Developing Perspective

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

00:00:02 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:06 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 87, and today is Tuesday, October 9th.

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

00:00:20 ◼   ► Starting off, I'm glad to announce that my weather app that I've been talking about on

00:00:24 ◼   ► the show and kind of walking through the steps of development was finally approved by Apple

00:00:27 ◼   ► sometime, I think it was early yesterday afternoon.

00:00:32 ◼   ► But so it's exciting and I think of things sort of moving along on track as I've kind

00:00:36 ◼   ► of been hoping it would be and as I've been talking about.

00:00:39 ◼   ► So as I, so now we're in this place, it's still planning to launch October 17th, which

00:00:44 ◼   ► is next Wednesday, so about eight days from today.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And the reason I'm doing it then and not immediately, you know, releasing it and unleashing the

00:00:52 ◼   ► the hounds and putting it out there is because I'm hoping to do a bit, you know, concerted

00:00:57 ◼   ► marketing push on this.

00:00:59 ◼   ► And that's what I'm going to be talking about today.

00:01:01 ◼   ► And I've had a lot, a lot, a lot of you to ask me about the App Store marketing, talk

00:01:05 ◼   ► about App Store marketing, talk, you know, please talk about it.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And it's like, I'll talk about it and I'm going to talk, walk through how I'm going

00:01:10 ◼   ► to go about it and what I'm doing.

00:01:12 ◼   ► I think I wanted to mention and emphasize those.

00:01:15 ◼   ► There is no, there is no magic sort of key to this.

00:01:20 ◼   ► There's no like, oh, if you do these 10 things in a row, your app will be successful, get

00:01:24 ◼   ► lots of buzz, and you'll make a million dollars.

00:01:26 ◼   ► That's not the way the store works.

00:01:28 ◼   ► That's not reasonable expectations.

00:01:30 ◼   ► That's not how this works.

00:01:33 ◼   ► What I'm going to talk about, though, is things that you can do that are reasonable, sort

00:01:37 ◼   ► of obvious, or obvious if you've been doing this a long time, which is perhaps a bit of

00:01:41 ◼   ► a conceited thing to say, but the things that you can do to give your app the best likelihood

00:01:47 ◼   ► of success.

00:01:48 ◼   ► At the end of the day, that's the best you can do, is you're just creating an environment

00:01:53 ◼   ► where you're not doing anything that's holding it back.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And that's kind of what I'm hoping to try and apply a lot of what I've learned from

00:02:00 ◼   ► a lot of different other app launches I've done.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I've done some with no marketing effort, with no press.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I've done some with lots of effort that have gone nowhere.

00:02:09 ◼   ► We'll see where this one goes.

00:02:11 ◼   ► But basically, why I did the thing I did where I submitted it, and then essentially I was

00:02:16 ◼   ► I was always planning to launch the app about two weeks after I submitted it.

00:02:21 ◼   ► It was roughly about two and a half weeks.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And so the reason for that is I want to, A,

00:02:28 ◼   ► know that the app is going to be approved and available when I'm starting to reach out to people in the press,

00:02:31 ◼   ► starting to do marketing efforts, when I'm starting to do all these things,

00:02:40 ◼   ► I want to be confident that the app is going to go out there.

00:02:43 ◼   ► And at this point, the app status in the App Store in iTunes Connect

00:02:48 ◼   ► is ready for sale.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And the only thing that's holding it back is the availability date,

00:02:53 ◼   ► which is set to October 17.

00:02:55 ◼   ► So you never know with Apple.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Things could change.

00:02:58 ◼   ► But pretty much, I'm 99% confident that my app will be available and ready

00:03:04 ◼   ► in the store on that date.

00:03:06 ◼   ► And so that's why I did it that way.

00:03:08 ◼   ► The other side benefit, which I'll talk about in depth later,

00:03:11 ◼   ► is that you can get your first set of promo codes for their application

00:03:16 ◼   ► uh...

00:03:17 ◼   ► the moment at the moment that the first version is approved

00:03:21 ◼   ► and

00:03:22 ◼   ► that

00:03:23 ◼   ► those codes even if the app isn't available in the store work

00:03:27 ◼   ► uh... which is kinda cool

00:03:28 ◼   ► which I'll talk about in depth later. So those are the two things that I did it that way

00:03:32 ◼   ► and I've actually already submitted my first bug fix release

00:03:35 ◼   ► I mean it's I'm

00:03:37 ◼   ► And I hope it'll actually be approved before the app goes live next Wednesday.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Because there's nothing major.

00:03:43 ◼   ► The app is pretty stable at this point.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It was just a few things I found in the nine days it took to be approved.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I found a few things.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I made those tweaks, made those adjustments, added a few people's names to the acknowledgments,

00:03:57 ◼   ► beta testers who got back to me and provided feedback.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And I'll go ahead and turn that right around and submit it.

00:04:04 ◼   ► I very much have a view with Apple and approval of,

00:04:09 ◼   ► it's something that I pay for,

00:04:13 ◼   ► and so I'm going to take full advantage of that.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And so if I have a few fixes, a minor update,

00:04:17 ◼   ► that will never annoy any users,

00:04:19 ◼   ► you don't want to be constantly pushing out updates.

00:04:22 ◼   ► But I have no problem with,

00:04:26 ◼   ► I resubmitted my app with version 1.0.1,

00:04:28 ◼   ► probably within about 10 minutes of it being approved.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And that's, you know, so I'm back in the,

00:04:32 ◼   ► I'm going to put myself back in the beginning of the line,

00:04:34 ◼   ► work my way along.

00:04:35 ◼   ► That's just the way I'm doing to do it.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And hopefully they'll be approved,

00:04:37 ◼   ► and so a slightly better version will be available

00:04:40 ◼   ► next Wednesday.

00:04:41 ◼   ► All right, so marketing.

00:04:43 ◼   ► The goal of initial marketing for a new app,

00:04:45 ◼   ► and this would change if it was an existing app

00:04:47 ◼   ► they're doing the update for, those types of things,

00:04:49 ◼   ► but for a new app,

00:04:51 ◼   ► you're sort of, your goal is always to have

00:04:52 ◼   ► a big, explosive launch.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And first, obviously, there's the,

00:04:57 ◼   ► the first reason for that is your app is most interesting

00:05:00 ◼   ► when it's new, that the first day it's in the store, it's the freshest, it's new, no

00:05:06 ◼   ► one's seen it before, it's hopefully interesting and compelling, and it's not old, and new

00:05:11 ◼   ► is good.

00:05:12 ◼   ► So you want to get it in front of people as much as you can that first day, first week,

00:05:17 ◼   ► first month, because that's one of your sort of, you have these few opportunities to really

00:05:22 ◼   ► have a good, compelling story about it.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Another thing that's also helpful is, as I believe this is still the case, though who

00:05:28 ◼   ► Who knows, Apple's constantly monkeying around

00:05:33 ◼   ► with the algorithms.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But typically, ranking is some kind of a weighted average

00:05:37 ◼   ► of past day sales.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And so initially, you benefit from it only being weighted

00:05:44 ◼   ► on one day's sales.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So if that one day's sales are good,

00:05:49 ◼   ► it does better ranking-wise than it may otherwise

00:05:51 ◼   ► if it was being pulled down by previous day's sales,

00:05:54 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

00:05:57 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like they sort of count

00:05:55 ◼   ► your previous day's sales is zero and pull you down.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It seems like they kind of give you this little extra inertia

00:06:01 ◼   ► on the first day.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And so you want to have a nice big burst.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And so your first day launch, you're

00:06:07 ◼   ► trying to get everybody you know,

00:06:08 ◼   ► everybody who you possibly could reach out

00:06:10 ◼   ► to, to be interested in your app and to download it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And that's the goal.

00:06:15 ◼   ► You want to have this nice big splashy launch.

00:06:17 ◼   ► You'll often see this happen when

00:06:19 ◼   ► an app has a big first launch.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And the interesting thing is you'll see them sort of go up

00:06:23 ◼   ► like a balloon.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Just fly up the ranks.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And then you're creating this opportunity where

00:06:31 ◼   ► if it's a really compelling, interesting, useful, awesome app

00:06:34 ◼   ► that's getting some word of mouth, getting some buzz,

00:06:37 ◼   ► it'll stay there.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It'll have some saying power, and you're getting exposure

00:06:41 ◼   ► to people who are just discovering it in the app store.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And that's awesome.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And if it's not so much, well, you'll have a big up,

00:06:47 ◼   ► and then you'll have a big down.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And that's okay, too.

00:06:51 ◼   ► You've made full advantage of your first day,

00:06:49 ◼   ► And you hopefully-- and honestly,

00:06:52 ◼   ► a lot of what I do as an independent,

00:06:53 ◼   ► my goal is that I want that first couple days,

00:06:56 ◼   ► I'll feel so much better if that covers my fixed costs.

00:06:59 ◼   ► The design, the artwork, font licensing,

00:07:04 ◼   ► all those kinds of things.

00:07:05 ◼   ► That if I can make sure that I've covered those,

00:07:09 ◼   ► I haven't necessarily covered my time in whatever that means.

00:07:12 ◼   ► But I feel a lot more confident if that happens.

00:07:16 ◼   ► If that doesn't happen, I'll be a little bit more nervous

00:07:19 ◼   ► about whether this was a good investment for me to make.

00:07:22 ◼   ► And so basically, the way I do that is this process started

00:07:25 ◼   ► probably about three weeks ago with sending out betas.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And I think I've said before, the way I do betas,

00:07:31 ◼   ► start with people who love you, people who like you,

00:07:33 ◼   ► and then move to people who you respect.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And so I've been working my way out to friends and family,

00:07:39 ◼   ► to friendly co-workers, I guess you could say,

00:07:43 ◼   ► colleagues, people I know really well.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I've worked on projects before.

00:07:46 ◼   ► And I've kind of been working that out with the beta process.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I use TestFlight for that.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I'll probably be switching to hockey at some point.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I like the way HockeyApp works a little bit better.

00:07:55 ◼   ► But at this point, it's very convenient to use TestFlight

00:07:59 ◼   ► because so many people have TestFlight accounts.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And so it's very easy to get their UDIDs and everything.

00:08:04 ◼   ► People are updating their device lists and accounts and things

00:08:07 ◼   ► there.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So I use TestFlight, and that works pretty well.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Basically, you just do a build that you

00:08:12 ◼   ► can send out to a specific number of devices.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Everything's fine.

00:08:17 ◼   ► The next thing that I do is, now that the app has been approved,

00:08:22 ◼   ► I switch into the promo phase of my marketing effort.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And by that, I mean betas are kind of-- they work,

00:08:29 ◼   ► but they're really kind of annoying to do these ad hoc distributions

00:08:32 ◼   ► with the app store built.

00:08:33 ◼   ► You need someone's UDID.

00:08:34 ◼   ► They only work on certain devices, et cetera.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Now that I have promo codes, every version

00:08:39 ◼   ► that's approved of your app in the store has 50 promo codes associated with it.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And that's basically a little code.

00:08:43 ◼   ► You type into iTunes.

00:08:44 ◼   ► You type into the App Store, and you get a free download for that person.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And these work even if the app isn't available yet.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So I'm in the process.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I haven't quite started, but I'll be starting soon,

00:08:57 ◼   ► of sending out links to other people to expand my reach.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And I'm doing this with these little links that say,

00:09:04 ◼   ► hey, if you'd like a preview of the app,

00:09:07 ◼   ► it won't be available until next week.

00:09:09 ◼   ► But if you want a preview, enter this promo code or click this link,

00:09:12 ◼   ► you can format promo links with a way to do kind of a one-click use, which is awesome.

00:09:19 ◼   ► So people who did it, it's trivial. If they're on their phone, they hit a link,

00:09:23 ◼   ► and their app will start downloading. Or at worst, it'll ask them for their iTunes password,

00:09:28 ◼   ► and then it will start downloading. So it makes it super easy.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And ultimately, what you're trying to do is, especially as you move out to the more sort

00:09:34 ◼   ► of the press people, people who write for magazines, people who write for popular websites,

00:09:40 ◼   ► What you're trying to do is make it as easy for them to kind of get a taste of your app.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And so that's where I'm doing, a lot of people do videos and things sometimes for that.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Honestly for me what I'm thinking is, "Hey, if I can, if you click one link and my app's

00:09:53 ◼   ► on your phone, I've won at that point.

00:09:55 ◼   ► If you open it and you like it, great.

00:09:57 ◼   ► If you don't, then my app's not very good."

00:10:00 ◼   ► But I'm going to be able to tell you a lot, like you can play with it and get a lot of

00:10:03 ◼   ► flavor for it right away.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And so like I said, I'm kind of reaching out to the press.

00:10:07 ◼   ► The press is kind of a funny thing.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of these big sites, I don't even really bother with anymore.

00:10:14 ◼   ► They have these kind of like canned forms where it's like, if you have an app that you'd like to see,

00:10:17 ◼   ► you'd like us to preview, enter a whole bunch of information.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And someone in our team may or may not look at it.

00:10:26 ◼   ► That may work one time out of a thousand.

00:10:28 ◼   ► I don't know. I've had very limited experience with success with that.

00:10:32 ◼   ► What I have success with, though, is trying to cultivate relationships with people in the press.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And this is one of those things that I'm going to say that if you've ever

00:10:40 ◼   ► listened to back to work, it's like, "That's fine for Merlin."

00:10:43 ◼   ► It's like, I've spent probably years now cultivating some amount of reputation in the community, so that when I reach out to some of these people, they know who I am.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And there's this funny part of this for marketing of one of the biggest things you can do in the marketing of your app is becoming famous.

00:11:05 ◼   ► becoming at least internet famous,

00:11:10 ◼   ► or becoming famous in a very small niche.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Because what you want is to be recognizable to these people.

00:11:14 ◼   ► And I can say from experience, it takes work,

00:11:18 ◼   ► it takes effort, but it's very doable.

00:11:22 ◼   ► About a year ago, when I was first starting developing perspective,

00:11:24 ◼   ► no one had heard of me.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I was just at F. Smith.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I'd been making successful apps on the store for years,

00:11:30 ◼   ► but it was just something I never really put any effort

00:11:30 ◼   ► or interest in.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I was just a developer.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I wrote apps and I put them out there

00:11:37 ◼   ► and I hope they did well.

00:11:39 ◼   ► But at a certain point I decided,

00:11:41 ◼   ► "Hey, I want to make a name for myself.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I want to create a platform from which I can share

00:11:46 ◼   ► my experiences and hopefully help people along the way."

00:11:48 ◼   ► And so that's what I did.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I started writing a blog,

00:11:53 ◼   ► David-Schmidt.org.

00:11:55 ◼   ► I started this podcast, Developing Perspective,

00:11:57 ◼   ► and I started to become very active on Twitter

00:11:57 ◼   ► to try and find opportunities to help people,

00:12:02 ◼   ► to engage in conversations, to get into discussions.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And I think it's largely worked.

00:12:07 ◼   ► I'm not saying I'm super famous at this point,

00:12:09 ◼   ► but a lot of the people who I respect in the community

00:12:12 ◼   ► are people, you could say they follow me on Twitter,

00:12:15 ◼   ► they follow me on AppNet.

00:12:17 ◼   ► There's a bit of a reciprocity to that,

00:12:20 ◼   ► rather than it being just like,

00:12:22 ◼   ► I'm rather than just being a follower

00:12:25 ◼   ► of a lot of these individuals.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And that means that at this point,

00:12:29 ◼   ► I have a platform by which to share

00:12:31 ◼   ► the things that I'm working on with people

00:12:34 ◼   ► who I respect their opinions of.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And that's a great opportunity.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And the thing that's hard is giving that as advice.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And by saying it's sort of in some ways a prerequisite,

00:12:45 ◼   ► is it's not easy to do and there's no straightforward way

00:12:48 ◼   ► to do that.

00:12:52 ◼   ► It's just you have to make it something

00:12:49 ◼   ► that you're working on.

00:12:50 ◼   ► In the same way that you're working on Beacon, being a better developer, being a better designer,

00:12:54 ◼   ► having a better taste.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Like, all of these kinds of things.

00:12:57 ◼   ► One of the things you have to work on is your name and reputation.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And I guess if you were a company, it's like your brand recognition, your brand.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Like you have to work on that.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And you kind of see that.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And it's interesting how I find some developers didn't have to do that work necessarily.

00:13:13 ◼   ► I think of someone like Tapbots, who their apps are so distinctive and so well done that

00:13:18 ◼   ► eventually they just created that name for themselves.

00:13:23 ◼   ► But that took a long time.

00:13:26 ◼   ► I mean, the first app, Waitbot, was years ago,

00:13:29 ◼   ► and they've been consistently making really good,

00:13:33 ◼   ► high-quality, distinctive products.

00:13:35 ◼   ► And if you do that, I'm sure the App Store will find you

00:13:37 ◼   ► if you're making awesome, amazing, distinctive products.

00:13:41 ◼   ► But as much as we all want to do that,

00:13:44 ◼   ► we're all nuts.

00:13:43 ◼   ► We're all not Paul Heddad and Mark Jardine.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Some of us just don't necessarily play at that level.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Or that's not the style, and we don't want to be distinctive in that way.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And so we just do what we can.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Ultimately, your goal is just to be yourself and find people who think yourself is awesome.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And that's the best kind of marketing you can do.

00:14:07 ◼   ► In some ways, it's a funny thing.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Where like the show and the people I'm talking to right now, if you're listening to this,

00:14:13 ◼   ► I hopefully have developed some amount of rapport with you over the year I've been doing

00:14:17 ◼   ► the show.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And so when I come in next Wednesday when it launches and I'm like, "Hey, it's available.

00:14:21 ◼   ► I'd really appreciate it if you check it out," I'm hoping that a lot of you do that because

00:14:27 ◼   ► there's some amount of relationship there.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And of course, you want to be careful.

00:14:32 ◼   ► You have a limited amount of capital.

00:14:33 ◼   ► You don't want to overly do this too often.

00:14:35 ◼   ► You don't want to go to that well too often or it'll run dry.

00:14:38 ◼   ► But I don't do it very often.

00:14:39 ◼   ► It's been a while since I launched something new.

00:14:42 ◼   ► That was a big important thing for me,

00:14:43 ◼   ► and so that's what I'm doing.

00:14:44 ◼   ► I'm going to be doing all this reaching out,

00:14:46 ◼   ► and I hope it works.

00:14:48 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:49 ◼   ► As always, questions, comments, concerns.

00:14:51 ◼   ► I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I'm on AppNet @justregulardavidsmith.

00:14:55 ◼   ► And otherwise, happy coding.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Have a great week, and I will talk to you later.