For iPhone apps that have had relatively big launches, they typically have great sales the first month, but during the second month, sales tend to drop substantially. It makes sense when you think about it… in these cases, the buzz for the app mostly comes from the initial launch itself so after a nice run up the charts, they start to slide downward and settle down to a relatively stable sales rate that’s dramatically lower than the peak days.
This has definitely been the case with most of our apps. Here are the first two month sales for the last two apps we launched before Camera+:
Convert
Voices
Month 1
$102,949
$205,000
Month 2
$33,424
$99,356
iPhone apps that’ve been pretty big hits for their first month tend to have somewhat of a “sophomore slump” for the second month. Of course this isn’t always the case… for example Angry Birds has pretty much been unstoppable since climbing to #1 (and its success is very well deserved because it’s truly a great game).
How did Camera+ do in its second month? If you’ve been following along, you saw that for our first month, we took in around $253,000. And based on our past apps, we were expecting sales to drop off to the point where we would’ve been pretty lucky to bring in another $100k or so for the second month.
Well, I’m really happy to say that the second month far exceeded our expectations and actually earned a bit more than the first month, coming in at a total of just over $254,000…
And here’s how the whole first two months looked…
So after two short months in the App Store, Camera+ has pulled in a whopping half a million dollars. Needless to say, we couldn’t be more pleased.
Camera+
what it is: the ultimate photo app
number sold: 399,436
net sales: $507,221
more info: at the App Store
Why the rise instead of the fall this time? There are a number of things that happened during the month and while no one particular thing can be attributed to the big sales month, there’s no doubt that each contributed to the whole. In addition, the word of mouth in general for Camera+ has been fantastic overall and it’s undoubtedly been a major factor for the sustained sales.
Here are some of the more significant events that happened throughout the month. Each is indicated chronologically on the sales graph above so you can get an idea of how it possibly affected sales.
A App of the Week ends
Apple featured Camera+ as the “App of the Week” throughout most of Europe and several other places around the world. The point on the graph marks when the featuring ended and our subsequent drop in worldwide sales soon after.
B First month sales post
The twin sister to this post, born a month earlier. The post got a decent amount of media coverage and subsequently, started Camera+ on another climb up the charts.
C “What’s Hot” featuring US
Nobody except Apple knows exactly why apps are chosen for the various featurings. In this case, it’s possible that they noticed a lot of charting movement of Camera+ over the few days leading up to this.
D Touch Exposure teased
Lisa posted a video that quietly demonstrated the main feature that was going into version 1.2. Being such a cool feature that nobody else was doing, it caused a lot of buzz.
E 1.2 released
Continued buzz for the Touch Exposure feature since people could actually use it themselves now.
F Media reviews
A large concentration of high-profile media coverage. Right before version 1.2 was released, TUAW posted a very favorable review of Camera+. Once 1.2 hit the streets, we got a flood of stories, with some of the more notable sites being Macworld, MobileCrunch, and Wired.
G MacRumors forum post
There’s no better way of having the word of your product spread like when actual users are talking it up. Especially when it’s in a huge forum like the MacRumors ones. There’s no doubt that this forum thread helped things considerably. I noticed it when looking at our stats and saw that a ton of traffic was coming from it.
H 1.2.1 released
We addressed all of the major stability issues with version 1.2.1. While it wasn’t the kind of release that’d cause any buzz, it definitely went a long way in instilling confidence in our users. It’s a lot easier to recommend something to others when that something doesn’t crash or behave unpredictably.
I Creative Exposure video
Lisa created a more in-depth video showing how to get the most out of Touch Exposure and Touch Focus.
J VolumeSnap submitted
I posted about us submitting version 1.3 to Apple for review. This version was all about allowing users to snap photos using the volume buttons on their iPhone. It was rejected by Apple.
Hopefully Camera+ will be able to sustain these levels or at least something close to them for the long term. We have a lot of awesome things planned for it so it’s definitely a possibility. Thanks to all of you who’ve supported us by purchasing the app… and and extra thanks to those of you who’ve been spreading the word of it. We’re doing everything we can to try and make it the best possible photography app on the iPhone and we think you’ll be very pleased with all that’s coming up with it.
In the first month sales post I mentioned that we did no advertising at all for Camera+ and that didn’t change at all for month two. I also mentioned that if there was enough interest, I’d write a post about why advertising generally doesn’t work these days for low-cost iPhone apps. And because of the big response to that, I’ve been writing that very post and should have it up here soon.
One thing I’d like to leave you with is the following…
The phrase:
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
…is bullshit. It’s more like:
Build a better mousetrap… and then blog and create videos about it and hope that the Mousetrap Store features it … and just maybe the world will beat a path to your door.
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>convert video to iPad mac
