Posts tagged App Store

So Apple may or may not have removed overtly sexual applications from the iTunes App Store. While the feedback has been mainly positive, sans for blogs who are link-baiting, it does present potential stress for developers such as myself. Whether Apple has the right to remove applications after allowing them for a year, causing many developers time and effort to now be wasted, is not the point of this article, however.

The App Store has been a huge success story for Apple, much in the same way the iTunes Music Store was for iPods. iTunes was a major reason (although not the only reason) why iPods became the dominant music player throughout the last decade. Digital Rights Management (DRM) forced people who wanted to utilize iTunes to own an iPod. In a similar fashion, the iTunes App Store is deeply connected with iPhones and iPod touch, and the innovation created by 3rd party developers has allowed the iPhone to remain the best phone on the market.

Similar to Apple policy changes in regard to DRM, it may be time for significant policy changes in regard to selling applications in the App Store. If sales of NC-17 rated apps have shown us anything, it’s that there is a huge market for those applications. Should Apple be required to sell those apps? The answer is “No”. However, Apple should not prevent innovative developers from meeting market needs that they do not wish to fill.

Therefore, maybe it’s time developers should be allowed to sell applications on their own websites. This new distribution method would solve many of the complaints blogs and news outlets state about the iPhone App Process. It allows any app to be sold to potential customers, and prevents ambiguity in the review process. As a trade-off, developers would be responsible for fees associated with downloads, hosting, and sales (credit cards).

This method does present challenges, and this blog post does oversimplify the situation. For example, allowing anyone to create 3G access-intensive applications could pose issues to the AT&T network, which may be one reason this distribution method has never been utilized. Therefore, this solution is more complex, but still possible.

Would I utilize this method? No, I wouldn’t. I’m completely happy with the process Apple maintains. I like the fact that I don’t have to worry about hosting and credit cards, as I had to in the past. It allows me to focus on other aspects of my business, which is an incredible advantage.

<Ad Network> worked out for me well. However, the ads won’t work out well for you if you’re looking for big traffic bursts within a short time.

Advertising and marketing are an integral and necessary part of any iPhone developer’s success. Whether you work for a big company, or you’re a one-person shop, you have to spend a significant amount of time letting people know your application is actually in the app store.

Search Google, and you’ll most likely come across tens of posts stating high expectations/low results of app sales. If you dig a little deeper in the posts, the developers usually state that they have done zero marketing, or only one expensive task, such as a paid review or advertising on an expensive CPM network.

I’ve developed several applications and have experimented with several marketing methods (and researched even more). I’m no expert, and I continue to research and try different marketing techniques, but I thought I’d take some time and put down some lessons learned from marketing in 2009.

iTunes is a marketplace, not an advertising platform (for most people). The biggest mistake is inflated expectations in regard to the iTunes App Store. People expect hundreds of sales with little to no work.

Don’t get me wrong. You will receive some sales with iTunes. iTunes gathers hundreds of millions of users into one store. If you sold your application on your own website, you wouldn’t receive any visitors because no one knows about you (or me).

When it comes to apps though, the iTunes App Store could be compared to a supermarket. It contains thousands of items, but it’s up to the product-maker to get consumers to notice your product, not the supermarket’s.

Also similar to the supermarket, iTunes does have an advertising platform called the App Store front page. I was fortunate to have 4Notes on the front page and it is the best marketing platform for apps. The problem is, unlike supermarkets, you can not “buy” your way to the premium spot. Therefore, you need a plan to market in other ways.

Banner Advertising (or other CPM methods). I receive a ton of advertising requests from medium size websites. A few things to note about CPM methods. First, even very popular websites, with hundreds of millions of visitors, have low click-through rates (around 0.1%). When I owned a company in 2004, I utilized Google AdWords, and click through rates were below 1%.

What can you gain from this? If your intent is to build a brand, then CPM is a great method. If your intent is sales, then this may not be the best method. Of all places, I grabbed the following information from Facebook

CPM advertising is usually more effective for advertisers who want to raise awareness of their brand or company, while CPC advertising is more effective for advertisers who are hoping for a certain response from users (like sales or registrations).

Now, I’m not against this type of advertising, per se. It just has to meet several of my criteria. For example, if you have an app that targets a particular demographic and there is a website that meets that demographic, I may consider CPM. Second, they would have to provide an easy way to create an advertisement. Facebook would meet both of these categories if I was advertising an application for the high school / college market. iPhoneDevSDK.com would be a good place if you had an app targeted to the developer community (they utilize your app icon as the banner). Fusion Ads is another place where CPM may be viable (although I haven’t had much time to research), depending on your goal.

Many websites, however, do not offer either of these. They want me to give my hard earned cash for CPM inventory (without proving their value to me) and they want me to spend money creating my own banner.

Paid App Reviews: I feel different than most people about paid app reviews. If you read many forum posts, people who pay for “honest” app reviews are shunned as cheating the system or something just as horrible.

Personally, I don’t like paid app reviews, but not because the developer is being dishonest or cheating the system. I feel the website who doesn’t disclose their conflict of interest is being dishonest. As a developer, if I pay for a review, it better damn well be a good review. Why would I want to pay $20-$50 for a terrible review?

The websites know it too, which is why you’ll notice most reviews are positive. These types of payments are like magazine advertisements that pose as a positive review and it should be disclosed as such. Or, if a website takes money and doesn’t honestly like the application, then they should return the money and post the review (or not post).

Paid app reviews are necessary sometimes. My first application, Buckets, was seen in publications like ComputerShopper.com and MacWorld. 4Notes was not reviewed in any publications. While 4Notes has performed better than Buckets, I feel Buckets has maintained a longer tail because of these reviews.

With paid app reviews, you’ll also notice that your cost is rarely proportional to the value you receive from that review.

As I continue to research and try new things, I’ll update the Alpha Blog. If anyone has some great marketing advice or stories, let me know and I can update the blog.