Recently, articles about earnings in the Apple App Store appeared on the hub
I can’t understand the reasoning of some people: “I gave $ 100 for registration to the app, at the moment I returned my money.” Those. these people do not consider the time spent on product development? IMHO, you can only reason like this if you have any income - work (or, at worst, a well :)). I consider programming and selling the programmed - as the main income.

So, meet: "business from scratch" or "the history of the EasyWakeup project - a smart alarm clock."

A project that I have been busy with for a long time.

I’ll tell you about sales problems and dispel some myths, in particular:

Myth # 1: “Having a Good Product is a Guarantee of Success”

Small introduction

I thought for a long time that an idea costs a lot. And then, one day, I matured to implementation ... The idea was as follows: I read this article and became very interested in the device. The price was high, and technically the essence of the device was to track movements in a dream.
Since I am one of the first iPhone users in Russia, a bright thought came: Why not use the motion sensor built into the iPhone for this?

At that moment I did not know the Obj-C language, did not know the iPhone SDK, and my assessment of the complexity of the software was in a man-week (that is, in a week to understand the SDK and get a working prototype), how wrong I was ... If I knew how long it would take me to develop, we probably wouldn’t even deal with this, however, now I'm glad that I was wrong.

Although after some time attaching the iPhone was no longer required, the idea began with the thought of attaching the device. The first thing you pay attention to is the comparison of sizes - the iPhone is a larger clock size from that article, so the first thing we did was check for attachment. The night test was passed at 100% - i.e. at night, the iPhone did not interfere with sleep for any member of the team. Hurrah!
Further, a pleasant surprise was the lack of alarms in the app store (at that time).

So "Let's go" !!!

Due to the lack of a Mac and a developer’s certificate, it took 10 days to investigate (with unofficial development methods) and finally
02.10.2008 - The first commit to svn (the code is already doing something, although it isn’t what you want)
24.10.2008 - version 0.1 suitable for internal use only. Did you check out how long prototype development took ?!
We were very glad that waking up became really easier, which means we need to go out to sell our product (here are still dreams of millions and burning eyes). By the way, already at this stage we found out what is written in the article about Sleeptracker is generally incorrect, but this is beyond the scope of this article.
11/28/2008- Version 1.0! Laying out our product, and the beginning of its promotion. Since at this point we still did not get the opportunity to work on the iPhone officially, we published our product in Cydia (only for hacked phones).

Myth number 2: "I would have something that no one has, uh, I would have got rich!"

As the reader understood, what we decided to sell is an innovative product.
Here, myth number two should probably be touched upon: “I would have something that no one has, wow, I would have got rich!” . Those. a person who thinks this way exaggerates the role of innovation in selling a product. Only now, I can answer such a statement with what I have to face.

1. You will need to convince people that what you did is worth their money, i.e. a person will need to delve into the essence of innovation.
2. If you did something new, then you worked not only on a planer, according to a ready-made plan. In our case, we were still studying the theory of sleep. This means that the cost of your products will be higher (well, and I think it makes no sense to prove that “the higher the price, the lower the sale”).
3. According to Nokia research, only 2% of people are interested in new products (is this really a market ?!). True, it is precisely these 2% that determine what the remaining 98% will receive in the future.

Product Promotion

So it is. We are so crazy that the release of an innovative product is not enough for us, we also decided to use innovative approaches to the promotion of goods :)

Buy for the price you want

At the time of the release of the first version, the price of the activation key to our program was from 4 to 64 American presidents (and from the Russian page there was an opportunity to buy for two) the keys are exactly the same.
those. such a plate:

for our super sponsors	$ 63.99
for our sponsors	$ 31.99
recommended price	$ 15.99
minimum recommended price	$ 7.99
for people with limited finances	$ 3.99
for those who find it difficult to buy even for the previous amount (only in Russia)	$ 1.99

Pros?

• Here is the data for a certain period of time: 65 sales for $ 4, 8 for $ 8, 5 for $ 16
  i.e. every 6th bought for a price higher than the lowest possible. Moreover, it is worth noting that there is still a minimum seller commission ($ 1) - i.e. everyone who bought for a price above the minimum received our blessing :). Although then we expected a more favorable distribution, but now I consider the resulting distribution quite satisfactory.

Minuses:

• There were a couple of comments on the topic “some incomprehensible price - cho for a glitch” (and I’ll ask you to notice this first impression - which is easier to create than to fix)
• I have not seen a single comment with the meaning "what a cool sales method."
• those who buy with stolen cards will buy for the recommended price, and their transactions, as you know, are paid by the developer from their own pockets.

Innovative Promotion Through Reviews

the method is: “You commit to write a review and get a key for testing.” In the review, we immediately asked to mention both the moments you liked and the moments that need improvement. Read more here: attention! the stock is no longer available - link, for reference only .
Pros:

• Some reviews were nevertheless written (which gave us some information about us on the Internet outside our site right away)

Minuses:

• Do you really think there were at least half of those who wrote ??? There wasn’t even a single letter on the topic “I won’t write a review”, but I really wanted at least feedback about my product ... (I’ve got the key, after all ...) Information from those who didn’t like the product could be especially valuable . Unfortunately this method did not give this information either.
• Again, there were comments in the discussions - “damn, how to trust reviews if those who write them receive a bonus from the developers?”. Those. people do not dig deep. It seems that the author of the review has already received this bonus (the key to the program), and from that he writes “good” or “bad” review - nothing will change for him. And what is this bonus? If the program did not like, then who will cling to this bonus?

Here are some tips to prevent cones from jamming:

1. Believe in yourself and your business .
   You need to be a little crazy to go through all this. We had to sell a car to cover current payments (and this despite the fact that we do not have any loans!). The first money we received, which allowed us to cover payments and stay in positive territory, we received on 02.07.2009 i.e. more than six months of net loss (although of course they have not yet returned the car). It’s probably not out of place to mention that the EasyWakeup team consists of three people, two of whom (me and venture ) are constantly busy on the project.
2. Focus initially on the market where there is money.
   According to information from a major international software seller, I found out that Russia gives 2% of revenue in sales. The main income is America. This was confirmed for upstore. Even being an outsider in America, you can earn more than in the top in Russia (sad, but true).
3. Attractive pictures.
   Whatever the super-super idea of ​​the application, the graphics should be beautiful! Animation is also welcomed (for an appstore, to a lesser extent, since a screenshot of the animation will do little). You can make at least three times a useful product, but if it is unattractive, then it simply will not be sold. Checked.
4. Do not reinvent the wheel.
   Less innovation, more proven and workable solutions (just push the consumer away, they don’t understand, screw up something without foreseeing, and a bunch of options for failure). Copy successful competitor solutions. BUT! not a zero amount of innovation;) In general, one innovation, but thought out, is better than ten fresh ideas that came to mind.
5. It is important, not what you know about your product, but what the user will think when he first sees it.
   Here is an example for you - for almost half a year we have been selling a product with the idea “We know that you can conveniently attach an iPhone (we use it ourselves)”. Yes, most potential customers will not even try it !!! They just think that is uncomfortable and that’s it! Moreover, some also make fun of users, including potential ones. Do you understand? I think yes. Much later, we added to the program a "less reliable method that does not require attachment." The sensitivity of the accelerometer in the iPhone allows you to cope with this task by leaving it on the same surface as a sleeping person. However, this decision came to us thanks to the following paragraph.
   
6. Get user feedback. The easier it is for you to say something, the better.
   One head it's good, but two better. - everyone knows that. But the "goals" of users is much more! :) Our product is mainly used by advanced people (i.e. their heads are more valuable), i.e. for us, this item was really important.
   In the previous paragraph, I described that we got rid of the need for attachment. So this thought was prompted by the user (!). He pointed us to the free iSeismometer program. The description in the store of which begins with the words “You will realize how sensitive iPhone is!” (You realize how sensitive the iPhone is!). The implementation of this idea took about three weeks, and on May 9, 2009 the implementation became available to users.
   Users love to give out their ideas. And especially love when you implement them. :) And grateful users give high marks and bring new users.
   
7. And the last tip: Do not start a business with a minimum price.
   For the AppStore, releasing a program with $ 0.99 is a bad idea. If you yourself do not value your product, then who will appreciate it? After all, no one bothers to arrange discounts and sales of their product? Although there is a case when it makes sense to do $ 0.99 immediately on publishing the application ... This is when you plan to make the price zero later;)

Afterword

Whatever is done, you can always make it better / more beautiful / more interesting.
There will always be users whom something will not suit your product.
And our case is no exception. At such moments it was thought: “now we will introduce this feature (the most important / necessary) and then everything will go like clockwork”.
And no matter how much we improve our product, this thought nevertheless appeared periodically.
I see this process as endless. At the moment we have plans to improve our product for 2 years in advance.
Therefore, do not dwell on this!
Work on product promotion: experiment with an icon / screenshots / description (3 whales upstairs), negotiate with sites, write on forums. - This topic also deserves a separate article.

There were also users who admired our product (even version 1.0) and said thanks, told how their life had changed radically after using our alarm clock. It was damn nice and motivated for further actions, because at such moments you understand that people appreciate your work.

PS There was a lot of text, but not everything that I wanted to share was expressed. Expect the third part of this “story” (using piracy for your own purposes) only when - I don’t know, it takes a lot of time to write articles. Those.
to be continued ...