selling! Once you are selling you need to make sure that you stay on top of any bugs or API changes and keep you app up to date. Do you outsource any of the work? I outsource all the coding work to Clever Coding in Utah. Since I am a designer I handle all the design for the app except specific art pieces like logos and such since I can’t draw to save my life. For this type of work I either use 99designs.com or call an artist friend. What is the average cost of creating an app? The cost of an app is going to vary a lot. A 3D game is going to cost a good amount more than say a Twitter client. Another major factor is that amount of features that an app contains. For example a Twitter client that is able to control every element of the site will cost a lot more than an app that just posts tweets only. As a base expect to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 for an average app. Then expect to continue to pay for updates to keep your app running smoothly, and your customers excited. How much are you earning on the app store? Earnings in the app store have varied a lot since we launched. At first we hardly saw any sales. Some major things that have helped our sales have been blog articles, tweets by influential people, and the best has been being featured on apples site. During the run of the articles and while being featured the App Store we saw the
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biggest numbers for sure. While I don’t have exact numbers to share right now, I can say that it has been worth what we put into the project and we will be expanding our business because of it. How do you promote an app? To promote an app we start off by writing a press release and having prMac (http:// prmac.com/) distribute it for us. This is a good start but definitely not enough. After that I start messaging media outlets. If you can land stories this is great exposure since it costs nothing. We also are making posters and stickers to put up in major metropolitan areas. We haven’t done any internet ads yet but we are planning on running some along with our next big release. Right now we are trying to find the best places to advertise and are still trying to figure out our approach for that since some are pretty pricey. The best promo so far has been being a featured app on the App Store, now this is tough to get and there is no official way to get chosen for it, however here are a few tips that helped me. Apple picks apps that are high quality and easy to use so make sure you take your time and make a good app. Next, I recommend going to any iPhone event that you can afford. WWDC is pricey but they offer other options during the year as well such as the Tech Talk World Tour. I recommend going to these events and making sure you sign up for as much workshop time as you can. Sit down with people from Apple and go over your app, thats what they are there for. Not only will you get great advice, if they like your app and remember it maybe they will recommend it to be featured. That is what helped me. How do you determine price? For us the price of other Twitter apps kind of dictated how much we were going to charge. Since we are making an app that is essentially an add on to a Twitter client we knew that people weren’t going to pay more than the Twitter client for our app. We priced PhotoNest at $1.99 and we think that’s a great deal. This allows us to still have some room for promos now and then and also is a good price to shoot for volume with since it is still an impulse price. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? The biggest thing we overlooked was marketing. We spent all our energy in build the product and when we launched we just then started to look into getting the word out. Make sure you start early with your marketing plan and try to build hype. Be ready to hit the press heavy as soon as it’s released.
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What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? The cool thing about this business is that you do not have to be a developer to be be in it. There are a lot of developers out there who are looking for good ideas to work on. If you have an idea, roll with it! Search elance.com and other freelance sites to find people. It really is amazing the opportunities that are out there if you go look.
More About MindTapp iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/photonest Mind Tapp Website: http://mindtapp.com/ Twitter: http://http://twitter.com/photonest
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Broken Thumbs About Broken Thumbs and Emily’s Girl Talk Broken Thumbs also benefitted from Inside Secrets and in return sent me a free copy of their app, Emily’s Girl Talk. Not only is the name striking, the app is gorgeously put together. Apple noticed this, and featured Emily’s Girl Talk on their new apps list. After it’s release, Broken Thumbs put a lot of effort into new updates and feature releases. They really listened to their customers and in return I kept reading about this app everywhere. It’s a fantastic success story!
An interview with Emily Maples, Broken Thumbs How long does it take to create an app? After coming up with an initial idea, it takes about 1 week to story board the idea into a viable concept that works in terms of interface design, general game play, and features. From there it takes about 2-3 weeks to develop the game. This includes rapid iterations of QA and design adjustments. Do you have a development process? We do have a development process. In fact, we try and process as much of our company as possible. Our development process consists of story boarding, creating a design and engineering specification, having a project kick-off meeting with our
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designer and engineer to discuss the project in detail, designing a schedule with milestones and tasks for each team, paralyzing design teams with engineering efforts (where appropriate), and using an agile process for quick iterations of builds that are run through and tested. We are also deeply committed to our users and take supporting our apps very seriously. We try to do updates to all of our popular apps every 2-3 weeks, which includes bug fixes and new features based on user feedback. Do you outsource any of the work? We use different contractors for different projects based on their strengths and schedules. For example, we use one of our graphic artists for our Emily and Quizzle lines and another for our more male-oriented apps like Zombie Duck Hunt and Beer Toss. We also contract out some of our development work if our main developer is swamped with projects. What is the average cost of creating an app? The cost of an app depends on the size of the project and can range from $15-$25k. How much are you earning on the app store? It is company policy not to disclosure any revenue numbers at this time. How do you promote an app? Marketing an app in the app store is extremely hard. The best marketing your app can get is being featured by Apple. Aside from that, some of the ways we promote our apps are through blogs, forums, review sites, and social media including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We also try to cross promote our apps as much as possible. How do you determine price? We use a set of criteria to determine an apps price points. A few of the criteria include how feature rich an app is, the competition already in the app store, and our target demographic. We are also not against changing the price of an app after submission to the app store, but we try to increase the price instead of decrease it to reward our early users. What has been the biggest surprise to you in creating an app? The biggest surprise to me is how long it takes to build a stable iPhone development company. The competition in the iPhone development space is extreme, but an
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aspect of the business that we feel we are capable of overcoming. We found parts of the app store we can compete well in and have started to focus our efforts in those areas. Another aspect of building a stable company is understanding the platform that supports your products. It has been a real struggle keeping up with the unforeseen and unexpected changes to the iTunes app store submission rules. Being able to adapt to these unanticipated changes has been hard, but a part of the business that we are learning we have to do if we want to stick around. What’s your advice to someone who wants to create an app? The biggest advice I can give someone who wants to create an app is to be realistic about your future in this business. You have to be disciplined, hard-working, humble, and to a certain extent delusional. I say delusional because you have to be able to work long hours, totally believe in the work you produce, be able to accept criticism to improve your apps, be able to change everything you know about the business on a day-to-day basis, and do this all quickly and while keeping your sanity. It’s a tough juggling act but if you are up to the challenge, go for it. Whatever happens to our company, I consider myself lucky to have been a part of a core group of talented people who have been able to do so much with so little. And, it’s amazing to me that the core group of talented people includes my older brother and father. This has been a great experience and something I will never forget.
More About Broken Thumbs iTunes link: http://itunes.com/apps/emilysgirltalk Mind Tapp Website: http://www.brokenthumbsapps.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/brokenthumbsapp Facebook Facebook Fan Page
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Index
Resources About HappyTapper HappyTapper Apps on iTunes http://itunes.com/apps/happytapper Download our iPhone apps HappyTapper www.happytapper.com About HappyTapper and our apps Inside Secrets to an iPhone App www.iphoneappsecrets.om The official book site Health, Wealth & Happiness www.carlakaywhite.com Carla’s personal blog about finding peace and prosperity. 1-on-1 Jam Sessions www.happytapper.com/services Personal phone session to jump start your project Press Kit www.happytapper.com/PressKit/HappyTapperPressKit.zip Images of logos and products Email carla@happytapper.com
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Index
HappyTapper Apps Gratitude Journal www.happytapper.com/gratitude-journal Change your thoughts, change your life. Vision Board www.happytapper.com/vision-board Visualize your dreams into action! Little Buddha www.happytapper.com/little-buddha Over 39,000 inspirational quotes
Other places you can find HappyTapper Twitter @carlawhite Facebook HappyTapper Fan Page Vimeo www.vimeo.com/happytapper YouTube www.youtube.com/user/carlakaywhite Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/happytapper/
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“Do what you love to help people, and you will always love what you do.”
Carla Kay White Author & Founder of HappyTapper
About Carla White and HappyTapper.com Carla created her first iPhone app, Gratitude Journal (iTunes link) during the hours of 5 - 7am before going into her day job. Gratitude Journal is a diary for noting five things we’re thankful for each day. By focusing on gratitude, we become aware of those things and thus create a shift in our thinking to the positive. Carla did all the designs, managed the development, started Happytapper.com and did all the promotion herself. She is a one person show. Carla outsourced the development for $500 and the entire project cost her just $700. Gratitude Journal was released in December 2008 and shot up to #2 in the Lifestyles category of the App Store within its first week. It remains around that position at the time of writing (June 2010). More importantly, it has received nearly all five star reviews. Carla’s apps received great reviews from Macworld, LifeHacker and was featured in USA Today. Apple also requested the rights to feature it in their advertising. Combining her iPhone development experience with her design and project management knowledge, Carla formulated a successful process that brings ideas to market faster. Using this process, she continues to create more iPhone apps while sharing everything she learns along the way. Carla is on a mission to create a life of financial independence while bringing meaning and purpose to other people’s lives. She created a formula that allows her to work on projects she loves while raising money for charity.
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