I ate my computer

Black Friday¹ 2024 is over, and as I said previously, I'll try to be more open about how my apps performed. So, how did all of this go?

Short anwser: not good and not bad.

As a disclaimer, I should start by stating a few things:

• Those apps are not my main job, I do this on the side.
• I spent 0€ in marketing
• I have low numbers of downloads

Downloads

This period had no impact. Normally I would be around 10 downloads per day, for all my apps, and as you can see in the graph below, the sales period (from Nov 29 to Dec 3) had no effect on the downloads. In fact, I could even say this is the worst period from the last 30 days.

Each day of the sales periods, downloads were lower than most of the days during the last month. Not good. Compared to last year, where we can see that the sales period had a real effect on the number of downloads—peaking at an astonishing 19 units on November 25th 2023.

On a positive note, we can see that I have more downloads per day than a year ago, which is a good sign.

Obviously doing no marketing, doesn't drive downloads, posting on social networks (Mastodon, X, etc...) about the sales, is also limited by the reach you have, and I have a small one.

This year, like last year, my Black Friday sales were part of the #IndieAppSales, and more and more apps are participating. More than 300 for 2023, and more than 400 this year, looking at the website, there are actually over 600 apps. This makes discoverability only by the #IndieAppSales less likely.

In my case, I saw absolutely zero increase in downloads this year. I did nothing more and nothing less than last year. Perhaps the #IndieAppSales is mostly seen by other developers (doubt it), and the interested ones already own my apps, or none of my apps are interesting. 😅

For information, the peak at 30 downloads on November 4th, is due to the release of Tooly, which added 21 downloads on that day, and 5 on average until November 17. After that, 0 or 1. Games, is still the app that drive the most downloads.

Benefits

As you might have already guessed, no download, no benefits. The sales period was no different than other periods.

This two peaks are due to Tooly. Thankfully, someone bought the Lifetime unlock on November 9 (🙏)² and, another person's 1-week trial converted on November 18 (🙏).

Apart from that, benefits are identical to what happens normally.

To be exact, during this Black Friday I made $7.42, which is half of what I made during Black Friday 2023, with a beautiful $16.

Thanks to Tooly higher price and different business model, November will be my best month this year (and since I started publishing apps on my own), with a total income of $140.

On January 2nd, I posted on Mastodon, saying that I wanted to increase the revenue of my apps in 2024 and set a goal of purchasing a Studio Display. The year isn't over, but it clearly seems like I failed, as I still don't have a Studio Display. On the bright side, I increased my revenue: in 2023 I made $206, and in 2024 so far I made $582— more than 2x!

What's next

Obviously there is a lot to do. First is the goal: what do I want to achieve with those apps?

At this time, I have full time job and since I finished school³ I always wanted to have my own business, and living from my apps would be a dream. We're not there yet. Is this what I'm aiming for right now? I'm not sure.

Anyway, there are changes that need to be made.

Pricing

I think right now that I don't charge enough and I charge too much.

I have the following pricing:

+----------+-----------------+---------------------------------------+
|   App    |       IAP       |             Subscription              |
+----------+-----------------+---------------------------------------+
| Games    | 3.99€ ($3.99)   |                                       |
| Amiilog  | 3.99€ ($3.99)   |                                       |
| TileSwap | 3.99€ ($3.99)   |                                       |
| Tooly    | 79.99€ ($69.99) | 0.99€ ($0.99) Weekly                  |
|          |                 | 29.99€ ($24.99) Yearly (1 week trial) |
+----------+-----------------+---------------------------------------+

I think TileSwap and Amiilog could go for 1€ or 2€ more and remain single IAP that unlock the full app.

Games is not priced high enough, and since I still spend a lot of time on it, I think moving to a subscription and lifetime option is the way to go. Nothing too expensive, though.

Tooly which I just released, might be overpriced. I aimed it at a professional audience, and I thought pricing it in the higher range would make more sense. This kind of pricing might work for companies; unfortunately, those aren't my customers (yet?). As it is, the Lifetime option might seem too much for the value provided by the app (compared to free websites). Also, the weekly subscription seems like an error. I saw it as a way to get the tools for cheap while doing something specific during a short period, and that users would cancel it afterward.

Yes, pricing is hard.

Ratings

One thing I’ve also overlooked in all my apps is asking users to rate the app and leave a review. Good ratings and reviews help—users tend to download apps with better ratings. And who doesn’t want a good rating for their app? 😁

As usual, it’s about finding the right balance between asking too much at the wrong time and not asking enough. For example, Tooly never asks users to leave a review, but the option is available from the About screen and the Tooly menu item in the menu bar. I’m not sure users will take the initiative to do it on their own.

On the other hand, Games asks in three different places: after adding a custom cover, after setting up a backup, and after adding a game—but always only once per app version.

Amiilog and TileSwap have no rating/review mechanisms at all.

There’s definitely room for improvement.

Communications

Something that I clearly overlooked is a way for me to communicate about price change and sales. In Tooly 1.0.1, the paywall was updated to handle the price change and show Black Friday messaging.

This is not the case for my other apps. So users seeing the paywall might just see it as the regular price and not bother buying it, because (apart from the app itself) they don't see an incentive to make the purchase.

Maybe using push notifications to inform about the sale, could help, but this is something I don't want to do. Receiving unsolicited notification for price drops—where none of the app uses notifications for anything—is just SPAM.

Other ways to improve all of this would obviously be better ASO, SEO and advertising. Unfortunately I'm not good at any of them, so it might be time to invest in this instead of only adding features.