The Indie Budget
It’s good to be back! Thanks @mysterycoconut for the new format. It’s gonna be great reading all the entries each day and I love that if I miss an interval I can still get back with it the next time (although I’m hoping not to abuse that power). When I left you last time I was still working on my 5th game. Unfortunately that’s the state I’m still at several months later. It’s been a busy Summer, but looking forward to the Fall and Winter to get some coding done. So today I want to talk about the Indie Budget and some thoughts/questions I’ve had.
Before I can talk about the indie budget I have to define what it means to be an independent developer. I started searching around for a good definition and found many, ranging from
- Independent from a publisher.
- Indie team has only one programmer.
- Someone who designs games with total freedom both financially and creatively.
- Motivated by passion, not money. Designed from the trenches.
- Indie is exactly what you are. Anyone who you think has an advantage over you isn’t Indie.
(By the way… take a moment to read the NinjaBee Dance article, it raises some good questions)
So that didn’t really help, did it? I’m gonna go with a combination of the 3rd and 4th definition and twist it towards the app store.
“An indie is someone who designs apps with total freedom both financially and creatively and is motivated by passion, not money.”
I will say that I’m not not entirely immune to the money motivation. I still aspire to hit it big like Tiny Wings, but if I didn’t have a passion for this, the money wouldn’t be a big enough motivating factor.
With that said… what is the indie budget? I’m gonna define it as
“The indie budget is the amount of money spent to develop, market, and maintain an app.”
Not an overly complex definition. But if an indie is motivated by passion and not money, then what does it really cost to develop an app? I hear about indie budgets of over $30,000 for a one-person-developed app and see indies with fairly decent marketing campaigns. Neither of those fit my personal situation. I don’t give myself a salary for my time and my marketing costs are relatively low. I would consider my indie budget is less than 5% of what I make.
But this doesn’t fit everyone (although I’m suspecting it fits a vast majority of us). The Indie community spans a wide range of developer types. Some committed full-time, some the weekend code warriors, and some (like me) coding when we find the time (and motivation). So everyone has their own budget. If I was doing this full-time then I would probably have to consider giving myself a salary. If I was riskier I’d probably be spending more on marketing (although with my success at what I have done, that is debatable).
So when does income and budget start to dictate that you might not be an “indie” anymore? If you’ve hired 5 people to program, do artwork, and create music are you totally free financially and creatively anymore? You are now tied to providing salaries and so finances start to dictate what you do. You now have a difference of opinion on your team and are not solely the creative director. You are now no longer totally in control of your destiny. Perhaps “indie” means just that… INDEPENDENT… a team of one. Hmmm….
I believe in total transparency if it can help others. So with that I’m gonna publish my financial history in hopes that it will motivate (or demotivate) and put into perspective this whole indie business. There are some stand-out indies who have made it big, but as I’ve said… I suspect I’m in the boat with 80% of us. So I think these numbers will help. In the 2.5 years since I started this adventure I’ve made $20,000 total on 4 paid apps (and 5 free apps). I just brought up Quicken and my expenditures were just around $1000. This includes marketing and service providers. It does not include the $3000 I’ve spent on development equipment (1 iPod touch, 1 macbook air, 1 iMac, 1 iPad). The equipment I consider the “justification” for my development. If I wasn’t developing, I wouldn’t be buying this stuff.
Here’s my AppViz report (and if you aren’t using AppViz… why not?). Click on it for an up close look.
The graph points out a couple of things. It only takes a few weeks after that initial release spike to dissipate. Christmas time is always good. Since April my sales have really sucked (this might be in part to the restructuring that PlayHaven did that impacted my visibility). Tramp Stamp wasn’t quite the hit that I wished. I hope this helps. Let me know your definition of “indie developer” and how much you think we should be budgeting for salaries and marketing. Am I your typical indie developer or could I be doing more?
Until next time….
The End
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Well… it looks like my ride on the idevblogaday train has come to an end. I’ve enjoyed writing. I haven’t gotten to cover a lot of topics I wanted to nor introduce/release my new game like I wanted to, mostly because of time commitments at work and the fact that I like to be outdoors in the summer.
But something has been bothering me lately. It’s the fact that I’ve never felt part of the “indy” scene. And why don’t I? Because I haven’t made the effort.
I don’t Tweet much, but I do lurk and watch the traffic between @MattRix, @OwenGoss, @GavinBowman, @frederictessier, and @noel_llopis. I admire their “indy” spirit and sometimes wish I’d take that leap and do this full-time. But hanging onto my day job is probably the best thing, since leaving the industry and potentially getting back into it at my age (46) could be difficult. Plus, I really enjoy my day job and find it just as challenging as iOS development (I even get to make some decisions sometimes).
Another reason I think I feel the disconnect is because I haven’t attended any iOS conferences. I keep trying to justify going… but so far haven’t found a reason except that I really want to go! Also, there isn’t a lot of indy activity/conferences in the midwest that I know of. I grew up on the west coast and perhaps I should use that as an excuse to get myself out to one of the conferences out there.
I also don’t feel like I did a great service to the community with my 10 slots on this blog. My intentions were good, but when each time rolled around I just hadn’t done enough research to share anything of substance. I probably should have resigned my spot after the 3rd or 4th entry. But I made a commitment to go the full 10 this time. So with that…
Put me back in the queue and maybe by the time the train rolls around again I’ll be in a more productive indy mode. Thanks guys for listening! Happy 4th of July for those in the USA. I still hope to get my new game out, but it’s really looking like Fall now. Keep an eye out for it! (Ya… I’m still not gonna tell ya the title)
Apple ‘dun Killed the App Store Star
I know… I know… it’s nearly 2 weeks since WWDC (I didn’t go), but this is the first chance I’ve had to blog since the announcements. This is gonna be another non-technical entry, but I think it’s something the indy developer is gonna want to take note on.
So Apple announced A LOT of new stuff. The part I want to talk about is all the new apps and functionality that seem to step on the toes of existing successful apps (a lot of those by indys). What’s strange is when the iPad came out so many apps were stripped away (weather, stocks, clock, calculator, etc.) and it looked as if Apple was opening up the door for the independent developer (although none of those ever went away on any other device). Now Apple announces a new reminders app, photo cropping and rotation, reading list, iMessage, etc.
There are so many TODO lists in the app store. Some good, some not so good. My favorite is Wunderlist. Will having a native app hurt these guys? I hope not, but I do know before the calculator and clock apps were taken away, I never went looking for replacements. What Apple gave me was sufficient and more tightly integrated with the operating system. And will the weather and stocks apps show up on the iPad since they now integrate so nicely into the new notification system?
Adding the photo cropping and rotation is something that should have been there from the beginning. And does an app that just does one of those functions really worth it? Is that what you want? Or do you want an all-in-one app? It seems the app market has kind of gone the route of do one thing and do it really well. In some respects that’s really cool, but in other respects it really makes the work-flow much more difficult.
I don’t personally use Instapaper, but having this functionality right in Safari seems like it will really hurt them. And what about iMessage? You think AT&T and Verizon knew about that beforehand?
I remember when everyone was complaining about Windows being prepackaged with so much software and not giving anyone an opportunity to play in that arena. Should an operating system really be providing all the apps that sit on top of it? It’s mighty hard to sell it if you don’t. I hope Apple is cognizant of what they are doing and thinking through which apps they really need to include to enhance the operating system and which ones are treading into third-party territory.
The Portable Podcast with Carter Doston, just happened to have a round table with some indys this week about the new features. It’s a pretty good listen (this is one of my favorite podcasts).
Oh… and for the first person that responds in the comments with the MTV connection of this post… you’ll win free promocodes for ALL 4 of my pay apps. Tell me the significance of the quote, the song title, and the artist.
Looks like I have one more entry next week and then I’m outta here! Until then….
A Work In Progress…
Wow, this week snuck up really quick. Unfortunately I’m not anywhere near where I wanted to be for this weeks idevblogaday, but I’m gonna go ahead and share what I have anyway. Last time I promised a video of my new game. However, I haven’t written a line of code in over 3 weeks. My schedule at work continues to be very busy and I was on vacation last week. So… you’re going to see a very rough cut of my game in progress. I still don’t wish to share the title or too many details, as I still have LOTS of work to do. I’m hoping before my idevblogaday stint is up (2 more times), that I have something more for you and can make an announcement about release date, etc.
So without further ado… heres video of the new game…
I also wanted to comment that I’m struggling to find the motivation to finish this game (see my first idevblogaday entry). Mostly due to the fact that my sales have been terrible lately. This is in part due to PlayHaven’s recent business model change that does not favor the indy anymore (it doesn’t even cross promote my own apps). I’m looking into other networks to switch over to. If anyone has any suggestions drop me a line (I’ve contacted the guys at AppExtras).
Until next time… oh oh oh… wait… Jiggle Balls is FREE for a limited time for the first time EVER, so go and grab your copy today! Until next time… keep jigglin’ those balls!
Programming: Then and Now
I’ve been programming since age 12. That was 34 years ago (holy crap). I would wait for my issue of Creative Computing to show up and type in every program line by line into my Dad’s homemade PDP-11. Later I would do the same with our home built Apple ][ with wooden case and detached keyboard (man, I wish I still had this). I knew all through High School this is what I wanted to do, so I went to college and got through in 3.5 years with only 0.5 credits over what I needed to graduate.
My first job was at WordPerfect programming the Apple IIGS and NeXT versions. I remember the hardcover Apple II GS programming manuals. We devoured every word in them. Now looking back, it’s incredible we were able to do what we did with the resources we had. I look at my programming workflow now compared to then. How frustrating would it be today to only have just a book and no internet resources to get the job done? Could I even get anything done? Our devices seem pretty much useless without an internet connection.
Back then Apple had a support bbs (I think this was on AppleLink — the precursor to AOL). We got help from the guys at Apple (Dave Lyons and Matt Deatherage come to mind). But there was little community beyond going to conferences and talking to people there and the beginnings of newsgroups. You had to figure out problems with your core team. And when you figured out a solution, there was no real way to contribute back to the community.
What would I do if I couldn’t go to Google and type in the exact output from a compile error and find 10 people with the same problem? But has this made me a lazy programmer? Have I gotten in the copy/paste mode without understanding the real problem? I think not, but I think that has to do with my years of experience and recognizing issues and resolutions. If I was a new programmer, yes… I’d be worried that I was just getting into a code-stealing mode and not really understanding the issue. Today I feel like I can quickly recognize whether a solution I find is just a hack or well thought out (although I do admit to “stealing” the hacked version in time crunch mode sometimes — and usually end up paying the price and refactoring). I find myself frustrated in the iPhone development forums when I see developers just wanting someone to write a piece of code for them and not really wanting to understand the problem or core concepts.
Lately I’ve been using Cocos2d a lot more. Although the documentation is really lacking (I’ve seen better javadoc!), the amount of people blogging and screen-casting about it is unbelievable. It’s a great community (let’s hope Zynga doesn’t screw that up). The fact that I can watch someone else in XCode demonstrating a concept or technique is invaluable. It’s paired programming at it’s best. There is no better way to learn programming then to watch someone else doing it. How many times have I been watching someone at work and go “wait… what did you just hit to do that? brilliant!”?
So I’m pretty glad I was born in the era I was. I feel like I got the best of both worlds. I experienced enough early on to enforce a learning ethic, but toiled enough to appreciate the plethora of information available to me today. I use to count the cycles my Apple II assembly code was taking (you had to at 1MHz). I don’t feel like this is something a college graduate now days has experienced. I wonder what things will be like in another 34 years? Will just searching for a resolution seem archaic? Perhaps. But then again… I remember back in the 80s when everyone predicted we’d just be buying off the shelf software components and wiring them up and that there would be no need for programmers anymore.
Next week I’m hoping to post some gameplay video of my new game. Until then!
Simply Universal
I’m slowly making progress on my next game. I’m hesitant to give out too much details, mainly because I still have a long ways to go… but check the end of the post for the icon I’ve decided to use. There are 3 things I’ve done differently that influenced and guided the development of this game. I wanted to use cocos2d, I wanted to release a universal app, and I had an idea for a new kind of game control.
COCOS2D
The major change I made with this game was I finally decided to use cocos2d. Up until this point I had been using my own homebrew framework sitting on top of Box2D. Switching was definitely the right decision. After a small learning curve I was up and running and I’m finding it saves me a lot of time. Especially CCAction and CCScene. It’s made the transitions and menus so much easier. I’m getting 60 fps across all platforms (even my 2nd gen iPod Touch) and I’m just overall happy with the performance and ease of use.
UNIVERSAL APP
The other decision I made was to make this a universal app, but not in the way most people are doing it. The nature of the game doesn’t really benefit from retina display graphics nor the extra real-estate of the iPad. Thus I’ve decided to just simulate 2x mode on the iPad using glOrtho and running normally on the iPhone and iPhone Retina. I figured if I made an iPhone only app and someone runs it on the iPad, this experience is no worse and it gets me into both App Stores. It might subconsciously be my laziness, but I’m actually pretty happy with how it looks on both platforms, so I’m sticking with it. I changed very little code to get this to work. The major change is adding the glOrtho translation:
-(void)visit
{
glPushMatrix();
glLoadIdentity();
float x = 480.0f / screenSize.width;
float y = 320.0f / screenSize.height;
glOrthof(-x, x, -y, y, -1, 1);
[super visit];
glPopMatrix();
}
I then continue to treat everything as 320×480 pixels. The touch events need to be translated and I did have to do a bit of work to get CCMenu to work properly, but overall much less work than scaling objects, translating coordinates, and providing double the artwork.
CONTROL SCHEME
The catalyst for this game was a whole new game control that I have not seen in any other game (and thus I’m not gonna share exactly what it is). However, as I progressed and this game morphed (as most games do) it became apparent that this was not the game to introduce the new control in, so I’m saving it for something else I have in mind.
CONCLUSION
I’m moving much slower than I want to on this project, but my day job is sucking up a lot of my time and any spare time is spent with Spring cleaning and yardwork. I’m still hoping for a June release, but it’s gonna be pushing it. With that said… here’s my icon for the game.
Oh that’s another thing. My game had a totally different name, but when I posted this to Facebook I got a response from a friend who suggested a much better name. We’ll see how it pans out.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all our indy developer mothers.
Apple Made Me Jailbreak My iPod Touch
Yes… it’s true… after 2.5 years of being legit, Apple forced me to jailbreak my device. Why? Because I had no other option to test my new game on iOS 3.1.3.
A few months ago I successfully (and legitimately) rolled my iPod Touch back from iOS 4.2.1 to 3.0. But as much as I tried I could not do the same with 3.1.2 or 3.1.3. I even tried to roll back to 3.0 (and even 2.2.1) and then upgrade to 3.1.3 to no avail. So I’ve had my iPod Touch at 3.0 and that’s what I’ve been targeting all my builds with. But then I uncovered an issue with my latest game that uses cocos2d. It was not running smoothly. On 3.0 devices cocos2d does not use CADisplayLink, which gives a much more consistent frame rate. I wanted to test my suspicion that if I used CADisplayLink it would work. Of course I could have just tested on a 4.2.1 device, but then I’d have no idea if it was CADisplayLink or some newer functionality and I really want to target the oldest iOS I can. So I spent the last 24 hours trying various options but couldn’t get my device to 3.1.3 (plus I almost bricked it a couple of times).
So… even though I wouldn’t recommend it, if you find yourself in the same position and really need to test on an older iOS, here’s the steps I took. Again… I would have loved to do this the legit way and it would be nice if Apple had a way for developers to downgrade, especially since we don’t have the luxury of multiple simulator versions anymore. I’m not including any links to these images or utilities. I’ll leave it up to you to do the research.
- Download the appropriate 3.1.3 image for your device. In my case iPod2,1_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw for a 2nd gen iPod Touch.
- Create a jailbroken image using PwnageTool 3.1.5 which is designed to work with the 3.1.3 image.
- Use iREB-r4 on Windows (I did this in a VM) to put your device into pwned DFU mode. This probably isn’t necessary if you can get the timing right on the button pushes. But I did notice on VirtualBox that the USB indicator showed if it was in DFU or RESTORE mode, which made it easier to tell when I was successful (other than the black screen v.s. iTunes connection screen).
- Use TinyUmbrella to spoof the gs.apple.com servers to allow the image to be validated and upgraded. I couldn’t get the host file change wouldn’t work for me.
- Use iTunes to downgrade the image (option-restore) and selected the jailbroken custom image.
So now I have a 3.1.3 device to test on. I guess I also get to see what’s going on with the jailbreaking community, something I haven’t payed any attention to. It was pretty cool to SSH into my device and poke around the directory structure. I think it’s at least educational to see how your app is deployed to the device. I would have to believe that Apple developers get an environment more like this when they are working on iOS or iOS apps. It’d be kind of cool if we could too.
In my next article I’m hoping to write about cocos2d and my experience with using it over my own framework that I’ve been using over the last 2 years. I’m also hoping to discuss my solution for getting it all to play nicely in a Universal app.
P.S. Jiggle Balls HD is FREE all this weekend (assuming the change I made 6 hours ago ever takes affect — something’s up with the app store)
Man… This Is Really Rank!
Again… this week… I’m super busy with the job that pays the bills, so I don’t have a lot to offer as far as development goes.
But… today I’m gonna fill you in on a little trick I thought of this week. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it sooner. It has to do with Applyzer. I’m a huge Applyzer fan. I’ve been using it for almost 2 years for my 4 apps. It tracks your rankings in the top 1000 for your category (and overall — but I very rarely see that). The website is workable, but I really like the dashboard widget Michael Dorn (you know I’ve never asked if he is Worf) created several months ago. A quick F4 at work and I can tell if some miracle has happened. And even though MOST of the time I’m not even in the top 1000 with 2 of my apps, I still am anal about checking them and seeing if some miracle might have happened. My other 2 apps are consistently in the 400-600 range, so I do like to see if any of my weak efforts at marketing pay off. 
But the website is really difficult to use from my iPhone. So I got to thinking… he must just be making an http/rss request from the widget. So I installed Wireshark and sure enough it’s just simple request to a php page.
http://www.applyzer.com/rss/currentranking.php?md=<key>
Where key is your 32 digit key you can get from the Key Generator section under My Profile.
My first inclination was to write an app to display this. Then my old brain went… wait a sec… shouldn’t safari be able to display this nicely? So I plugged the url into safari on my iPhone and this is what I got.
Blech! Where’s the ranking icons??? reader.mac.com must be messing with the content. I searched to see if there was a way to bypass Apple’s rss reader, but to no avail.
So then I tried Opera Mini.
Aaah… much better.
So now I can check my rankings where ever I go! Hopefully you’ll find this useful (or maybe even obvious) too!
Oh! Oh! Oh! I forgot. Tramp Stamp is FREE today as part of the Daily App Dream promotion. And now I can track my way to the top 50 from the toilet. WooHoo!
P.S. Michael gave me permission to publish all this information. He’s been a really good guy to work with and has been very responsive to my queries. He’s even awarded everyone extra days when something Apple does causes the rankings to freeze or be unavailable. If you are not a member of this site and are as anal as I am, I’d really recommend it. I am not affiliated with his site in anyway. Just a fan boy.
What’s On???
Ok, this week I have absolutely nothing to talk about dev-wise, except for Tramp Stamp and Tramp Stamp Lite Universal App updates both being approved. WooHoo! Plus I’ve started conceptualizing my next game. Pretty excited about that.
I’m always curious what other people have running on their devices. I’m a minimalist, so nothing sticks around for too long, but here’s what’s on my iPhone right now. Comments and suggestions are welcome. What am I missing? What do I have that you didn’t know about?
Ok, here goes…
I like to keep my home screen uncluttered with pretty much just the non-deletable Apple apps. With a few exceptions. In this case Dropbox and Instacast. I use DropBox ALL the time to move files to and from my mac. I just started using Instacast by a recommendation on AppSlappy. So far I like it, but no 2x playback (update: new version has 2x). Oooh… that reminds me. iTunes needs to move to the “Other” folder now.
Of course I always keep copies of all MY apps.
I don’t keep a bunch of games around. Here’s a few I’ve played more than once or twice. blockBUZZter was written by a friend of mine. Check it out!
Only one other folder of “Games”. I can’t get enough of Tiny Wings. It’s definitely been responsible for lots of lost sleep and non-development time!
Surprisingly not too many developer apps. Haven’t used AccSim or iSimulate for quite a while. I mostly check the IAA Network and iTC Mobile.
Pretty sparse here too! Check out iShoe if you’re an Ohio State Buckeye fan. My girlfriend’s son worked on this this past summer. I’m keep meaning to use RunKeeper, really I do. The Best Of FTA will make sense to anyone who owned an Apple IIGS. Some of the first great indy apps. And MakeAZombie is there because I’m seriously thinking of writing a zombie game and needed some ideas of what they look like. Mmmmm… brains…
Can’t say that I really use ANY of these except for Wake, which wakes up my iMac remotely because my Apple TV is too stupid to send the bonjour packet (unless you have an Airport or Time Capsule). I do use Pandora on long car trips, but that’s about it.
Ya, not sure why I even bothered with a folder here. Baby Scratch is a lot of fun though.
Why Apple doesn’t provide cropping and rotating functionality I’ll never know.
Again… a ton of stuff I never use very often. Oh, just noticed Chordmaster should go over to the music folder. Weather Bug runs beautifully on my iPad but consistently crashes on my iPhone (update: just got the new version, so hopefully fixes the problem).
Again… stuff I don’t use very often.
Twitter and Facebook mostly here. Although I use Facely when Facebook decides to not upload photos, which is quite often. Crowdbeacon just doesn’t have enough users in my area yet.
Speed Test gets use the most. Especially when I’m running a Verizon v.s AT&T test against my buddies at work and I can kick their butt with 2x the speed. Seriously! RandInt is used for our Columbus iPhone Users Group (CiDUG) to pick a random number for door prizes.
And a few stragglers that haven’t found a home. HOP will probably be deleted soon. I download ALL ball apps to see how they compare to the Grand Daddy Jiggle Balls. And Pilot Winds can’t compare to Tiny Wings.
I really appreciate this every 2 week thing. It gives me time to get my thoughts in order and pre-can my entry. I’ve been doing some serious opensocial development at work, so by the time I get home I’m pretty burned out and haven’t felt like developing. I’m still hoping to get a new game out by this summer. Keep indy’ing!
Help Wanted… Jobs
No… I’m not looking for a job… I’m looking for some help…
Ok, I know most of you are busy playing with your new iPad 2s, or trying to figure out XCode 4 (when it’s not crashing), or disgruntled because iOS 4.3 won’t install on your Verizon iPhone, or recovering from your GDC hangover… but I want to discuss something that has been brewing in my mind for over a year now. And that’s “How do I market in this arena?”.
I don’t care what anyone says (including KMT in the Apple Forums <g>), but the new release list is the independent developers best friend. My belief is that if you can make the jump from there to your category top 50 in the first few days and then the subsequent jump to the overall top 50, you’ve got it made. Miss that mark, and well… you can be Tiny Wings and you’ll still get buried pretty quickly. I’m not saying an app can’t be discovered later (like Trainyard was), but it’s nearly impossible unless Apple or one of the big review sites decides to feature you.
Sure, there are exceptions, but I really think being “visible” on the App Store is key. And I’m talking about the App Store on the devices, not iTunes. It’s the people browsing the App Store on the device and making that impulse buy that is key. Few people are clicking over from a Touch Arcade ad or searching the App Store after a favorable review on a podcast. Most developers I’ve talked to just have not seen the payoff from that kind of marketing (and most of that marketing is way too expensive for the independent — with a few notable exceptions I’ll discuss later).
So… what am I proposing? A couple of things Apple could do to make exposure a little easier. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s Apple’s responsibility to do our marketing, but I think there are things they could do to make it a little easier for the independent developer (cuz let’s face it… some of the best stuff in the App Store is from the little guy).
- Allow us to buy advertising space in the App Store. I’m proposing a 50/50 split in revenue for the privilege. This could even be a randomly rotating list of apps, but at least featured front and center. Call it “Developer Suggestions” or something like that.
- Have an independent section in the App Store. I’m not 100% sold on this, since the average consumer might not know what this means, but I think there is a target of the audience that would look here.
- Instead of featuring the top games in the iPad Game Center, feature random apps. On the iPhone provide a random games section as well.
- Allow our App Store pages to be a little more attractive. How come only certain companies get to have the flashy backgrounds, etc.? Let us embed video and html links and respond to customer feedback inline. Punish me if I abuse that privilege.
- Let me change my icon without an app submittal. I’m still unclear as to which one gets shown by what section of the app store. The 512×512 one submitted in the metadata or the one in the app itself? I need to do more experimentation here.
- Let me change my keywords without an app submittal. Again, punish me if I abuse the system. For example changing my keywords to the most popular app, etc. (although that would probably have the reverse affect of what you’d want if everyone was doing it). Being able to experiment with my keywords is crucial IMHO since once I’m buried it’s really the only way I am being found (besides word of mouth).
So… this blog post was not meant to be whiney or complain that I have a disadvantage because I’m an independent developer. I also understand that to Apple it really makes no difference as to whether what they are selling is from the big guy or little guy (I don’t even think the average consumer knows the difference either). But I will dispute that the App Store would not be the success it is today without the help of the independent developer. So I guess I’m just asking for “a little love”. The App Store is an indy dream. No where else can I get this kind of exposure. The extra $10,000 I make a year is pretty nice. It would be nicer if I could truly make a living at it.
Now… who is givin’ the love? There are a few independent favored sites and some advertising that’s not too expensive. The kings? The Portable Gamer without a doubt. These guys have reviewed every single one of my products and had me on the podcast twice without asking for anything in return. Carter and Rob are true champions of the indy. Next up… AppVader… another very friendly indy site. Also PlayHaven and IAA have been very helpful in cross promoting. And I have to give a shout out to the iPhoneSlutz who provide very affordable advertising for an upfront 15 seconds spot on their show. Unfortunately it had very little impact on my sales beyond the first day.
Please… please… please… fill up the comments with your suggestions and rebuttals. I would really like to know what the rest of you think.
On a side note. After my last entry I did get motivated and I’ve taken Tramp Stamp and made it a Universal App and gotten it to build under XCode 4. I just submitted it to Apple yesterday. It will be interesting to see how the universal app fairs against my other apps. Hopefully minimal investment for a little gain would be nice. And I also made Jiggle Balls HD FREE for the weekend to celebrate the iPad 2. Pick up a copy if you haven’t already done so (and let me know how it runs on an iPad 2). Enjoy!
