Farm Friends Sales Experiment
Jen Gordon Sep 20

Hey all - Jen here :)

If you're reading this post, you're probably trying to figure out how to make a profitable business selling iPhone apps too! While I can't claim to help you sell your app, I will be documenting my journey, which will hopefully glean results we can all use :)

Rather than horde stats, tactics and results I've decided for our latest release "Farm Friends" to publish everything:

  1. Marketing/PR strategies
  2. Steps taken to execute strategies
  3. Daily results - App Store ranking and download stats

Each day I'll be documenting strategy, action and resulting stats. I'll probably find a better way to document this info in a more easily digestible manner - any tips on that are welcome!

Here's where we stand so far.

Pre-release Promotion

  1. Marketing/PR strategies
    1. Define target audience: Parents with iPhone/iPod Touch
    2. Generate awareness with target audience
    3. Communicate with target audience about the app
  2. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Created a landing page for the app
    2. Created a Facebook fan page
    3. Created a "Get a Free Copy" form on landing page to collect email addresses of interested parties
    4. Leaving comments on blogs that talk about kid-related apps
    5. Direct communication with some mom bloggers
  3. Daily results
    1. http://www.theiphonemom.com/ wrote about Farm Friends
    2. Design Mom wrote about Farm Friends
    3. We had about 174 people that signed up for a free copy of FF. We collected email addresses for about 6 weeks prior to launch.

09/16/2009 - Wednesday

  1. Price - 99¢
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Get the word out via Facebook and Twitter
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. The night prior I reached out to about 30 of my Clever Twist Facebook friends individually. I wrote each person a message about Farm Friends, annoucing the release and asking them to pass the message along. I did not send canned messages, each message was based on my relationship with that person.
    2. Sent out Twitter messages: Teach your Kid how to Oink [IPHONE] <--CUTE http://bit.ly/q0wCo
    3. Called friends and family to download.
  4. Daily results
    1. 10 downloads
    2. $6 revenue
    3. 7 of the 10 downloads were the people I called personally asking them to download.

09/17/2009 - Thursday

  1. Price - Free for half the day, 99¢ for half the day
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. No specified goal, really didn't do much this day
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Reached out to author on HARO that was writing an article about parents/iphone
    2. Talked to PR contact that promised to send out a twitter/FB blast to his people
  4. Daily results
    1. 74 Downloads
    2. $4 revenue
    3. 6 of the 74 downloads were paid at 99¢

09/18/2009 - Friday

  1. Price - Free
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. No specific goal
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. 8:00am - @PerryBelcher Farm Friends iPhone app FREE today only! http://bit.ly/PREH8
    2. 8:30am - Farm Friends iPhone app FREE today only! #farmfriends http://bit.ly/PREH8
    3. 8:30am - Send out email blast to the Farm Friends list collected from the "Free Copy" form. Told them Farm Friends would be free all of Friday.
    4. Networked with a dev friend who agreed to download and review FF
    5. Responded to 6 support emails 4 were positive reviews and 2 were negative, complaining of sound glitches
    6. Hoo Dee Hoo posted a review. Decided to keep FF free for a while longer for her audience to grab a copy
  4. Daily results
    1. 1563 downloads
    2. $0 revenue

09/19/2009 - Saturday

  1. Price - Free
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Decided to keep Farm Friends free indefinitely to try to push it into the top 10 for kids games in the US
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Responded to two support emails
  4. Daily results
    1. 901 downloads
    2. Ranking is US, games/kids category = 27
    3. $0 revenue

09/20/2009 - Sunday

  1. Price - Free
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Day off
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Wrote this article
  4. Daily results
    1. 746 downloads
    2. Ranking is US, games/kids category = 30
    3. $0 revenue

09/21/2009 - Monday

  1. Price - Free
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Reach out for feedback from people signed up for a free copy on FF website. Give them the opp to download or review app in iTunes and call me with any issues they found with the app.
    2. Reach out to 50 more friends on Facebook
    3. Promote the Farm Friends Sales Experiment on iPhone-related blogs
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Sent email campaign around 9am with a/b split test subject line "Farm Friends Feedback" and "Farm Friends Follow Up"
    2. "Farm Friends Follow Up" won the split test
    3. Sent 212 emails, got 94 opens, got 8% click rate
  4. Daily results
    1. 539 downloads
    2. Ranking is US, games/kids category = 34
    3. $0 revenue

09/22/2009 - Tuesday

  1. Price - Free up until 2pm, then up to 99¢
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Not much - we've had flooding here in atl and being home with the kids = no work gets done! :)
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
    1. Got an inquiry from a NYT writer, interested in iPhone apps for kids. Followed up with info on FF
  4. Daily results
    1. 217 downloads (6 paid downloads)
    2. Ranking is US, games/kids category = 34
    3. $4.20 revenue

09/23/2009 - Wednesday

  1. Price - 99¢
  2. Marketing/PR Strategies
    1. Trying not to give up :)
    2. Reaching out to development community with this blog post
  3. Steps taken to execute strategies
  4. Daily results
    1. -- downloads (6 paid downloads)
    2. Ranking is US, games/kids category = --
    3. -- revenue

 

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Enter your info below and I'll let you know. And please leave comments - I'm happy to provide whatever info I can to help figure this thing out for both you and me! :) jen

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Comments

  1. Posted by Brian Cauble on 20/9/09

    As always, this is a great article. We have seen very similar results with one of our new products. While it was paid, it was averaging about 20 downloads a day. We put it out yesterday for free and had about 800 downloads. We are considering just putting out a free version with ads in it. I’d love to hear your thoughts some time.

  2. Posted by jen on 20/9/09

    hey brian – tks for the comment and yea the results are pretty discouraging. Ad revenue is certainly a possibility, but for this app I think parents could get upset having their kids getting wrapped up in accidental hits on ads.

    It’s certainly something we considered but ultimately knew it would also be cheating the system since kids most likely have no intention of buying stuff from ads :P

    Definitely let’s catch up on this – and anyone else out there please provide your feedback too! :) jen

  3. Posted by Joe Johnson on 22/9/09

    Hey Jen – don’t get discouraged, love the art in your app. We’re experiencing similar results with sales.
    What would be great is if apple would let us (the developers) cross promote within kids games. Buy this app get this app free kind of stuff.
    I’ve also considered adding advertising to a free version of my app, but I really don’t think parents would appreciate it.

  4. Posted by Gil G on 22/9/09

    Great Article! Could you perhaps share what application you are using that is shown in the screen shot?

  5. Posted by Nathan Peterson on 22/9/09

    Nice blog post. I hope you keep updating this. Those numbers are discouraging, but it looks like a great app. I am interested to see if you guys figure out a marketing strategy that works for you. Keep it up! Btw what is this reporting software that you are using?

  6. Posted by jen on 22/9/09

    hey all the reporting software being used is Appviz: http://www.ideaswarm.com/products/appviz/

    best $30 i’ve spent —

  7. Posted by Adam Alexander on 23/9/09

    Gil, that looks like AppViz to me. I use it also to track my app sales and highly recommend it. The developer is responsive, releases updates often, and is active on Twitter.

  8. Posted by John on 23/9/09

    In my experience, it is generally a mistake to start off free and then try to move to paid. Once your app is offered for free, that is the expectation and the value users ascribe to it. You’re better off starting at the price you want to charge and then using short term sales or free days.

  9. Posted by Matt Martel on 23/9/09

    Jen, this is a tough problem. You obviously have software with value/appeal to certain users, but maybe your experiments will take a little more time. If you look at the recent Fling case study, they kept it at free for an extended period to maximize the viral distribution. You can’t necessarily do that because the ones that “buy” it are not the ones that use it. You might try having a free/lite version in addition, or you might try putting it to free for a longer period of time, because it looks like you were getting a good deal of downloads. Weekends and launch days are always way higher for me, so you have to expect the trough during the week days. Finally, you need app reviews. Having fan pages and web sites is not enough. Until it gets mentioned in a review or an iTunes ‘staff picks’ nobody will find it. How about using prMac or MacTech News to distribute a real press release? You already have most of the pieces of the puzzle, I hope the rest falls into place for you.

  10. Posted by Andrew B. on 23/9/09

    Great post, thanks for sharing. It’s nice to see what strategies other developers are employing.
    Here are 2 posts I wrote about pricing experiments (a week at $0.99 and a day at Free) on my app:

    http://www.babybinks.com/2009/09/in-app-store-week-at-099.html
    http://www.babybinks.com/2009/09/in-app-store-day-at-free.html

  11. Posted by Joe Johnson on 24/9/09

    jen – come back from the dark side

  12. Posted by jen on 24/9/09

    @joe where is the dark side and how to I get out?? :D

    @john the app ran paid for a couple of days with pitiful downloads (the only people that downloaded were people i reached out to personally – friends/fam)

    @matt I’d love to hear more about your experience with prMac. I’ve used them twice for launches and even though Ray is the awesomest dude ever I got maybe 20 – 25 hits on my Clever Twist page from those runs.

    I did use PitchEngine and got some decent traffic from that, actually better than prMac, but didn’t renew the $300/yr subscription so the press release isn’t live anymore —

    thanks guys for the feedback!! :D jen

  13. Posted by Nathan Peterson on 24/9/09

    What are you using for your search keywords on itunes connect? I just tried searching iTunes for “baby games” and farm friends doesn’t even show up. I know some developers who have seen HUGE increases in downloads simply by changing some keywords.

  14. Posted by Tomer Tishgarten on 25/9/09

    Hi Jen — I love your app — very cool idea! A couple of questions for you:

    Have you tried to tie your app to an upcoming event/holiday (or even season) that’s popular with kids in order to make the app more relevant and then use that to generate more buzz? IOW, can you easily create a Halloween branded or a Fall branded FF app?

    Also, did you have any luck determine what’s the market opportunity/competitors for your app and how are they marketing their’s? I looked at Parenting.com and NYTimes.com reviews of iPhone apps for kids and they seem to be targeted at users that are 4+. The good news is that your pricing seems to be on the mark. Any insights for that analysis that you can share?

    Tomer

  15. Posted by John on 25/9/09

    Have you thought about moving the app to the Education section? The competition there is nothing like it is in Games and I think you’ve got a good basis for putting it there based on some of the other apps I’ve seen in that section.

  16. Posted by jen on 25/9/09

    @john – i just changed the primary category from “games” to education” – i had them the other way around b/c the games category had a “kids” subcategory. But i think trying Eduation as a primary is worth a shot. You’re right there’s less competition there :)

    tks for the feedback!! :) jen

  17. Posted by david on 28/10/09

    Have you just given up on this app?

  18. Posted by software development london on 1/12/09

    That was an inspiring post,

    Keep up the good work,

    Thanks for writing, most people don’t bother.

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