Great success story on bootstrapping your business, and a big congrats because it's very a difficult road and will surely challenge your nerves and sanity. :)
If your app has only been for sale for ~1 month, I encourage you to be very conservative with your spending — the AppStore is extremely volatile. While the momentum is in your favor with the Top Charts, I suggest you keep your eyes focused on improving the iPhone app and pushing updates. The other mobile markets aren't mature enough yet to approach aggressively, and sales on the AppStore could fall as quickly as they came.
Designing a logo which stands out compared to competitors around you: I would say this is a textbook case of marketing.
Having said that, it is clever using a free marketing opportunity like that, and, even better, being (one of) the first to realize there's a huge opportunity there.
All I hope is that I won't be asked to punch any monkeys while browsing the AppStore any time soon. :)
Yup, my bad- $350/day without advertising would be more accurate. I think of most of the icon/description/sales page work as positioning than as marketing, but that's probably splitting hairs too much.
Was it really the icon's graphic design, or the fact that the word "free" is positioned very prominently within it? It'd be an interesting experiment to actually change the app icon for a month and test the results. Of course that's risking real money, so it'd be understandable if you didn't want to take the chance. :)
Good question- it's both, and the color scheme. If you pull up the Book category, most of the icons suck- plain, generic, bookcase after bookcase. So, a big red icon that also states FREE prominently is sure to get stand out.
Based on how we moved up the list, I attribute most of the sales growth to increased visibility from our icon as we moved up the Top 100 list, assuming that search traffic from things like 'Free Books' would remain relatively steady.
Thanks Derrek! The App Store is definitely a great way to make money, though it's of course up to developers to execute and position themselves well.
For us, the only issue is communication- we've now had a Kindle companion application, Kindling, in review for 94 days, without any communication outside of form responses from Apple.
We take the long view- the App Store is currently the best mobile platform, but we're working on expanding our business to other platforms. I think it's pretty crazy for any developer to be focused on one platform exclusively, and have 100% of their revenue capable of being destroyed with a single click of the 'Remove from Sale' button in Cupertino.
A lot of our revenue actually comes from the rest of the world- Australia, Canada, and the UK are all solid, and we've been in #1 Books for Canada for solid stretches.
We're actually 25 spots away from being Top 100 overall right now in Canada, so much of our revenue is attributed to the world, and not just the US. This is something we're going to expand on a lot more moving forward, as it's caught us by surprise.
Thanks for the additional info.
You're right, I forgot to account for the fact that the 250 downloads is a "world" total and not the "US" total. Do US sales generally account for roughly half your sales. If so, 8th place at 125 downloads is still pretty good for the "Books" category.
Yes, nothing signifies "free books" like a Soviet hammer-and-sickle.
Who knows where the world would be today if the USSR hadn't kept the flame of publisher freedom alive through the darkest days of the cold war, when dissidents had to smuggle mimeographed copies of banned books into Paris, London, and New York.
The Soviets banned books and imprisoned dissident authors. The icon's graphic design romanticizes Soviet imagery, and in the context of 'free' books.
That's a different level of values-incongruity than using cavemen as a minority-group stand-in for laughs.
Also, I don't expect cavemen to be a threat in my lifetime, but censorship in the service of a new utopian program is an everpresent danger. Rehabilitating Soviet symbols to mean something cool and related to free expression obscures an important lesson from the 20th century.
It's an interesting point, and one I'm surprised hasn't been brought up yet in the conversation. In fact, I've never received an email from a customer or potential customer about the negative aspects of the icon, while we've gotten a bunch from people who really like the approach to design and copywriting on both the site, the description page, and the app itself.
So, two things:
a) Business side. We certainly lose out on some customers who are turned off by the icon- that's probably the case with yourself. You posted in another thread saying you'd be interested in our upcoming Free Audiobooks app, so maybe we'll lose that sale based on the icon.
Based on past performance I'm confident that the upside of extra sales gained balances the downside of sales lost- that's what makes the icon effective. It stands out because most folks wouldn't be comfortable offering it, which is why there aren't a million icons that look just like it. It's a risk, and it's paying off.
b) Romanticization of a brutal dictatorship. I feel it mocks the Soviets more than anything- it's over the top and campy. Like on freebooksapp.com - "Free Books. Better than vodka. Great success!". Cheap laugh? For sure. But it converts phenomenally, with 2.5 minutes average time on site and 15% bounce rate in primary markets, and positive customer feedback in email.
If you look at the browse page (freebooksapp.com/browse) it's clearly done campy/mocking, not romanticizing- "selection like glorious grocery store!".
Taking the application flow as a whole, I just don't think there's any way that anyone can take this as a vote for communism. I'm glad you made the comment, though, because it's good to have feedback in the negative side of the box- it concerned me in the back of my head that I hadn't had ANY negative emails about it.
It wouldn't necessarily make me a non-customer, but it would give me some pause. The campy look of the web page puts me in a better frame of mind than just the tiny pairing of 'hammer & sickle + free books'.
I was also wondering if in your home cultural context, it was more clearly ironic, because no one could possibly take the symbol seriously.
I wouldn't expect you to change it if -- as your article indicates -- the icon seems a strong net sales boost.
But I would also hope that many other clean, colorful, distinctive icons would have the same effect -- because if App Store customers have uniquely warm feelings towards totalitarian graphic design, I have deeper worries. :)
If you needed to have it both ways, you could work in a dissident 'samizdat' angle and put the symbol upside-down -- retaining the motif (including mock-Cyяillic) without any connotations of endorsement.
> Especially in this case: these guys are Hungarians and should really know better.
You seem to define "knowing better" as "agreeing with me". Since these people are Hungarians, I'd guess they know more about Hungarian culture than you do, particularly what symbols are considered offensive in that culture.
If most people wouldn't find the symbolism offensive, in practical terms it isn't a problem. (Of course, anything will be offensive to someone).
If your app has only been for sale for ~1 month, I encourage you to be very conservative with your spending — the AppStore is extremely volatile. While the momentum is in your favor with the Top Charts, I suggest you keep your eyes focused on improving the iPhone app and pushing updates. The other mobile markets aren't mature enough yet to approach aggressively, and sales on the AppStore could fall as quickly as they came.