Late Night Post 1
I really apologize that I haven’t quite updated this in a while. I promise that I am going to post some graphs soon on how BarCards fared with the different publicity that it received, but now is not the time.
I guess this is more of a late night musing on something I had on my mind. I met up with some friends for drinks for a guy who I used to work with who is leaving the corporate world to pursue his dream of getting a degree in Philosophy. While I was at that event with a lot of folks I used to work with, they asked me how the app was going, what updates I have coming out, and some of the things I have learned. I thought this might be a good post.
Lessons Learned
I always think that you learn the most out of your failures, so I want to lead with the lessons learned (Lord knows I have learned a lot from this experience!). As I have mentioned before, I am not very technical at all, and if there is another person like me out there creating their own app, these are some of the things I would have done differently:
1.) Make only one version of the app and make it free.
I know this sounds contrary to thought, but check out Free Apps Doesn’t Mean No Revenue which was pointed out to me by Andrew over at Fingerbakery. I completely agree with him that the shift will be towards giving away free apps with In App Purchases that allow users to purchase additional functionality.
As an Industrial Engineer, this makes complete sense to me: it is easier to expand something that I currently have than to purchase a “Full Version” and have two separate applications. Think of how most paid software works, you have the demo/trial version of software and then you purchase the full version that unlocks more features on the current program. This is how it has worked for quite a while, and I think it makes sense in the App Store.
I am working on another iPhone App (a party game in the same vein as Charades, Taboo, Catchphrase but will get a LOT of laughs), and I am completely adopting this model in that game.
2.) Have a page/links to your Facebook Fan Page and Twitter Account.
You are in 2010, not 2005. If you don’t have a social media presence, then you are just kind of dumb. It is worth having a place for people to conglomerate to talk about your app or to point their network to your app.
While I had the Facebook and Twitter accounts, I did not make it easy for people to get to them from the app. This was just as stupid as not having one.
3.) Update Often
This has been the cardinal sin that I have committed. I got a lot of press on BarCards, we knew there were updates we wanted to make, and we just kind of stalled out. We do have updates coming out, but I am a little concerned that they might be too late. I guess we will see.
I will say that you don’t have to adhere to this rule all the time. This next game that I am releasing is going to be incredibly simple and we are not going to be as concerned in building a community with it like we are with BarCards. Then again, if the consumer wants it, we will be listening.
How BarCards Is Doing
Since a lot of the pub has died down, you can imagine that the downloads have died down in the same manner. This is true, though we are pulling in anywhere from 2-10 paid downloads a day and 5-15 free downloads. I guess this is pretty good considering there has not been any updates.
We also got a nice review on TechRockstar as being one of three apps that they suggested for a night out and this just happened two days ago, so we still are getting a little press. This was cool because they had actually reviewed BarCards for the first time in the middle of June in an article I completely missed!
I guess for not having an update, it is not going completely all that bad.
What Updates I Have Coming Out
The next thing is the updates that I have coming out. My devs have been working hard on two main things that will be an update for BarCards.
First, we are working on having a pretty slick website that users will be able to use some of their creativity. I think that this will really get people all excited about the game all over again. I will just leave it at that for now and hope that you drop by when it is all done.
Second, the app itself is going to have some updates. We are going to be providing some new cards which I know a lot of people are looking for. There are going to be some bug fixes and we are also adding some features to help you find the answers to some of the cards that are more trivia oriented. Overall, I think players will like it.
These are the short term features and I hope that it will regain some interest so we can pursue our long term goals.
So that is where I currently stand; I am excited to share with you some of the download history graphs along with letting you know as the BarCards updates come and App Number 2 is released!
