Of course Xojo has problems, considering the fact that it is a never ending “work in progress” and extremely complex. It has to be adjusted to new updates of the Operating Systems and upgrades of existing functionality.
What I have learned in life by moving from Germany to the third world country Namibia, is to find a solution when problems occur and working my way around it.
With most issues in the past, I could manage through the help of fellow developers at the Xojo forum, which I am deeply grateful for, or using my own time and effort to find an acceptable solution, thinking out of the box, or the issue has been addressed with an upcoming update of Xojo.
What matters most to me is the mindset of the people behind Xojo, in particularly Dana Brown, who is helpful beyond words and I have nothing but respect and gratitude! Thank you for keeping this incredible tool going!
I would like to address four personal issues of concern…
SALES: My sales at the App store don’t even pay for the annual fee of Apple to register as a developer and having to pay for Xojo Pro licence and a website to market the products, my developing efforts are nothing but an expensive hobby. Luckily I was gifted a free licence this year by dear Dana, otherwise I probably had to stop it all together. My point is, despite having several really cool products, it is not selling. This was different before the Apple App store took over and sales would rely on recommendations of VersionTracker or MacUpdate, which rated my apps 5 stars and even editors choice awards. Is there a way that Xojo could rate and recommend apps? Or are there any suggestions from the forum? Maybe my dilemma is based on the fact that I am not US based? Is my assumption right that one can only place adverts on the app store for iOS? What is the best way of promoting good products? Maybe my website sucks (https://www.quadrant-7.com/) or my prices are too cheap or too expensive? Love to have some feedback!
MOVIE PLAYER: There is a Xojo memory problem in iOS with movie players, if one needs to display many (even for small size movies), worked my way around it, but it is a painful and time consuming process.
IN-APP-PURCHASES: A year ago I tried to implement in-App-purchases and gave up on it, since it was way too complicated for me to do so. There should be an easy way of doing it, fully implemented into Xojo, since it seems to be the only way of making money - providing free apps with that functionality.
EXTEND VARIABLES: Is it possible to call fields, players, buttons etc through variables (Arrays) that hold the names of the controls? It would reduce the coding dramatically!
Finally, I would love to give back to the Xojo developer community with a free download of the app Converter, a measurement calculator - details on my website. If you are interested please send me an e-mail at nickolbe@icloud.com and I will gladly send you a download link.
Xojo used to host Developer Awards at their conference, awarding a best-in-category to several apps. I found a page for it on the website, but it looks like there hasn’t been any announcements since 2020.
Disclaimer: this post might seem harsh but I am trying to help.
Sadly, that is the case for half of the App Store developers. But most of them don’t understand one simple fact, making a great app is not enough. You should spend as much time marketing your apps as you spent developing them.
As soon as I realised that, most of my apps have been a great success. My apps’ proceeds could allow me to buy a new Xojo license every day
Having a website for your iPhone apps isn’t very important. 90% of my app downloads come from searches on Google or the App Store. 5% or so come from my app’s website.
In-app purchases is the way to go.
Honestly, why would anyone want to buy your Base Pro app for $9.99 when there will certainly be a free alternative. There are 2.5 million apps on the App Store. Any app has at least a few (or many) alternatives.
Browsing your App Store’s page I see
Expensive apps
Bad ratings
Cluttered and un-meaningful screenshots
Unprofessional icons
A tiny description (don’t forget Google indexes your app’s description for important keywords)
Any potential customer would see all of this and find a free or better alternative.
If you believe your apps are useful, implement in-app purchases to unlock some features. You will get many more downloads and people will be happy to try them before buying them.
Here is a screenshot presenting downloads for Packr (free app) and Packr Premium (paid app)
The “secret” of sales is delivering what people need by the price people feel fair.
The first question is: what lots of people need?
So the most perfect software to do a thing most don’t need, almost won’t sell.
The cheapest software to do a thing most don’t need, almost won’t sell.
The most expensive software to do a thing most need, almost wont sell either because there are cheaper alternatives.
The most perfect and cheaper software to do a thing most need, is the hit needing marketing, so it can be found by those needing them. A competitor can’t have all your features or can’t handle your price, or both, while people still need an app, any app, able to solve their problem, by a fair price.
Although that is true, sales aren’t the only way to drive revenue from mobile apps.
Some of my apps display ads, some have affiliated links.
I would be stupid to set the in-app purchase price at $1000 but that wouldn’t stop my app from generating revenue.
This is always true. The kind of sale is what changes, from direct to indirect. Sometimes you are selling ad views instead of direct pay for features, or whatever, always selling something, if not, your product is a freeware, and I’m not talking about such class of products.
I started using admob (MBS plug-in) three weeks ago.
Total app revenue has increased by 10-15% just displaying ads.
That is basically 3 days of work to get a 15% raise
As for affiliate links, for one app it is 1% of total revenue, for another it is close to 20%.
