Hurry up and wait (app biz update 7)
It’s been an exciting week, but this newsletter will be a quick one. A couple big ups, and a couple of down moments too.
Today
Well, I finished the Today app this week and submitted it to Apple on Wednesday. If all goes to plan, it’ll be approved around the 6th august (but won’t come out till the 12th). So that’s pretty exciting.
I’ve created the launch mini-site for it here: todaycalendarapp.com. If you wouldn’t mind tweeting or linking to that site, that’d mean the earth to me! Here’s hoping that it’s a nice enough site to entice people to purchase the app. It’s amazing how high the bar has been raised these days for making software in the quality of the promotional site and actual app that you need to make such small sale prices, it really is a struggle. Anyway, fingers crossed.
The app will be held back for release until the 12th august, as that is when my promotional period starts with the blogger from Minimal Mac. Since the app was originally inspired by one of his posts where he put out an open invitation to the world effectively to ‘please make an app like this’, he’s happy to review it as a normal post on his site free, but i’ve also paid for a couple of promotional posts. I’m really hoping that it’ll drive traffic to the site (which has google analytics to track such things) and then to the app store (and then to my wallet).
Bummer
So, my biggest app to date has been an app for checking your postpaid phone plan usage, which was bringing in between $100-150 a day for quite a while now. But I noticed a steep drop yesterday, which was odd. After a bit of looking into it, it appears that the telco has released their own free app a few days ago which allows you to check your usage. So there goes my golden goose down the toilet…
This changes things a bit, financially. Before, because of the financial cushion it provided, i was going to try the today app, and if it failed i’d try making a SaaS web app for server monitoring. But now, i might simply throw in the towel and start looking for a job again if the Today app doesn’t do well. At least I tried.
Wait
I’ve a friend who used to be in the army, and he used to say it was all about ‘hurry up and wait’: as in, you’d be in a mad rush to get somewhere and then you’d just sit there and wait for days on end doing nothing. Which amply describes my week: Huge rush to get the app finished, polished, submitted, get the marketing copy written for the app store and the promo site, design the promo site, etc.
And now it’s all done, there’s an interminable wait for the app approval and then until the blogger starts the promotion week on the 12th. It’s nailbiting - i just want the app out so i can see if it’ll succeed or not! And in the meantime, there’s no point starting another project because my wife’s about to go into labour at any time. So… I’m just sitting around for the next few days. But it’s a good feeling to have the app finished.
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
linkedin
