Expiration No More
I was receiving some negative reviews on Jiggle Balls Lite concerning my expiration policy. So today I released v1.1 to the App Store. It removes the expiration of the free features.
Jiggle Balls and Jiggle Balls Lite both continue to do well in the Top 100 Entertainment Apps. They have been in there for about a week. I hope to get some good reviews on the Lite version now that it doesn’t expire. Let me know what you think.
Momentum
Jiggle Balls seems to be gaining some momentum. The Lite version has been as high as #65 on the top 100 free entertainment apps list (with 13,000 downloads) and the pay version has made it to #85 on the top 100 pay entertainment apps (with 1,200 downloads). I’m pretty pleased. The feedback on Jiggle Balls Lite has been a little negative, so I’ve put in a 1.1 release to Apple to remove the expiration on the free features. I hope this will please people a little more, without giving away the farm.
Top 100
Today I made it into the Entertainment Top 100. WooHoo!
Conversion Rate
Wow… finally some numbers to talk about. Jiggle Balls Lite was download 1,000 times yesterday. Of that, I made 61 sales, so a 6% conversion rate. Not huge, but a start. The App Store (especially from the devices themselves) is still not showing my app, so this is mostly from iTunes views, I would have to think. I imagine it would be much higher if the App Store wasn’t still broken. But not bad.
I Feel Much Lighter
Jiggle Balls Lite went into the App Store yesterday. Unfortunately, things still seem to be a little broken and it’s not showing up on all the lists that it should. Last night after release it only got 92 downloads. Hopefully today things will start to propagate and it will get better.
If things go well and I think it’s profitable (I am on my way to paying off all my original equipments costs of $1300) I’m going to start work on “Jiggle Balls: Spikes!”. This will be a game based on the Jiggle Balls theme. I also have another fun idea, however it’s going to take considerably more development time, so I’m going for the quick apps right now. Just seems like the right thing to do.
I appreciate all the beta-testers helping me out. There is no way I would have been comfortable releasing something that had not been tested on all the platforms.
Is there anything in OS 3.0 that excites me? Not really… my target is the iPod Touch (since there are 3x more users on that than the iPhone). I’m not sure how many of the Touch users will pay the $10 to upgrade to OS 3.0. I will probably be downloading the SDK soon, just to make sure my stuff is working on it.
App Store Saga
It appears there is yet another problem with the App Store (thus, making me think they did a rollout that is causing problems — I know they put a new rating system out). Apple has a new contract you are suppose to accept. Those accepting are getting their apps removed from the listings and search. Luckily I saw this before clicking on accept. And the sort by date problem continues too. I’ve delayed the release of Jiggle Balls Lite until March 31st. Hopefully by then something will be corrected. But Apple really has a lot of irate developers. The forums are flooded with messages, and it’s starting to make the mainstream news.
App Store Busted
The App Store is still stuck after 2 days. It looks ok from iTunes on PC and Mac. But from iPod Touch (and I assume iPhone) the sort by “release date” is all screwed up. Check this out:
Crazy Eye was last released on Jan 12, 2009.
Imv.karbon on Jan 23, 2009.
Celebrity Gossip July 24, 2008!
WTF Apple? Really… how hard is it to rdist things? Both updates I’ve done for Jiggle Balls have been affected by glitches in the system. As an indy developer I rely on the short visibility on the “release date” list to help get my app seen. I would expect that 90% of sales come from the App Store on the device and not iTunes on the PC or Mac.
I’m holding off releasing anything else until it appears Apple has fixed things, but so far the system has been flaky since the beginning of March. All emails to Apple have gone unanswered.
Crazy Eye… enjoy your time at the top. You’ll probably wake up tomorrow with a boat load of sales and be going… what the hell?
Jiggle Balls Review
The guys at Portable Gamer did an audio review of Jiggle Balls. Check it out at:
http://theportablegamer.com/2009/03/icasual-doubleheader-belly-button-jiggle-balls/
Thanks guys!
Jiggle Balls Video
We Can't All Be iShoot
Earlier I wrote an article about iShoot. Ethan had made enough money to quit his job at Sun and start writing iPhone software full-time. He’s probably made close to a million dollars by now. Then you read stories like this:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/10/0157221
The Dapple scenario seems to be more the norm and is what I am experiencing with Jiggle Balls. However, my development costs have been low (if not non-existent) and I’m enjoying spending 8-10 hours a week working on it. I haven’t spent months and months. I wrote my first app in a little under a week (with thanks to the box2D guys!) and each update has taken an additional week. I think that’s the way to do it. I’m convinced that if I had spent 6 months developing something, I would have had the same net result (possibly less… because the updates are helping me sell more units). And I still have plans to release a “Lite” version that will probably sell a few hundred more copies of the pay version.
So, did I make the hundreds of thousands of dollars I wanted to? Not yet. But I’m having fun, I navigated the obstacles of getting something in the App Store, and I still have lots of ideas. And as long as I’m enjoying programming, then I’ll continue.
There are still more balls to be jiggled…
