An industry where 25 new competitors crop up every day would make any entrepreneur anxious. That's the situation iPhone developers find themselves in as
The store, Apple's
The newest tactic: banding together in small groups to promote their applications outside of the App Store. That's the idea behind AppStoreGems.com, a stand-alone Web site that launched in late August. The simple but elegant site currently highlights six iPhone applications, ranging from a personal budget tracker to a global positioning system's (GPS) navigation service. Users can browse the apps and learn about their prices and basic functions. The site then leads them to the App Store, where they can purchase the programs.
"Countless new apps come out every day and fizzle out on launch," says John Casasanta, a Mac and iPhone developer who came up with the AppStoreGems idea. "You have to find alternative ways of getting noticed."
AppStoreGems also functions as an advertising co-op. The developers involved have purchased print and online ads as a group. The first major ad will appear in the October issue of Macworld magazine. More ads in tech-oriented publications, on- and offline, are planned.
Such ads generally cost thousands of dollars, making them costly bets for individual developers selling apps that sell for a few dollars apiece, says Casasanta. (Apple takes 30% of the selling price for iPhone apps; developers get the remaining 70%.)
Come January, the group probably will collectively rent a booth at Macworld, the giant, Apple-centric conference/expo, to promote its apps. "Working with talented people makes the whole thing easier to pull off and more fun," says Austin Sarner, a developer who helped create AppStoreGems.
The strategy has its challenges. In the two weeks since it went live, AppStoreGems has attracted only 16,000 visitors, reports Casasanta--fewer than he had hoped to see. TapTapTap.com, a site that features his entire portfolio of iPhone applications, has enjoyed about 10 times as many visitors, thanks in part to a popular blog Casasanta maintains there.
To attract traffic, he is considering adding a user comment section, a blog, contests and giveaways to AppStoreGems. "Right now, it looks like a big ad," admits Casasanta. "Giving it more of a community feel would be good."
As with any cooperative effort, all the members are expected to pitch in to keep the operation running. Casasanta has asked AppStoreGems members to contribute to ad design, site design and upkeep. Those that didn't are likely to get dropped in the next few months when the group adds new members. Eventually, members will be allowed to rotate in and out every month or so, to keep the group under 10 to 12 members at a time.
Members say they're willing to give the site more time to prove itself. "I'm not judging it yet, but I think it can only help," says Sarner.
Other creative promotions will likely follow. "It's a smart strategy," says Greg Yardley, chief executive of Pinch Media, a New York-based start-up that aims to be the
The goal for everyone in the App Store is to break into at least the top 100 list or, better yet, the top 25 or 10. The much-perused lists each represent "an order of magnitude" difference in sales, says Yardley. Notching a place in the top 100 yields sales about 200% higher than not being in the top 100, he adds. Making the top 25 drives sales more than 500% higher than being in the top 100, he says.
Casasanta says his most popular app, "Where To," which locates points of interest using the phone's GPS, is currently ranked No. 20. It regularly sells more than 1,000 copies a day, he reports. One of his less popular apps, a tip calculator called Tipulator, which has not made the top 100, usually draws fewer than 20 buyers a day.
Anxious to win a spot on at least the top 100 lists, some developers are resorting to tricks. One common one: A developer might give away apps for a period before slapping on a price. The AppStore nonetheless counts the giveaways as part of the new app's popularity, thereby artificially boosting its ranking.
Casasanta says he has pointed out the loophole to Apple, which will re-rank such apps when flagged. Frequently updating an app also temporarily boosts sales, because some store lists rank apps by release dates.
Less than two months after the App Store's debut, most developers are still relying on the App Store and word-of-mouth to yield sales. Pinch Media, for instance, is working with a few dozen developers. But Yardley predicts the numbers will grow as apps multiply. (He predicts there will be as many as 10,000 by next year.)
"It could be extremely difficult to get even on the top 100 list without ads and promotions then," he says. "I predict that a lot more developers will start to take this seriously as a business."
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