iCombat

With all of the media hype success stories like Pocket God, iShoot, and Trism receive it is tempting to think that App store success is right around the corner.  All it should take is to make something and launch it, and then just watch the bills come rolling in.  While all of us developing apps would like for this to happen, the reality is that success, if it comes at all, usually takes much longer than expected.  Take for example iShoot, where Ethan Nicholas had his game in the app store several months before releasing the lite version that pushed his paid version to No. 1.  Or Pocket God, that launched after only a week of development but took 6 (or 7?) weeks of updates and community building to get it to the No. 1 spot.  These were not overnight Sound Grenade or iFart gimmicky successes, but took a long term perspective and a prolonged marketing effort.

Enter developer Owen Goss, creator of Dapple, who posted a self described “brutally honest” description several weeks ago about how he had done in his first month of sales. While Owen just came out with a lite version of his app and his experience is far from over, the numbers he provides highlight just how disheartening the launch period can be.  To sum it all up, in the first 24 days of Dapple being available it sold 131 copies worldwide.  That wouldn’t be such a bad deal if it were a side project, but Owen spent 6 months and over 30k developing the game (we should back out that he paid himself a salary throughout though).

While the reviews of Dapple have been strong and it clearly is a quality product, the game had a few key factors going against it.  First of all it entered a competitive game genre and had a $4.99 price point which couldn’t have helped much early on.  I won’t get into the full discussion around the pros and cons of Owen’s marketing strategy but check out the full story here if you are interested (also check out Owen’s awesome slides on his experience with Dapple here – pdf).  I am more interested in how he is dealing with the early setbacks.

Surely publishing sales data got Dapple noticed, evidenced by the fact that I am writing about Dapple now, but is this really going to help? And just how long do we tinker with our formulas until you know it is time to give up and try another app?  Is it until the lite version fails to boost paid downloads, or until or the price is dropped to $0.99, or maybe just until all of the major sites refuse to review the app?  As I get within a few days of submitting iCombat (that’s right, bugfixing is almost over!) I am trying to be optimistic but also prepared for a long hard slog of self promotion, begging, and screaming to get my app noticed.  We’ll see if I can avoid having to post a “brutally honest” entry of my own once my app launches…

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