As we enter the second half of the year, it’s as good a time as any to look back at how my apps have been doing in the Apple App Store.
These numbers cover from the 3rd of January to the 3rd of July, 2011. As I’m a fool, I hadn’t downloaded the stats for the months prior to this, so this post is a record for myself as much as anything else.
Pint of Plain
Downloads: 2,589 (down 1,709 on the previous 26 weeks)
Updates: 4,979
Pint of Plain was my first app and after 18 months on the App Store. At the start of this year, I released a major update which was essentially a complete rewrite. One of the changes I made was to include iAds. It’s not been a huge success for me, with revenue of $4.92 for the last six months. I’ve not seen a live iAd myself yet so I’m assuming part of the problem is a low fill rate.
The app has a pretty poor rating but I’ve never been sure how much of an impact this has had. If I do another version, I may abandon the current version in the App Store and essentially relaunch with a rebranded app.
TaxCalc.ie
Downloads: 694 (up 417 on the previous 26 weeks)
Updates: 28
TaxCalc.ie is my only paid app. I was originally selling it at the €1.59 price point, but over Christmas I decided to experiment with dropping the price to 79 cents. Sales increased by a little more than double which meant I was making a tiny bit more than I was at the old price.
The app is regularly #1 in the Irish Finance apps but this doesn’t translate into huge numbers of downloads. It has rarely had more than 10 downloads in any one day and there have been times it has taken the top spot on the back of three or four downloads. Still, I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and I get a little thrill when I see the app icon used for Finance in the category listings.
The low number of updates isn’t surprising since there hasn’t been an update since early December.
Broadsheet.ie
Downloads: 4,330
Updates: 3,045
Broadsheet.ie was the first of two apps I’ve released this year. It’s based on the first version of TTWordPress (which I originally wrote for the Visionary.ie app). Of all the apps it certainly gets the most usage and there is a constant stream of reviews and suggestions. The app certainly wouldn’t be such a success without the content coming from the website since it is rather basic.
Visionary.ie
Downloads: 1,290
Updates: 320
Visionary.ie is the other app I’ve released this year. Considering it’s a very niche market (i.e. mostly clients of Darren) I’m very pleased how well the app has done. There was a huge surge of downloads initially as the app was mentioned in a photography newsletter. Since then it’s slowed to a trickle but that was fully expected.
Of the four apps, I track usage in three of them via Flurry (TaxCalc.ie being the odd one out as I don’t want people to think I’m sending any of their tax information outside of the app). The most interesting piece of information for me is the percentage of users with iOS 4 and the percentage using an iPhone 3G. Between 66% (for Broadsheet.ie) and 78% (for the other two) of users have a device running iOS 4 and less than 3% still have a 3G. Considering that there’s been just under 7000 users of the three apps (with very little cross over between them) that gives about 210 3G to 5460 on iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs and iPad users. This makes me think it’s getting to the stage where dropping iOS 3 support is not going to hugely impact on downloads.
Overall I’m happy enough with how my apps are doing, especially considering how little I directly promote them.