Advertising Blues

Well this online advertising is not as straight forward as it seems. My first Google ad was finally approved with limited use because it contains the word 'iPhone' which is a trademark. Limited means apparently it can be seen only in the US, which is probably ok since US is the biggest market anyway. But its still not showing in general search. It does show up on related content sites (so if you go to a taekwondo website and they have google ads showing, my ad is being displayed, I think). But I have no idea why the search is not working and google support is terrible.

I also tried to place a similar ad on Bing. It was disapproved for landing page relevancy. I got on to MS support and it was actually not rejected for that but again for trademark issues with iPhone. At least the support was nice and prompt with LiveChat.

So I am still not sure how you successfully advertise iPhone apps. I don't want to say its for a smartphone. I'll get clicks from Blackberry and Palm devices which is a total waste of time and money.

Still learning...

New App Is Coming Along Nicely

I have been working on my first game for the iPhone and it is coming together nicely. The basic gameplay is now there, as are some the graphics. I think I'm in the final stretch. Its now about making it look like a finished product. Am hoping it will be available for sale before the end of July. Pictures once it looks a little more complete.

Well That Was Disappointing

So after saying how I was going to use Adwords to raise awareness of my app, nothing has happened. Well nothing positive anyway. I created the ad last Monday. Now this being google, I sort of expected an immediate result. However, its now Wednesday (that's 9 days!) and my ad still isn't available. How do I know that? Well it certainly isn't from any obvious clue on the Adwords website. It tells me my campaign is Active. However, the Diagnostics tool, tells me none of my keywords trigger my ad. What the...? So after emails to google support, they tell me the ad is still waiting to be approved. Would be nice if the website told me that.

After reading the numerous complaints on the Adwords discussion group, I found that the new beta interface does show the ad status. This doesn't work under Safari 4 on iMac. I've fired up, Firefox and checked it out. Woohoo! It shows its 'under review'. So at least I can see that its not actually started yet. But how does it take over a week to approve approximately 140 chars of text? Seems to be a lot of people on the forums bagging Adwords and recommending yahoo or msn advertising. Might be worth a go...

Google sent me a 'how did we do?' survey email on Friday. Needlessly to say, that was a fail. I even mentioned the fact the web site doesn't show the ad status. No one suggested that I try the new interface. Grr...

Some positive news is that the app is still selling ok. Not big numbers but consistent. Will be nice if that keeps going.

TKD Results

So after the first few days of availability, I've averaged about 4-5 sales a day. Not the thousands per day I need to retire, but its nice to think anyone thought the app was worth $3.99 USD at all. Its a bit hard to tell how many of these were people who searched the app store specifically for taekwondo or just happened to find it as a newly released program. To really measure that I think I would have to leave sales go for another couple of weeks, so the app isn't really new anymore. But I don't want to leave it just hang at those sorts of sale levels.

The Google Analytics for the product page has been interesting to look at. Been a few hits from facebook checking me out (thanks friends!) but most hits seem to be direct links which would mean they have come from iTunes. At the same time, I know I have made sales in France and Norway and these don't show on analytics at all. So as a rough estimate I would think 40% of people who visited the products page bought the app. Would more have bought it if it was cheaper? Maybe. But at this stage, I don't see the need to decrease the price. I still think I have a quality product. Pity there is no way to measure how many people visited your app link in iStores (at least I don't think there is).

So what's next? Google Adwords, that's what. I've read articles that examined different ways to increase sales for your iPhone app. Adwords was actually towards the bottom of the list. I can see that being the case for a lot of apps, especially games. They really need to be reviewed, get on to featured lists, etc. In this case though, my app is targeted for people who are learning their taekwondo patterns. I know from personal experience that Google is a great place to look for examples and instructions. So I reckon that for my app, Adwords should achieve something. Anyway, I've set up some Adwords so we'll see what results I get.

First iPhone App

Well I got an email overnight to say that my first iPhone app is available for sale. So I am on my way to financial freedom as the hordes download my app :-).

Taekwondo ITF Patterns is an information app which describes how to perform the ten patterns you need to perform to get your black belt. Its got pictures of each step of the pattern and allows you to view them from four different angles. I think the interface works pretty well.

It will be interesting to see how this sells and what marketing I can do with it. Given that its more of an information app, its not really something I feel could be successfully reviewed on one of the many iphone app review sites around the place.

Price point will be interesting. I have priced at $3.99USD to start with. Since this is a specialised app with specific domain knowledge, I feel its justified having a higher price. I know I would easily have paid $3.99USD to have this info with me while I was going for my blackbelt. When I first got the idea for this, there were no comparable apps on iTunes. Just in the last week though I have noticed there is a patterns app, priced at $0.99USD. So already there is pressure to drive the app down in price. However, its content is simply a scan of pages that already exist on the web. It doesn't seek to make that content more accessible as I believe I have done. So at this stage I believe the $3.99USD price is still justifiable.

For the first week I will simply leave it be and see what sort of hits it gets from iTunes. I doubt this will achieve much but since this is my first app, its going to be a learning experience as to what makes sales, what works, etc. Next week I will start to try a few things and see what impact it has.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. Here I hope to post experiences of my developments with various technologies, including iPhone, Silverlight and WPF, as I seek to make a comfortable living as a freelance developer.