Rith: App-Store Performance

April 29, 2010

Since there always seems to be great interest in sales on the App store, particularly for independent developers, I have decided to post sales information here, as well as my efforts to increase sales. Hopefully this will be of interest to other iPhone developers.

First, I must say that I don't expect to make a ton of money from Rith. It's a math game! But, I enjoyed writing it, and I think there is a segment of the population that will really enjoy the game. I wrote the game to learn more about programming on the iPhone and because I wanted to work on my game design skills.

That being said, I did decide to take basic measures to try to increase sales. First and foremost, I made the app free and decided to make money on in-app purchases. As I've told others, it's hard to make money on a $0.99 app; you can't even put things on sale without losing a revenue stream. But, how many people log on to the App store on a daily basis to look for new apps? I don't. I do, however, monitor apps which are on sale. I've gotten a lot of reasonable apps (and some awful ones) for free that way.

Now, for the interesting part. While I want Rith to be free, my first technique to gain exposure is to occasionally put it on "sale" for $0.99 (tier 1) so that it will get more exposure when it goes back to being free. For now, I'm trying the second iteration of this, and we'll see how it works out in a few days.