If sales won't go so well, or if you would like to try a different marketing approach, you might consider this:
Instead of asking for money upfront, you should give the app for free with a few sample monsters. Then you can provide the full package with in-app purchase. The logic behind it is that it will be easier to convince the parents to pay for it, after their kids love it. Another reason - with a $2.99 price point, it will be hard for you to hit the top list, which has the most influence on your sales. But you could charge that in an in-app purchase without affecting your listing in the free apps.
If you decide to do it, make sure to ask the user to upgrade in strategic locations (For example, after they launch it several times, after they finish all the paintings, etc.)
We have a free version. Our hope is to signal a premium product with the $2.99 price for the paid version and so drive trial of the free version in order to monetize with IAP. We'll see if it works..
I think this is a smart thing to try, especially because the purchasers are likely to be parents who are used to blowing $2.99 on physical coloring books that last for one dinner. Unlike, say, college students buying games, parents who want this probably won't relate much differently to 2.99 than .99, I would guess.
I am not convinced that kids will nag their parents enough to make them pay to upgrade - I suspect most parents will just be happy to let their kid play with the free version.
Regarding "nag their parents" -- be careful, be very careful, you are treading on sore thumbs here. If my preschooler starts nagging me about IAP prompted by whatever ad mechanism that is in the game, the app gets promptly deleted and it gets 1 star rating and a review with a warning to other parents.
As I said in another comment, while I do not like to say "no" to my kid, I really hate him being used as a pressure point for milking parents for IAP money. If your app is respectful towards the parents, I will gladly pay you and probably more than you think.
I doubt that you're a parent. No fault of yours. But here is what happens. Your kid will play the free version and then she will master the free part. You'll see that she enjoys it and you won't hesitate paying for the paid version or the in-app purchase upgrades.
She went through the free version in a zippy and kept playing it over and over again. I took her iPad, disable Restriction and bought the paid version.
We worry about this as well, actually. In fact it's been interesting to get the comments pushing back on IAP, because our concern to date has been that we gave away too much content for free. What's interesting about that Flurry article I linked to is that it's a fraction of the market that's driving the majority of the IAP revenue...so even if most parents don't go for the in-app purchase option, the ones that do should (we hope!) help us keep our lights on.
Have you considered going straight for the paid option
( ie. no free content ) and seeing how much demand you have? I think the app looks a lot better than most of the stuff already out there, and the price point would reassure parents that they are getting a high-quality product for their kids.
We've tried a premium-only approach with previous apps and we've gotten feedback that our users like the option to try before they buy - which is what led us to IAP.
Also, when we've tried a premium-only approach our apps have been made available for jailbroken devices within a couple of weeks, with little chance to directly monetize these pirated free copies of our apps. See, for example: http://theikidsblog.com/blog/2010/11/30/arr-there-be-pirates...
This time around our approach was to build a premium product, price it accordingly and let people try it out via the free version. It's hard to know what the best way to handle it is - but that's definitely part of the fun of the wild west of mobile apps these days..and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, the freemium model seems to have a lot of traction..
I have a gentleman who is into this sort of thing and I've played through most of AppStore apps with him. They fall into exactly two categories - shorter games that are shallow in their content with low re-playability and longer, more elaborate games for older kids. And I can tell you with certainty that 3-5 year olds is an under-served market.
With regards to the app (the paid version of it) - it looks promising, but the test subject is napping. Three things though -
(a) the app is lagging heavily on iPad 1. For example, clicking on the ? icon scrolls the page up in jerky increments, it looks like the app is really struggling.
(b) the music selection is a no-go. For one, I doubt the classics will fly with my kid, and for two - it will most certainly annoy the hell out of my wife and myself.
(c) the "purchase more" hooks - I appreciate why you have them, but as a rule of thumb I will do my best to avoid any apps that have in-app purchases. Having for-a-fee options always leads to "what is that?", "why can't I press this button?" and so on and on. This is a not so subtle form of parent arms' twisting by an app developer and I as a parent passionately hate it.
On a more constructive note regarding (c) - add a single option in a config menu "hide all related to real money" or let me buy ALL you optionals at once (full unlock) or explain exactly how the accumulation of monsterbucks works. Nothing else would do. Let me reiterate how I really really don't like my child being used as a leverage for milking me for follow-up purchases.
a) Yup, I have same experience here on iPad 1.
b) I disagree with this, but my kid is 3 years old. I thought the music selection was playful and best of all, not annoying when played ad infinitum.
c) I bought the paid version thinking that it would come with all the extras. I don't like in-app purchases in paid apps, and I think this should have been an option in the free version only.
With that in mind, I would also suggest that you provide a way to earn monster bucks for free, through offerwalls. Disclaimer and shameless self-promotion: I work for Tapjoy, that does this: https://www.tapjoy.com
(c) absolutely - compare with Drawing Pad, where you can purchase colouring books in app. It has a config option to hide the IAP store, which avoids all the awkward questions.
I don't mind purchasing additional content in a premium app. If the app is good value by itself then additional sets for $3 a pop is fine. But I don't want my kids to see this option - as far as they are concerned, the app has what it has, and extra books appear magically from time to time.
Thanks so much for the feedback. Always nice to get a counterpoint to the sunshine and roses you hear from friends, family and the like.
Regarding:
a) Performance. Very disappointing to hear that you are experiencing lag. We did extensive device testing on iPad 1, and while we can't get the app to perform like it does on iPad 2 (SJ wasn't kidding about 7x graphical performance on the iPad 2), we did think we had gotten it to a stable, smooth operating state for the original iPad. Sounds like that's not the case for you. Would you be willing to let us know whether you downloaded the free or the paid version? And what version of iOS are you running? We'd love to address any issues you're seeing, but any further info you can provide is very helpful for any fine tuning.
b) Music. It's a funny thing, very much a matter of taste. My kids (age 2,4) love the music. In fact, the three of us had a huge dance party to the Brahms piece from the app to celebrate launch. Sorry it's not your thing. We would have loved to include some music from Philip Glass, but we couldn't work out the licensing. Any suggestions on what you would like to hear?
c) In-App Purchase. Very familiary with your sentiment regarding IAP. That said, the freemium model seems here to stay - see for example: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/67748/Consumers-Spend-Average-of-...
And while there is a (vocal) group of folks that don't like this model, there are lots of people out there that are OK with it - and this is the market we've chosen to serve, in part because they pay. That said, for those parents out there that really dislike IAP, Apple does offer the ability to disable it from the device settings. This was enough for us, but if we continue to get this kind of feedback, we can relook at it.
Finally, I'm assuming that you don't go to carnivals, stores, malls, or anywhere else with your kids where they might be tempted to ask you for more of something that they like? Sorry for the snark with this last comment, but it's hard to hear complaints about asking for money for our hard work as anything other than a devaluation of the work itself. Parents don't blink at 19.99 for a new Lightning McQueen toy, but asking for half that amount for something of significantly greater entertainment value via IAP is somehow wrong? I struggle to get my head around that. But perhaps more of the community here can help me make sense of that POV?
Again, thanks for all the feedback, both positive and negative. Take my response with a grain of salt - there's a good chunk of my blood, sweat and tears in this baby..hard to detach from the criticism..
> Parents don't blink at 19.99 for a new Lightning McQueen toy
For one, I am not one of these parents. For two, Lightning McQueen toy is not sitting in a middle of my living room. Feel the difference, as they say.
On a tangential note - I am willing to pay $15-20 for your app if it comes with no strings attached. Would this be worth a try for you? Package it as "Deluxe" edition and see how it goes. You might be surprised how many people hate in-app purchase model (which is not a freemium by the way, it's more of a much despised trialware).
Love the idea of a Deluxe version. We had actually discussed it, but we were worried about diluting our audience across three versions of the app - it's hard to chart in the App Store if you split your audience three ways. Honestly, it's hard to chart period.
Once the dust of launch settles, we'll very likely revisit this suggestion. Our aim is to get our content in the hands of kids (of all ages!) that will enjoy it...and to make enough money to keep doing what we're doing. Your suggestion is perfectly compatible with that.
As for LMQ not being in your living room...well he is in mine. He's on my TV, in the drive-thru, everywhere...I understand your point, but my point is that I think that IAP is uniquely villainized for doing something very similar to what a lot of other industries have been doing for awhile - building on a branded experience and trying to make money by delivering additional value. But again, you are right - many people share your take, and a deluxe version could help to serve that crowd.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts on the app and related issues. Very helpful.
Yes, this is something we're still working on and hope to improve in subsequent versions. Most coloring book apps only allow you to fill or paint and if you are able to fill the number of areas is pretty low. We decided to go for doing everything and although it's working well (we think) we're continually seeking ways to improve the speed in that area.
I don't have an iOS device, so I can't comment on the app itself.
The flavour the site's design adds is excellent. Major props for that.
I think it'd be cool if the background was `position: fixed;`.
I also really like the social aspect on the site ("Super awesome monsters created by our community."). I think a "monster of the day" would be an excellent way to get people motivated and involved (as sort of a competition).
Judging from the video, there doesn't seem to be an undo button in the app. Seems like one should be there.
Sadly, the site loaded slowly for me (~15 seconds; I'm on a low-bandwidth connection), and in that time, things were shifting position and some text was unreadable.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'll definitely look into the slow loading of the site. We've been trying to get everything together so quickly we probably didn't optimize it as much as we could have. I'll go back through and try to fix that for sure.
Undo isn't in the app right now but it's on the list for a future update.
I'm literally about to go to bed so I can't reply quickly, but if you want some tips on speeding up your front-end, my contact details are on my profile.
The site design at least is very beautiful, congratulations! I especially like all of the extra content you've added, the store, the "freebies", etc. My only idea to make it even better would be eventually writing some kind of subtle animation into the monster, or alternating the monster for different sections of the site.
To pay HN back for all the feedback and buzz, consider writing up a blog post about the process, and how sales and marketing go. I, at least, would love to read about it and learn from your experience.
This should end up as a good case study - we just got featured on the front page of the App Store. Thanks again to HN for the support. Will let you know how things go from here..
I almost never share things like this on Facebook, but I shared Monster Coloring Book. I don't even own an iOS device, but the execution/design seems spot on. I see this becoming highly successful - congrats!
I'm not sure who your intended audience is, but the UI is very hard to use for little kids. You have lots of text based UI elements, and they have to click to a page to change the brush, then click on 'color' to go back to their drawing, etc. You pop up text dialogs asking them if they want to save their drawing before they can change monsters, and there is some kind of 'balance' which I have figured out yet.
Maybe your intended audience isn't little kids, but if it is you should make the UI simpler and not require reading skills.
This app is going to stay focused on Monsters - but we will consider branching out with other coloring apps if we have enough success here to warrant it.
Really fun! I quite enjoyed going back to my childhood and colouring in :D Only one small problem - the app regularly crashed after attempting to "buy" patterns.
Beautiful design, lovely idea, I will be downloading this tonight. Do you have any plans for localizing it to other languages ? ( I think it would be a successful app in Japan )
Why is the Facebook like button on the lightbox of video rather than the front page? After I closed the lightbox, I tried to find the `like' button but failed.
Thanks for all the kind words everyone. We're really excited about this app and appreciate the help spreading it around as well as the feedback/suggestions.
Hm. Well, we did also consider the name Monsters Ink, but stayed away because we didn't want any trouble. Seems hard to tie your shoes these days without someone filing a lawsuit.
Instead of asking for money upfront, you should give the app for free with a few sample monsters. Then you can provide the full package with in-app purchase. The logic behind it is that it will be easier to convince the parents to pay for it, after their kids love it. Another reason - with a $2.99 price point, it will be hard for you to hit the top list, which has the most influence on your sales. But you could charge that in an in-app purchase without affecting your listing in the free apps.
If you decide to do it, make sure to ask the user to upgrade in strategic locations (For example, after they launch it several times, after they finish all the paintings, etc.)
Good luck!