Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:07 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herne, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 97, and today is Tuesday, November 27th.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:20 ◼   ► All right, so this is kind of a follow-on to this last weekend, which here in the US

00:00:25 ◼   ► was Thanksgiving and the traditional start

00:00:29 ◼   ► of the holiday shopping season.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And along that, there's this thing we call Black Friday

00:00:33 ◼   ► and Cyber Monday, which are both terrible names,

00:00:36 ◼   ► but just generally refer to this practice and process

00:00:40 ◼   ► whereby people who sell things, put them on sale

00:00:46 ◼   ► the Friday after Thanksgiving

00:00:47 ◼   ► and the Monday after Thanksgiving

00:00:49 ◼   ► to jumpstart sales and get ready for the holidays.

00:00:52 ◼   ► And then you think a little bit about hub sales.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I put my apps on sale for Thanksgiving,

00:00:57 ◼   ► checked the weather, and my recipe book were both on sale.

00:01:00 ◼   ► And I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about sales,

00:01:03 ◼   ► how they work, the mechanics of that,

00:01:05 ◼   ► as well as just kind of like why you should do them,

00:01:07 ◼   ► why you shouldn't do them, how often you should do them,

00:01:09 ◼   ► those kinds of things.

00:01:11 ◼   ► So basically, the mechanics of putting an app on sale

00:01:14 ◼   ► are fairly straightforward.

00:01:16 ◼   ► iTunes Connect has made this a lot simpler in recent years.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Basically, in the rights and pricing area of iTunes Connect,

00:01:24 ◼   ► you just specify a schedule for pricing for your app.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And you can do this for apps as well as for in-app purchases.

00:01:29 ◼   ► So if you want to put an in-app purchase on sale,

00:01:32 ◼   ► you can also do that.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Just make sure that your app is smart enough

00:01:35 ◼   ► to always be refreshing the bundle price before you

00:01:39 ◼   ► display it to the user, which I think

00:01:41 ◼   ► you sort of have to do anyway, but I've definitely

00:01:43 ◼   ► run into that trap before.

00:01:45 ◼   ► But basically, you can set a schedule.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And this can basically be as arbitrarily complicated

00:01:50 ◼   ► as you want.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But it can only be as granular as a day.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And essentially, you can set the price to change at midnight

00:01:59 ◼   ► on the day that you set it to.

00:02:00 ◼   ► So if you wanted it to go on sale on Saturday morning,

00:02:04 ◼   ► essentially, you would set the date to be Saturday and at 12

00:02:08 ◼   ► o'clock PM.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And I think it's in the local time zone,

00:02:11 ◼   ► though I'm not 100% sure on that.

00:02:14 ◼   ► The price will just change.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And users buying the app at that point

00:02:17 ◼   ► will just see a different price in the store,

00:02:18 ◼   ► will see a different price in your app for an in-app purchase,

00:02:20 ◼   ► and will take effect.

00:02:22 ◼   ► You can set an end date or not.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And when the end date arrives, essentially

00:02:26 ◼   ► at midnight on the day before you set at the end,

00:02:29 ◼   ► it will appear and that'll be it.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Sort of the new price will change.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And so when I wanted to go in and put my app on sale,

00:02:37 ◼   ► I just set--

00:02:38 ◼   ► for me, I was dropping the price at $0.99 for two days.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So basically I said from now until--

00:02:45 ◼   ► in this case, it was the Saturday--

00:02:47 ◼   ► the price should be $0.99.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And I added that, and then it just said from now

00:02:52 ◼   ► till Saturday, price will be 99 cents.

00:02:55 ◼   ► After that, it goes back to its old price, which worked great.

00:02:58 ◼   ► It's really nice that they automate that.

00:03:00 ◼   ► The only thing that's tricky is, of course,

00:03:02 ◼   ► if you're going to do any kind of update in the app's

00:03:04 ◼   ► description, which you probably will, just indicate,

00:03:07 ◼   ► hey, the app's on sale, or this is a limited-item offer,

00:03:10 ◼   ► get it for now before the price goes up.

00:03:13 ◼   ► You can do all those kinds of things.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Make sure you go in and undo them as soon as you can

00:03:17 ◼   ► after the sale's off.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Just you're not sending the wrong messages to your users.

00:03:22 ◼   ► But as for the mechanics, that's really it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And like I said, it's pretty straightforward,

00:03:25 ◼   ► nicely automated for you.

00:03:27 ◼   ► One thing to be very careful about heading into the

00:03:29 ◼   ► Christmas season is typically over Christmas, iTunes Connect

00:03:35 ◼   ► is down, and I believe this year is the same.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I think it may even be down for a longer window this year.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Something like the 21st to 27th sticks in my head, so I'm

00:03:43 ◼   ► not sure about that.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But basically, you want to be very careful about doing

00:03:47 ◼   ► scheduling price changes during the outage window.

00:03:50 ◼   ► That's for two reasons.

00:03:51 ◼   ► One, sometimes they just won't apply.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And there's, you know, often their iTunes Connect

00:03:56 ◼   ► documentation will tell you this, that during an outage,

00:03:59 ◼   ► you know, any changes you make

00:04:00 ◼   ► may or may not actually happen.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And if they don't happen, that's not great.

00:04:04 ◼   ► If you're, you know, you're lowering your price,

00:04:05 ◼   ► expecting it to jump back,

00:04:07 ◼   ► say like you lowered your price,

00:04:08 ◼   ► trying to boost your rank going into Christmas day.

00:04:11 ◼   ► This point was highly possible.

00:04:12 ◼   ► There will continue to be that price on Christmas day,

00:04:14 ◼   ► which may not have been what you wanted.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Second, any time you make a change in something

00:04:19 ◼   ► in iTunes Connect, there's some chance

00:04:21 ◼   ► that something could go funny.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Exactly what that is will vary a lot,

00:04:24 ◼   ► but you just never know.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Something could just go funny.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And I've had this before.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Like, one of my apps was just sort

00:04:30 ◼   ► of unavailable for purchase for a day,

00:04:32 ◼   ► because somehow iTunes Connect got stuck in a weird state.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:04:37 ◼   ► That kind of stuff happens, and so I'd always

00:04:38 ◼   ► be careful about doing it before what is traditionally

00:04:41 ◼   ► the biggest sales day of the year, which is Christmas Day.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So just be very careful about changing prices

00:04:46 ◼   ► too much right around Christmas, I'd probably recommend

00:04:49 ◼   ► just doing anything you want to do, get it set up,

00:04:52 ◼   ► and then just kind of lock it in for the Christmas ride.

00:04:55 ◼   ► So just something to keep in mind.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Then I was going to kind of think about

00:05:01 ◼   ► how effective are sales?

00:05:03 ◼   ► Do you actually end up making money?

00:05:05 ◼   ► Is it a really useful marketing tool?

00:05:07 ◼   ► I'd say maybe.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Generally speaking, I found sales to be--

00:05:14 ◼   ► Typically I don't lose money on sales, but I rarely make a lot more money.

00:05:19 ◼   ► When you do a sale, you're kind of having a couple of different goals.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Really, there's probably three.

00:05:28 ◼   ► You're trying to boost your rank and attract more users that way.

00:05:30 ◼   ► You're trying to get exposure from the variety of services and websites

00:05:34 ◼   ► and things that talk about app pricing that you'll hopefully be flagged as like,

00:05:38 ◼   ► "Oh, on sale today," and you get a little bit of publicity and exposure that way.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And you're hopefully also trying to encourage those users

00:05:43 ◼   ► who are very price sensitive to download your app

00:05:46 ◼   ► if they wouldn't get downloaded otherwise.

00:05:48 ◼   ► If they're just in their minds,

00:05:50 ◼   ► like I only buy 99 cent apps,

00:05:51 ◼   ► and there's nothing you can do,

00:05:52 ◼   ► no you can't make your app,

00:05:54 ◼   ► there's no amount of awesome that you can build

00:05:56 ◼   ► into your app that will make it sell to them,

00:05:59 ◼   ► you're just trying to attract that user

00:06:00 ◼   ► and sort of integrate the curve for them

00:06:02 ◼   ► and be like, you're going to get that little bit of,

00:06:05 ◼   ► that segment of the market you're going to be able

00:06:07 ◼   ► to monetize.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And to some degree they work,

00:06:10 ◼   ► I mean, I've put apps on sale and sometimes I've lost money.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Sometimes I've just broken even, which is sort of good.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But like this last one, I had two apps on sale. My recipe book and Check the Weather.

00:06:22 ◼   ► My recipe book did much better in revenue, which is great.

00:06:26 ◼   ► The sales seemed to work and kind of coincided well with, I guess, Thanksgiving and the cooking going on.

00:06:30 ◼   ► So that was great. Check the Weather, on the other hand, didn't really do

00:06:34 ◼   ► much better at all. I basically broke even, maybe slightly lower in sales,

00:06:38 ◼   ► which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I mean, from a revenue perspective,

00:06:42 ◼   ► I'd rather in some ways have more users

00:06:44 ◼   ► because hopefully they're going to like it

00:06:46 ◼   ► and share it with their friends and things,

00:06:47 ◼   ► but it's definitely another thing

00:06:50 ◼   ► you're always going to make money on.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And I think especially the effect of a sale

00:06:55 ◼   ► wears off dramatically after a day or two.

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's not the kind of thing that you put on sale for a week.

00:07:00 ◼   ► You're going to get a better impact

00:07:01 ◼   ► than if you put on sale for a day or two.

00:07:03 ◼   ► For me, I just put it on sale, I think,

00:07:04 ◼   ► for basically two days.

00:07:07 ◼   ► it was basically Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And I think that after, you know, sort of,

00:07:12 ◼   ► it seemed as though that was, you know,

00:07:14 ◼   ► my rank in other changes that were happening on late Friday

00:07:18 ◼   ► were, seemed to have basically settled out.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And so it wasn't the kind of thing

00:07:21 ◼   ► that I was continuing to see an advantage,

00:07:23 ◼   ► and so I may as well raise my price

00:07:24 ◼   ► and make a little bit more money on the revenue side.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And that's really speaks to a little bit

00:07:28 ◼   ► of the frequency question,

00:07:30 ◼   ► how often should you put your apps on sale?

00:07:32 ◼   ► Traditionally I would say you don't want to do it too often.

00:07:36 ◼   ► it's always tricky if you create this expectation with your users

00:07:39 ◼   ► that they should be waiting for the app to go on sale before they buy it,

00:07:43 ◼   ► because it's entirely possible, or if not likely, that they'll forget about it,

00:07:48 ◼   ► that something else will catch their interest and they'll use that instead,

00:07:53 ◼   ► or just that if you've gotten someone's attention to be thinking about your app,

00:07:59 ◼   ► you want them to buy it.

00:08:01 ◼   ► You want as few reservations you could possibly have in their mind

00:08:04 ◼   ► as to why this would not be an awesome time

00:08:06 ◼   ► for them to give you a couple bucks.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And so you just want to be very careful about,

00:08:10 ◼   ► if they go to App Shopper or one of those kinds of sites,

00:08:13 ◼   ► and I'm not sure how many people do this kind of shopping,

00:08:16 ◼   ► but I'm sure there are a fair few,

00:08:18 ◼   ► go to a site like App Shopper

00:08:19 ◼   ► that shows you the price history,

00:08:21 ◼   ► and if it looks like every couple weeks

00:08:23 ◼   ► it's bumping down, bumping up,

00:08:25 ◼   ► jumping down, bumping up,

00:08:26 ◼   ► you're probably going to be,

00:08:28 ◼   ► they're probably going to wait for it to bump down again.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And so for me, I typically,

00:08:32 ◼   ► I'd say I put my apps on sale.

00:08:35 ◼   ► It's maybe kind of like a semi-annually,

00:08:37 ◼   ► maybe every six months, once a year, something like that.

00:08:40 ◼   ► It depends on the app, it depends on if there's

00:08:41 ◼   ► a good situation or a reason for it to be on sale.

00:08:45 ◼   ► But typically I try to do it no more frequently than that.

00:08:48 ◼   ► There's a period of time I even were,

00:08:50 ◼   ► I used to, there was a time when you could,

00:08:52 ◼   ► I found a little pattern where if I dropped the sale price

00:08:57 ◼   ► on Saturday, it would boost my rank,

00:09:00 ◼   ► and then I would raise my price again on Sunday

00:09:03 ◼   ► and it would boost my revenue

00:09:04 ◼   ► 'cause Sundays were my heaviest volume day

00:09:06 ◼   ► and so being slightly higher ranked would be beneficial.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And I tried that for a little while and it sort of worked.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Like I was squeezing out an extra like five or 10%.

00:09:13 ◼   ► This was a couple years ago.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I'm not sure if the app store would respond

00:09:17 ◼   ► in the same way as it did then,

00:09:19 ◼   ► but what I found with that,

00:09:20 ◼   ► being frequently changing the price

00:09:22 ◼   ► is that I got a lot of people who were really upset

00:09:25 ◼   ► when on Sunday they bought the app

00:09:26 ◼   ► and it was more expensive

00:09:28 ◼   ► and they kind of felt cheated because I was constantly

00:09:32 ◼   ► bumping the price lower and higher, lower and higher.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And if they missed a window, it kind of felt annoying

00:09:36 ◼   ► to them.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And that was, as soon as I sort of started getting

00:09:39 ◼   ► that feedback, I stopped playing that game.

00:09:40 ◼   ► It just wasn't worth kind of this extra 5%

00:09:42 ◼   ► that I was squeezing out to have all these people

00:09:44 ◼   ► who were really annoyed at the price changes.

00:09:47 ◼   ► And they're like, "What's going on?

00:09:48 ◼   ► "My friend bought it for, got it for 99 cents,

00:09:50 ◼   ► "I got it for $2.

00:09:51 ◼   ► "He got it for 99 cents, I got it for $2.

00:09:53 ◼   ► "What's going on?"

00:09:54 ◼   ► And so I just kind of stopped that game

00:09:56 ◼   ► and kind of moved on.

00:09:57 ◼   ► But that's sort of how you do it and the mechanics of it.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Like I said, sales are great to have a short-term goal

00:10:06 ◼   ► if you're trying to target something specific.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Otherwise, there's not really that much point to it.

00:10:13 ◼   ► I think generally, you raise your price,

00:10:15 ◼   ► it'll probably make a little bit more money.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Unless you're going after ranks, if you're going after--

00:10:19 ◼   ► it's like when I launch Check the Weather,

00:10:21 ◼   ► I dropped the price of $1 because I

00:10:23 ◼   ► thought it would make a little bit more money there.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And it did, I think, in terms of being

00:10:27 ◼   ► able to have that extra rank support when you really are ranking aggressively.

00:10:31 ◼   ► But otherwise, it only has limited effect.

00:10:34 ◼   ► All right, so that's the main topic for today.

00:10:37 ◼   ► I'm going to talk a little bit for the last part of this, just about, this is kind of

00:10:41 ◼   ► more of the personal section or whatever.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I'm just going to talk about something that I've been struggling with recently in the

00:10:47 ◼   ► hopes that other, you know, sort of it's helpful to hear that someone else is struggling with

00:10:50 ◼   ► it if you are yourself.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And it's this constant, it's sort of the problem of focus.

00:10:55 ◼   ► It's something that I've struggled with a lot over the years.

00:10:57 ◼   ► I've written articles about it.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But it's just something that is so difficult, I find,

00:11:02 ◼   ► as an independent, where your time is your own.

00:11:06 ◼   ► There's no one telling you you have to do anything

00:11:08 ◼   ► by a particular time.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And that makes it incredibly difficult

00:11:11 ◼   ► when you are trying to get things done.

00:11:13 ◼   ► That you have lots of different sort of,

00:11:16 ◼   ► like lots of different fingers and lots of different pies.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And you can always kind of be moving between things.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It's hard to know what's the highest priority,

00:11:24 ◼   ► what you should be working on.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And it's really discouraging and often even depressing

00:11:29 ◼   ► when you kind of go through a day

00:11:31 ◼   ► and you're just kind of like, man, I got nothing done today.

00:11:34 ◼   ► I did lots of tiny things that don't really add up

00:11:36 ◼   ► to hardly anything being done.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And there's no accountability for that

00:11:40 ◼   ► because you're just independent.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Like, what are you going to do?

00:11:43 ◼   ► And I guess the encouraging thing that I'd say is,

00:11:46 ◼   ► what I find is you just have to kind of work your way

00:11:49 ◼   ► through it.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Whenever I had to hit these spells,

00:11:52 ◼   ► and I had a couple last week where I just couldn't

00:11:54 ◼   ► get anything done, you just kind of have to work out

00:11:57 ◼   ► what are the tricks that can try and jump start you

00:12:02 ◼   ► into the zone or jump start you into a productive place.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And just focus on those.

00:12:07 ◼   ► There's not a lot of, I wouldn't say there's necessarily

00:12:09 ◼   ► a lot of, I don't even know, these productivity hacks.

00:12:13 ◼   ► It's not like you need to reorganize your to-do list.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Your to-do list needs to be better.

00:12:16 ◼   ► You need a bolder bolder, redder red,

00:12:19 ◼   ► to steal Merlin Mann's phrase.

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's not that you need to organize

00:12:22 ◼   ► what you need to do better.

00:12:23 ◼   ► You just need to get yourself in a chair

00:12:25 ◼   ► with fewer distractions, focus on your task, and do it.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And for me, this is how I kind of do that.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Like when I hit this, I think it was last Thursday,

00:12:34 ◼   ► I just couldn't get things done.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And I was like, okay, I need to focus.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So for me, what I do is I have sort of like,

00:12:41 ◼   ► it's almost like I have an emergency stash of music.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And they're songs that I don't go to very often

00:12:47 ◼   ► because they're a little intense,

00:12:49 ◼   ► but they really help kind of focus

00:12:50 ◼   ► and amp me up and get me going.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And for me, it's a band called Dragon Force,

00:12:56 ◼   ► which if you're not familiar with them,

00:12:57 ◼   ► they're this kind of strange,

00:12:59 ◼   ► I don't even know how to describe them.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It's like speed power metal, maybe.

00:13:03 ◼   ► I'm not a big sort of power metal fan in general.

00:13:06 ◼   ► This one band, they have tremendous tempo,

00:13:08 ◼   ► they play at tremendous speed,

00:13:10 ◼   ► and for me, it's almost like audio caffeine.

00:13:12 ◼   ► I put Dragon Force on,

00:13:14 ◼   ► like my pulse quickens, and my fingers go a little faster,

00:13:18 ◼   ► and it's like I just took a triple shot espresso,

00:13:22 ◼   ► followed by a Red Bull.

00:13:23 ◼   ► Like I am on, you know, sort of on for it

00:13:25 ◼   ► when I'm listening to this music,

00:13:27 ◼   ► and it kind of gets me pumped, gets me jazzed,

00:13:28 ◼   ► and I just sit down, the Dragon Force on,

00:13:30 ◼   ► and just sort of grind it out.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And often that is painful, that is sort of hard to do.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I don't really want to do it,

00:13:37 ◼   ► but it's just something that you just kind of

00:13:38 ◼   ► force yourself to do.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And if you put around yourself

00:13:41 ◼   ► a couple of those types of things,

00:13:43 ◼   ► like you just go to, it's almost like you have

00:13:44 ◼   ► the power song if you ever did that

00:13:46 ◼   ► when you're going running.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Like you put it on, you're like, yeah, I'm going to do it.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And like you save that for the, you know,

00:13:51 ◼   ► so that it's not all the time,

00:13:52 ◼   ► you don't want to waste, you sort of waste it too often,

00:13:55 ◼   ► but for me, you just kind of have to find that environment.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And it just, everyone's different.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I know if some people were like, they can't get focused,

00:14:00 ◼   ► they go somewhere, they have a particular place,

00:14:02 ◼   ► whether it's a coffee shop or a park,

00:14:04 ◼   ► or it's a certain kind of place in their house,

00:14:06 ◼   ► and it's just trying to get into that place

00:14:08 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, this is my productive place,

00:14:10 ◼   ► I can't slack off here, I'm in the mode,

00:14:12 ◼   ► and you just force yourself to do it.

00:14:14 ◼   ► And it is painful and hard, but often it works.

00:14:17 ◼   ► So, just kind of sort of something I wanted to mention

00:14:19 ◼   ► because I often struggle with it,

00:14:21 ◼   ► and maybe that's helpful to someone else.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And if you ever find yourself needing a little audio caffeine,

00:14:25 ◼   ► check out Dragon Force.

00:14:26 ◼   ► They're pretty awesome.

00:14:27 ◼   ► I'll probably have a link in the show notes

00:14:29 ◼   ► if you want to find out more easily.

00:14:31 ◼   ► But otherwise, that's it for today's show.

00:14:33 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns,

00:14:35 ◼   ► I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I'm on AppNet @davidsmith.

00:14:40 ◼   ► The podcast feed for the show,

00:14:42 ◼   ► as you can find on the website, developingperspective.com,

00:14:45 ◼   ► or on Twitter @devperspective.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Otherwise, I guess have a good week.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I'll talk to you on Thursday,

00:14:50 ◼   ► And happy coding.