Today's happy plateau (app biz update 11)
Second week sales bonanza
So, the second week has come and gone, so how’s it looking? If you remember, last time it was pretty much halving in sales each day, and I was about to swear off apps entirely. Well, this week looks very different. I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, but it’s almost a success story:
- 18th: 23 sales @ $1.99ea
- 19th: 13
- 20th: 12
- 21st: 24
- 22nd: 17
- 23rd: 18
- 24th: 26
- 25th: 20
It looks to have hit the sales plateau. A much happier plateau than I initially thought last week’s daily-sales-halving would end at. Now, i’ll give it a few more weeks before i’ll make and future decisions (such as whether to build apps vs saas web-apps), but if this truly is the plateau, then i’ve got a viable shot at success here, just let me break out the calculator:
At an average of 19 sales per day, at $2 each, minus apple’s cut, you could extrapolate that to 9 grand per year here. Not enough to change your life on its own, but if you cranked out an app like this per month, it’d replace the dayjob salary within a year. I’m almost excited, but i don’t want to get carried away yet. As i said, give it a few more weeks.
If this plateau continues healthily, last week’s depressed panicking will certainly look, well, childish. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere. Something about having faith that things will work out, or being persistent and sticking with it, or something like that.
New job
So, the new job at Google is interesting. Very thorough. Food’s good. Not sure what else I can say? It’ll be a good learning process for sure. I asked around, and it doesn’t sound like contract-to-perm or contract extensions are going to happen, so whatever my plan B is, I better get busy with it for 6 months time when the contract’s done. Just the motivation an often-lazy guy like me needs (hey, i’m Australian!).
Vampires
Here’s another pro-tip: If someone sends you a vicious email about your app, don’t for the love of God reply to them. If you do: they’ll send you another, vicious-er, email. Just because that’s the kind of person they are (which you should have already figured out from their initial email!). And by that time, you’ll be more emotionally invested because you’ve replied once, and then twice, and then maybe 3 times before you learn your lesson… and you’re having a lousy couple of days by then. Take it from me: don’t feed the emotional vampires!, don’t empower them by responding and giving them a platform to speak into your life.
Simply read their original email, out loud, in Comic Book Guy’s voice, laugh, and delete it!
Seriously I spent a couple of days this week in the grumpy zone by falling for this one. Live and learn.
Etc
So I went ahead and submitted my contraction counter app to the app store. I figured it couldn’t hurt. It’ll probably be out by wednesday. Anyone having a baby soon? Tell your wife to hold on until my app’s out ;)
4 more days until the lovely guv’mint decides whether or not to throw dollops of taxpayers’ dollars at me for my iPhone game + in-schools-app-development-teaching idea!
Anyway, thanks for reading. As always, if anyone on the list has a project that’s about to launch, let me know if i can help by blogging about it or something. And good luck with all your projects!
Thanks for reading! And if you want to get in touch, I'd love to hear from you: chris.hulbert at gmail.
Chris Hulbert
(Comp Sci, Hons - UTS)
Software Developer (Freelancer / Contractor) in Australia.
I have worked at places such as Google, Cochlear, Assembly Payments, News Corp, Fox Sports, NineMSN, FetchTV, Coles, Woolworths, Trust Bank, and Westpac, among others. If you're looking for help developing an iOS app, drop me a line!
Get in touch:
[email protected]
github.com/chrishulbert
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