I love these posts, and I am rooting for you guys, but find it a little depressing that you first started making real money by cloning someone else's crappy novelty fluff app.
Innovation is overrated- users don't care about it, they care about delivered value. Half the time the innovators have crappy executions, but are so wedded to their idea that they refuse to simplify, change, and evolve.
That's when cloners come in and beat the living daylights out of them by copying and improving upon their innovation.
Incredibly well-written for a HBS book, lots of solid case studies, and some interesting research into the nitty gritty numbers behind innovation vs imitation.
Thanks doomlaser. With little money (especially back in September), it's incredibly risky to innovate, and in today's world, everything is a derivative of the other in some form. e.g., Facebook from MySpace, Lamborghini from Ferrari. Talking Gremlin was exactly this, on a smaller scale.
This is our philosophy: Find a successful business -> Discover as much as possible about it -> Re-implement it all -> Then battle them for supremacy.
Having an enemy brings out our primal instincts. Boom. :)
There's a real nugget of wisdom in listening to angry customers. So many customers will say something nice to not offend.
When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say.
So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this person or other who liked their startup. I always ask did anyone say they didn't like it? Usually they say sure but I just ignored them - big mistake.
I believe Erik Ries said much of the same thing in a talk I saw once (can't find it now, of course). The gist of it was that nobody likes to get angry, and angry customers are therefor especially important because they actually care enough about your product to get angry at you for screwing it up.
You've kind of hit the nail on the head right there. We made precisely the same mistake with CopterKid, believing it to be virtually faultless in every regard. It's all about being sensible enough to decipher a well-wished constructive/negative criticism from a downright trollish one.
Thanks for sharing as well.
Seems that you had a three pronged approach to success:
1. Create something that has a proven market, and do it well (Talking Tom Cat clone)
2. Viral marketing (Youtube videos and Facebook sharing) As well as cross app promotion
3. Create more apps with the same formula and framework already set up.
This should work for a lot of other devs as well, although they may not see the same level of success as these gentlemen.
As a fellow indie dev with some success in the app store, I'm always happy to hear of other indies become successful. I think the App Store has really flipped traditional software sales on its head and made it possible for the likes of you and I to compete head to head with billion dollar companies. It's quite remarkable and I hope this is just the beginning.
@bignoggins - Absolutely, I could never have imagined I would be running a business where we make our own products from scratch, without all the large scale corporate mumbo jumbo.
p.s. great website, good to see you're able to live the dream and travel the world!
Hmm, the shareware market before the app store was pretty lucrative too.
The app store didn't really change anything for small shops. If you compete against big money on the app store you still have the problem that they have a lot more marketing money to spend. And marketing is still of #1 importance.
The only difference is that the download portal now takes 30% of your money for the privilege of being listed there. You still have to make some buzz so that people learn about your product.
I'm on the app store with my products but I really don't like the concept.
Great story, I'm a long time lurker but created an account to comment/question. From what I could gather in the 3 posts, it looks like neither of you guys were technical at the very beginning. Did one of you eventually learn to code/design, or is that portion still hired out? What qualities did you look for when hiring coders?
Great question, I'm pretty technical since I've was developing websites for several years before starting FIPLAB. At times, I even figure out how to code things when our programmer can't figure it out. I always look for the simplest way to build something, especially when we are under a tight deadline and need to ship before the competition does.
Also, I still do a lot of the design work myself (obviously not the 3d modelling/animation though) - but more UI/Icon design.
As for hiring coders, the number one thing we look for is a proactive and 'never give up' attitude. Can't stand it where in the past a programmer has given up after spending just 1 hour trying to code a particular feature. If they can't be bothered find/figure out the solution, then they'll never mix well with our team.
I am especially curious how effective you guys found paid advertising to be - the conventional wisdom I've heard is that it's pretty pointless for advertising App Store apps.
Are you guys still doing any paid advertising these days, or is it mostly organic/word of mouth/cross promotion at this point?
Thanks. Paid advertising is pretty much useless, unless you have very deep pockets. We just splashed a bit of cash on it as we needed to do everything possible to break into the Top 25 'Golden Zone'. We also got a very good deal at $0.01 CPC and they matched our initial deposit of $250.
I'm really enjoying these articles. Thanks for sharing.
Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
Hi, Anirudh here, and thanks for reading. Although iAds eCPM has dropped, we normally still manage high single digit figures. Our revenues from ads have roughly halved, but there are the odd anomalies in eCPM rates. For instance, yesterday was pretty stellar at a $17.7 eCPM average. Certainly, late last year, especially when iAds was first launched in the UK, ad revenue and CPM rates were at their peak.
However, by moving onto the Mac App Store at an early stage with popular apps, we have shifted from solely relying on large ad revenues as our income source to paid app income. Our overall daily turnover ratio between paid app earnings and ad revenue is now roughly 50-50.
Open to answering any more questions directly here on HN, so do keep them coming.
On your website it says "If you have an interesting project to propose to us then we’d love to hear from you."
Is that still the case, or are you guys swamped at the moment ? If you are still accepting new projects, would you perhaps go into some detail on the workflow/costs etc. Thanks much.
Please don't take this the wrong way, this is a serious question, and I hope you give it some serious thought before you answer.
Do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel like this is the most you can contribute to human civilization? If you could, how would you most like to make the world a better place?
That's a silly question for someone starting their first business.
Most great philanthropists only dive in in their 50's and 60's.
Elon Musk started a mapping site in his 20's, which put him in position for PayPal, which gave him the capital to launch rockets into space.
If more people focused on making money in their 20's, real money, scalable money, there'd be more shoot for the stars entrepreneurs in their 30's and 40's, and more world class philanthropists in their 50's and 60's.
[+] [-] doomlaser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinplamondon|14 years ago|reply
That's when cloners come in and beat the living daylights out of them by copying and improving upon their innovation.
There's a fantastic book on this, 'Copycats':
http://www.amazon.com/Copycats-Smart-Companies-Imitation-Str...
Incredibly well-written for a HBS book, lots of solid case studies, and some interesting research into the nitty gritty numbers behind innovation vs imitation.
[+] [-] wyldstallyn26|14 years ago|reply
This is our philosophy: Find a successful business -> Discover as much as possible about it -> Re-implement it all -> Then battle them for supremacy. Having an enemy brings out our primal instincts. Boom. :)
[+] [-] joelhaus|14 years ago|reply
Part 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214
Part 2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965929
[+] [-] rmason|14 years ago|reply
When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say.
So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this person or other who liked their startup. I always ask did anyone say they didn't like it? Usually they say sure but I just ignored them - big mistake.
[+] [-] mluiten|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldstallyn26|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 201studio|14 years ago|reply
1. Create something that has a proven market, and do it well (Talking Tom Cat clone) 2. Viral marketing (Youtube videos and Facebook sharing) As well as cross app promotion 3. Create more apps with the same formula and framework already set up.
This should work for a lot of other devs as well, although they may not see the same level of success as these gentlemen.
[+] [-] bignoggins|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bignoggins|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldstallyn26|14 years ago|reply
p.s. great website, good to see you're able to live the dream and travel the world!
[+] [-] leon_|14 years ago|reply
The app store didn't really change anything for small shops. If you compete against big money on the app store you still have the problem that they have a lot more marketing money to spend. And marketing is still of #1 importance.
The only difference is that the download portal now takes 30% of your money for the privilege of being listed there. You still have to make some buzz so that people learn about your product.
I'm on the app store with my products but I really don't like the concept.
[+] [-] gwhy|14 years ago|reply
Great story, I'm a long time lurker but created an account to comment/question. From what I could gather in the 3 posts, it looks like neither of you guys were technical at the very beginning. Did one of you eventually learn to code/design, or is that portion still hired out? What qualities did you look for when hiring coders?
Thanks!
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
Great question, I'm pretty technical since I've was developing websites for several years before starting FIPLAB. At times, I even figure out how to code things when our programmer can't figure it out. I always look for the simplest way to build something, especially when we are under a tight deadline and need to ship before the competition does.
Also, I still do a lot of the design work myself (obviously not the 3d modelling/animation though) - but more UI/Icon design.
As for hiring coders, the number one thing we look for is a proactive and 'never give up' attitude. Can't stand it where in the past a programmer has given up after spending just 1 hour trying to code a particular feature. If they can't be bothered find/figure out the solution, then they'll never mix well with our team.
[+] [-] stevenwei|14 years ago|reply
I am especially curious how effective you guys found paid advertising to be - the conventional wisdom I've heard is that it's pretty pointless for advertising App Store apps.
Are you guys still doing any paid advertising these days, or is it mostly organic/word of mouth/cross promotion at this point?
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottchin|14 years ago|reply
Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
[+] [-] wyldstallyn26|14 years ago|reply
However, by moving onto the Mac App Store at an early stage with popular apps, we have shifted from solely relying on large ad revenues as our income source to paid app income. Our overall daily turnover ratio between paid app earnings and ad revenue is now roughly 50-50.
Open to answering any more questions directly here on HN, so do keep them coming.
[+] [-] dxbydt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkamb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TheSOB88|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
But I guess you learn to get used to it.
[+] [-] dusklight|14 years ago|reply
Do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel like this is the most you can contribute to human civilization? If you could, how would you most like to make the world a better place?
[+] [-] colinplamondon|14 years ago|reply
Most great philanthropists only dive in in their 50's and 60's.
Elon Musk started a mapping site in his 20's, which put him in position for PayPal, which gave him the capital to launch rockets into space.
If more people focused on making money in their 20's, real money, scalable money, there'd be more shoot for the stars entrepreneurs in their 30's and 40's, and more world class philanthropists in their 50's and 60's.
[+] [-] rgrieselhuber|14 years ago|reply
Isn't it hard enough figuring that out for your own life?