1) Create one app to throw-away - something that's simple, useful to you, and which you are confident you can create. Don't worry about there being hundreds of similar apps. This is your Learner app. Get it together in a few weeks and put it on the app store for $1-$2. Make sure you have some "please leave a review / send email" link that makes it a no-brainer for people to give you feedback. Read them all, but learn to distinguish between genuinely useful suggestions, and comments from people who feel your app really needs their pet feature.
2) Find a need that you think people would pay $3-$5 for, preferably a need that you yourself have, and work on that app using everything you learnt in #1. Get something basic but polished out, then iterate.
General tips:
- Polish is more important than features.
- Ensure you get 6 friends to buy & rate your app (5-6 is the minimum you need for a visible rating).
- Launch at $1 for a week, and cut the price to $1 for a week for every update. It does make a difference IME.
- Read the descriptions of top apps and see how they sell themselves.
- Read the reviews of apps similar to yours and see what people are missing.
- Make it easy for people to send in-app email for support questions. Be the best support person they've encountered. Happy users recommend your app and leave very nice reviews (particularly if you ask for the latter after helping them).
In the early days of the AppStore you could drop your price to $0, then switch to paid, and retain your ranking. Apple quickly quashed this, so perhaps these apps are looking to benefit from word of mouth, or to gain a number of reviews. As I mentioned earlier you need 5-6 reviews before you even get a rating and having more certainly doesn't hurt.
On a similar note, I believe Apple's charts may now be weighted to take price into account, at least in some form. I occasionally play around with app prices to see how sales/revenue/in-app purchases change, and last week I upped the price of one app from $1.99 to $2.99. Sales dropped from ~400 to ~250, but my chart placing was virtually unchanged (I think I dropped once place). I don't believe the ranking is based on sales over a period of days, though it may be a factor, since my ranking does increase/decrease with normal sales fluctuations.
Comments
I would recommend you do two things:
1) Create one app to throw-away - something that's simple, useful to you, and which you are confident you can create. Don't worry about there being hundreds of similar apps. This is your Learner app. Get it together in a few weeks and put it on the app store for $1-$2. Make sure you have some "please leave a review / send email" link that makes it a no-brainer for people to give you feedback. Read them all, but learn to distinguish between genuinely useful suggestions, and comments from people who feel your app really needs their pet feature.
2) Find a need that you think people would pay $3-$5 for, preferably a need that you yourself have, and work on that app using everything you learnt in #1. Get something basic but polished out, then iterate.
General tips:
- Polish is more important than features. - Ensure you get 6 friends to buy & rate your app (5-6 is the minimum you need for a visible rating). - Launch at $1 for a week, and cut the price to $1 for a week for every update. It does make a difference IME. - Read the descriptions of top apps and see how they sell themselves. - Read the reviews of apps similar to yours and see what people are missing. - Make it easy for people to send in-app email for support questions. Be the best support person they've encountered. Happy users recommend your app and leave very nice reviews (particularly if you ask for the latter after helping them).
> Launch at $1 for a week, and cut the price to $1 for a week for every update. It does make a difference IME.
I see a lot of apps cutting their price to $0 for a few days. Does this technique work? What are the advantages of doing this?
In the early days of the AppStore you could drop your price to $0, then switch to paid, and retain your ranking. Apple quickly quashed this, so perhaps these apps are looking to benefit from word of mouth, or to gain a number of reviews. As I mentioned earlier you need 5-6 reviews before you even get a rating and having more certainly doesn't hurt.
On a similar note, I believe Apple's charts may now be weighted to take price into account, at least in some form. I occasionally play around with app prices to see how sales/revenue/in-app purchases change, and last week I upped the price of one app from $1.99 to $2.99. Sales dropped from ~400 to ~250, but my chart placing was virtually unchanged (I think I dropped once place). I don't believe the ranking is based on sales over a period of days, though it may be a factor, since my ranking does increase/decrease with normal sales fluctuations.