August 13, 2009

Building a Profitable iPhone App

This is one of the better and more to-the-point presentations on building a successful iPhone app that I’ve seen. A few highlights

  • Exposure is crucial: it pays to make the Top 100 /Top 25/ Top 10 apps lists, by an order of magnitude
  • The App store is designed for maximum turnover, so the best strategy is a burst of maximum exposure, knowing that downloads are going to fade.  Price cuts can juice paid apps (duh), especially if they are well-timed, but you can’t pull this lever with a free application
  • Usage of free apps drops precipitously after one or two days (slide 12).  Paid retains their audiences longer- probably because of consumer investment in the product. Long term audiences are 1% of total downloads on average
  • Majority of free applications are run at most 12 times after first download

iPhone AppStore Secrets - Pinch Media

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