Discussion: App Store Strategies, Hints, Tweaks

General
1

How do you deal with App Stores and distribution platforms? Are there more distribution platforms than Apple MAS and iOS App Stores? Are you struggeling with low sales or ratings? Do you depend on your App Store revenues or are these revenues just a side-effect of already existing projects or software?

I am moving the ongoing discussion from Xojo-made iOS apps in the App Store to here to make this more general and more helpful for others.

Are there helpful links or ressources like the Link Maker tool by Apple, Sascha posted before?

2

For me the MAS is a serious and steady revenue stream with about 15 apps in there. None gets more than 5 sales a day, but yet, this is a nice income.

I had to deal with bad reviews. It seems there are different kinds. The purely spammish ones are removed fairly easily. The crazies are another story. I never was able to have removed one posted by a guy for every app of the same type, identical (copy/paste) and inaccurate. Finally, there was that crash that suddenly happened with 10.10.3 and my app is now littered by people insisting on the crash.It is removed pending my finding what is exactly going on.

In all these cases, I have decided now that new versions will not be the same app. Pity for updates, but that is the only way to get rid of the baggage. I start anew with a slightly different name, and remove the older version with the bad reviews.

From the marketing forums around, it seems I am not the only one experiencing the total lack of response from Apple concerning unjustified bad reviews, and that publishing a new name is increasingly common.

The second app Store where I have business is the Windows Store, which soon will be open to Xojo apps with the Centennial Bridge, if all goes well. At present my apps are in VB for the Modern API. I have half a dozen titles identical to the MAS. Sales are at best 20 times less than the MAS.

The third one is the iTunes App Store, where I placed my first app a month ago or so. Just as Dave S did, I found out that my app was buried under everything including the kitchen sink, and never showed up at all with the keywords or part of the name. The only way to find it is by entering the exact name, “Elementary Letters”, but yet, for whatever reason, the first app to show in iPad is “Lowercase Keyboard”. Neither Elementary nor Letters appear anywhere in the description of that completely unrelated app, so I strongly suspect the search algorithm to be outrageously biased, probably with advertisement ranking. Sales are anecdotal, and would it not be for the real pleasure I got from discovering Xojo iOS while creating that app, I would have regretted to waste so much time on such a dismal result. To me the lure of the huge iOS market is over. It is probably great for Candy Crush and other games from brainless children, it is nowhere the kind of market for my apps.

Finally, I have a free app in the Android Play Store, to feel the waters. Unlike the pesky iTunes Store, it shows well and downloads abound, but I suspect anything with a price tag would not sell terribly much.

All in all, to me, the MAS remains the best place to sell programs.

3

Hello,
for some reason I’m considering to remove an app of mine from MAS and replace it with a new one with a slightly different name, as @Michel Bujardet pointed out in the previous post.

I’d like to ask to those who have gone this way (MAS only):

  1. in the description of the new app, do you specify that you are going to support the app for a limited amount of time (ex. one year)? (just to make myself understood: as Sam specifies it for App Wrapper). Or you just paste --more or less-- the old description?

  2. how do you deal with old customers? Reduced price?

  3. since we do not know the identity of our customers, how to make sure that one claiming to be an old customer is actually a customer?

  4. any other suggestion welcome.

Thank you.

4

Carlo, you are preparing yourself for a lot of pain if you pretend supporting old customers.

I do that on a case by case basis, and demands for upgrade can be counted on one hand, since two years ago, on the 4 apps I changed.

When people ask for support that require me to provide a file, I request they send me first the App Store receipt, and explain that we don’t get a copy of the sales, since Apple is the seller. Then eventually I send them the app by email.

I do not volunteer at any time in the app description for free upgrades or other BS.

5

Thank you, Michel. I’ll follow your advice.
It is encouraging to know that a lot of unsatisfied old customers have not besieged you.

6

In one of our apps people can download app from website and select app from App Store.
Than we read and verify receipt. If valid, we flag them as registered.

7

I think as developers, we tend to have a technical culture, and forget that the App Stores are essentially commerce platforms. Purchases on these platforms are essentially impulse buy. If the software satisfies the needs of the moment, customers will not notice that no updates are pushed through.

Personally, as I also distribute stuff on Amazon besides software, I am growing more and more conscious about this important fact : I am into it to make money, not to waste time tending to customers who will probably never buy anything more.

Bad reviews can really drag down an app. I made that dreadful experience on the Windows Store. A series of grouchy no life idiots decided to flame one of my best selling app. In a matter of days, sales went down to negligible. It is unacceptable to be taken off the air by people who cannot understand how to install an app, or who are too dumb to read the manual.

On the Windows Store side, they won’t remove a bad review, unless it uses abusive language. And since they insist on extremely heavy procedures to open a new app, I give up.

As a free seller, I consider that a dumb policy. So I have decided to make no effort whatsoever with the Windows Store from now on. In terms of business, it is somewhere around 1/5th the Mac App Store anyway. Consumers are not the only ones who can walk away.

On the other side, the Windows Amazon App Store is much more vibrant.

To be blunt, I have spent enough time on lost causes. And that is valid for online stores as well. The desktop market is shrinking, anyway, all the reasons not to hold too tight to a melting iceberg.

8

I’m curious how people feel about subscription-based app via the Mac App Store. Anyone have experience in that yet?

9

I specifically avoid the App Store as best I can, and subscription apps completely.

*By subscription I mean apps where I no longer have access to the software at all when subscription expires. Things like AppWrapper and Xojo are okay by me because I can still use them when my updates period ends.

10

[quote=331909:@Tim Parnell]I specifically avoid the App Store as best I can, and subscription apps completely.

*By subscription I mean apps where I no longer have access to the software at all when subscription expires. Things like AppWrapper and Xojo are okay by me because I can still use them when my updates period ends.[/quote]

I mean from the point of view of a developer more than from the PoV of a user, actually. And I do mean apps that continue to operate and don’t remove user supplied content, just don’t allow more input.

11

Sorry, though it would be helpful to offer input from the user side of things.

Same ■■■■, different pile. If it ceases to be useful it’s locking the user out (and is an absolute no-sale for me).

12

Thank you for sharing your opinion, Tim, but you are not the average App Store user. Actually, you don’t even seem to be a customer there, from what you say.

Actually, quite a bit of apps in the iOS App Store already work that way. More or less elaborate client accesses a web service, and depending on subscription status, offer different levels of access.

It should be pretty easy to concoct such a contraption, with a Xojo Web server, and with little more than an HTMLViewer, you can have a Mac, iOS or Windows app in no time. Of course it would take some scaling if the app is very successful.

Subscription based software can be a very good deal for the publisher. Steady income, instead of one shot sale. It would probably take a rigorous market survey to see which competing web based services already exist, and find the very good idea that people will embrace.

13

Think different.

Many of us are old enough to saw computer dying, 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disk dying, software disappearing, etc.

And if you are fortunate enough, you exported your archives from a totaly dead mass storage to current ones.

And if you are fortunate enough, you exported your files from a closed application file format to another application file format, but up to date. As an example, if you have Word 1.0 files, you moved their format to 2, 3, … current. If you have Nisus or WordPerfect files…

Now, the oldest can be far from happy to learn about new ways to afford the future with yearly licenses and cloud (and the future disappearance of the Compact Disc as a storage file format [I include inside that: CD, DVD and Blu-Ray…).

And I do not talked about punched green cards (the one without Andie MacDowell nor Gérard Depardieu).

14

These kinds of apps are supposed to be rejected by Apple:

15

not to mention punch cards and EIGHT INCH floppy disks!

16

[quote=331925:@Tim Parnell]These kinds of apps are supposed to be rejected by Apple:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality[/quote]

Indeed, but add a bit of cosmetics and you got your typical Facebook app :wink:

What they really don’t want, is a glorified browser.

17

[quote=331925:@Tim Parnell]These kinds of apps are supposed to be rejected by Apple:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality[/quote]
Twice I’ve tried to make some remark about this, but twice it ends up coming out as frustrated vile.

18

There are not that many real sellers on the MAS anyway. And even less willing to share their knowledge. Sam, you are the most authorized to talk about the MAS. Without App Wrapper, there would be much, much less Xojo apps in the MAS.

Personally, I find it highly ironic that Apple now bans the kind of apps Steve insisted to push at the beginning of the iPhone :wink:

BTW, the Amazon App Store takes Web apps as well. I did not investigate very far, but it seems they are mainly apps running on their hosts. Which if I remember right, Xojo does.

19

Michel, you’re making me blush…

In the tune of a famous Disney movie… “It’s a whole new world”. IMHO Apple pushing out Pro apps from the Mac App Store is just another indication that they’re not in the Pro industry. I love “Coda” but was sad when that was kicked out because of a Sandbox change. Surely the App Store needs apps like Coda, Adobe and hey, maybe even App Wrapper ??? At least then Apple could ensure that these apps are not infected (like the Transmission/Handbrake saga).

In fact looking through my regular used apps list, there’s only 1-2 that are from the App Store; the rest are direct from the vendor (or my own).[quote=331909:@Tim Parnell]*By subscription I mean apps where I no longer have access to the software at all when subscription expires. Things like AppWrapper and Xojo are okay by me because I can still use them when my updates period ends.[/quote]
Just to clarify; you CAN do subscriptions on the App Store, they have the bonus a subsequent years you get a better rate (85% instead of 70%). You MUST use the App Store In-App-Purchase mechanism (which currently can only be done via plugins) and last time I checked (so this may not be valid) there was no way to give people a coupon for a NFR copy, I think you can now offer a FREE 30 day trial. As the developer you can choose what happens when the subscription expires.

20

To jump in again, my question was supposed to be: “Does anyone actually have a XOJO-made, subscription-based app on the App Store and how does it seem to fare in terms of making money?”