Pick me! Pick me!
Getting ahead in the Apple App Store
Mobile Monday Sydney May 4th 2009
Keith Ahern
Co-founder mogeneration.com
@pubzak (personal)
@mogeneration (business)
We put big ideas in small devices - mogeneration.com
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Background
‣ Keith Ahern co-founded
mogeneration in September
2008 with Tom Adams.
‣ Chairman is Ilkka Tales who
founded VOIP company
engin and has a long history
with mobile companies.
‣ Graham Dawson is a
mogeneration shareholder
and developer. He created
OzWeather, the most your
successful paid App with company
Australian content. here
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Overview
‣ interrobang ‽
‣ how to get your app noticed
‣ iPhone 3.0 - does it change
anything?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Interrobang
‽
A sentence ending with an interrobang expresses excitement or
disbelief in the form of a question
For example:
■ They did what‽
■ WTF‽
■ Excess data charges cost how much‽
Source: wikipedia
The mobile industry is full of interrobangs. so is this presentation.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

MoGeneration update
due to the fall of capitalism...
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

mogeneration update
due to the fall of capitalism...
MoGeneration
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

mogeneration update‽
due to the fall of capitalism...
MoGeneration
‽
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Mobile survey
‣ In the last month:
‣ Who bought content paid for by Premium SMS?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Mobile survey
‣ In the last month:
‣ Who bought content paid for by Premium SMS?
‣ Who bought content paid for by Carrier billing?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Mobile survey
‣ In the last month:
‣ Who bought content paid for by Premium SMS? 1
‣ 3
Who bought content paid for by Carrier billing?
30-40
‣ Who bought iPhone apps?
(results in red, approx 150 people surveyed)
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

iPhone App Stats as of May 2009
‣ 1 Billion apps downloaded in 9 months since July 2008 (source
Apple)
‣ 35,000 apps available (source Apple)
‣ 500K iPhone OS devices in Australia (source mogeneration here-
say, conjecture and eavesdropping on carriers)
‣ 33 apps on average per iphone‽
‣ 1,000 new apps released per week.
‣ Surge in iPhone developer applications since 3.0 announced
(source Apple)
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Golden days of app store marketing - there was
no marketing.
“if you build it they will come”
Some guy from the movie
“Field of Dreams”
‣ From July 08 until around October 08 an app would stick around
on the “recently released” list for a few days and sell.
‣ This suited most developers just fine, they didn’t need to put
effort into marketing.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Rising to the top
‣ Cross promotion
‣ Advertising
‣ Word of mouth
‣ Blogosphere
‣ Review sites
‣ “Lite” (free) vs. Paid
‣ Analytics, feedback
‣ Apple publicity
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Cross promotion
‣ Tell your existing users about your
iPhone app, especially if they are on the
iPhone!
‣ m.news.com.au had a 28% increase in
traffic when mobile users were directed
to the mobile version automatically.
‣ You can detect an iPhone user anytime
they consume web content including rich
HTML emails and calling web services.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Advertising
‣ Apps can be installed from a link in an
email or on the web. The link will start
iTunes.
‣ leverage existing online ad
networks
‣ Links work on both PC and iPhone.
‣ Considered ‘rude’ to start iTunes/App
Store on a device without a landing
page
‣ Affiliates - get 5% commission for
selling your own apps!
‣ Problem: CPC often too high for
$0.99c apps
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Admob Download Exchange
•! Show ads for other apps in exchange for promotion of your app
•! Ads are automatically created for you and targeted based on the App Store profile
•! You choose to serve more paid ads or more exchange ads in your app
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Admob Download Exchange
‣ >80% of AdMob iPhone publishers are participating in the app
exchange
‣ Currently averaging >15K app exchange derived app downloads
per day.
‣ >300K apps have been downloaded via the exchange since
launch (April 09).
‣ 10 apps have >10K downloads each.
‣ >10% conversion rate after the click.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Word of mouth
‣ iPhone apps are possibly the single
most demonstrable (and resellable)
products in existence - all you need
is an iPhone.
‣ Make it easy to send to a friend.
Integrate with the address book -
allow friends to engage
‣ Obama app - phone a friend
‣ millionaire - phone a friend
‣ Aesthetics. “boring” apps have
been given new life with great sexy
sexy
aesthetics business
weather
search
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Word of mouth - urban spoon
‣ One of the top iPhones apps
‣ iPhone version of urbanspoon.com
(they have a website‽) - low profile
until the iPhone app
‣ urbanspoon (company) recently sold
for > $10M USD
‣ Launched widget version of iphone
app UI online.
sexy
restaurant
search
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Word of mouth - flight control
‣ Melbourne based firemint
‣ “warm up game”, dreamt up and
coded by CEO. “fixed up” by the
designers.
‣ 500K unit sales in 4 weeks @ $1USD
‣ 700K unit sales to date
‣ => 700K USD = 960K AUD
‣ less apples share (30%), GST (10%)
‣ => $576K
‣ less estimated production costs $50K
‣ => $526K AUD profit (estimated)
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

blogosphere
‣ blogs
‣ twitter
‣ youtube etc.
‣ monitor with
google alerts
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

review sites
‣ 10-20
significant sites
‣ send a press
release
‣ app coupons
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Lite vs. Paid
‣ Android model
‣ 24 hours for a refund. One top selling game “Kenny
Rogers Blackjack” - has 40% of sales refunded.
‣ In general free but limited apps help sales of paid apps. But
there have been many exceptions.
‣ Apple lite apps must be functional, they can not be called
‘demos’, they can not be crippled with:
‣ time limitations
‣ “upgrade to full” prompts on disabled functionality
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Lite vs. Paid
‣ Lite Success story: iShoot
Via Wired
When iShoot launched in October, business
was slow for a while. And then Nicholas found
some spare time to code a free version of the
app — iShoot Lite, which he released January.
Here’s how that helped: Inside iShoot Lite he
advertised the $3, full version of iShoot. Users
downloaded the free version 2.4 million times.
And that led 320,000 satisfied iShoot Lite
players to pay for iShoot.
The game soared to the No. 1 spot.
$800K USD in 6 months
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Lite vs. Paid
‣ Lite Sob story: Dabble
$35K USD to develop
$535 USD revenue first month.
The lite version had no effect
“Lite”
on sales ‽
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Analytics & Feedback
‣ Analytics tools for iPhone rapidly
maturing
‣ How are your users interacting with
‣ Providers
your application?
‣ admob
‣ Where are your users coming from?
‣ pinch media
‣ What do they love and hate about
‣
your application? mobclix
‣ ‣ Google analytics*
How long are they spending on your
application?
‣ What device types are they coming
from? Are they coming from wifi vs
carrier?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Commbank iPhone App
‣ Lousy app, launches
web browser.
‣ Terrible reviews.
‣ #1 free app for several
weeks ‽
237 “*”
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

App abandonment
‣ Pinch media:
‣ \"20% of people only use free apps after the first day they
download it\" (30% paid)
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

App abandonment
‣ Pinch media:
‣ \"20% of people only use free apps after the first day they
download it\" (30% paid)
‣ \"20% of people only visit a bookmarked webpage after the first
day they bookmark it\"
‣ Nobody would really be bothered by the second stat on a PC.
‣ Push in iPhone 3.0 will help
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Apps are possibly the primary content discovery
mechanism on the iPhone
‣ Hamish and Andy is both
the #1 podcast and a
popular free app
‣ The app is simply the
podcast content, without all
the podcast goodness‽
(background, desktop sync
etc)
‣ Most app users do not
know about the podcast
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Apple publicity
‣ You don’t call Apple, they call you.
‣ App Store
‣ staff picks
‣ featured apps
‣ “special” pages in iTunes
‣ Retail Store
‣ Pre-installed on iPhones / iPod Touches
‣ Genre listing table signage‽
‣ Big shiny icon
‣ Print
Male model (‽) Mick Liubinskas
‣ full page ads in SMH, The Australian
pointing to OzWeather icon in
‣ TV Ads
Apple Store Sydney
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

iPhone 3.0
‣ Apple had a surge in iPhone developer applications for 3.0
‣ 1000 new APIs
‣ In app purchases
‣ time based: subscription models (magazines, books, video)
‣ content based: game levels, game weapons
‣ Push
‣ real time updates: badge, alert, sound notification
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

How mogeneration can help
‣ Strategy
‣ Business models
‣ Development
‣ Marketing
your
‣ Training company
here
Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Contact
Keith Ahern
Founder mogeneration
+61 415 618 993
keith@mogeneration.com
twitter (company) @mogeneration
twitter (personal) @pubzak
Offices in Sydney (Surry Hills) and Brisbane
Tuesday, 5 May 2009