Creating my 1st App

About 4 months ago I decided to produce my first App. It is exciting, scary, new, time consuming, huge investment, it is CHALLENGING and FUN! Now what?

1. Market Research

According to a great site 148Apps.biz and their tracking of the number of applications submitted per month to the iTunes App Store, it seems like there is one game submitted for every 4-5 submitted apps. So, GAME it is! But it is not that simple and I am not that naive either. At this stage I don’t even think of competing against players with big budgets and plenty of resources. My goal is to make a great fun game within my budget, learn how to properly market it and try to recuperate expanses. There is a great article on indie game developer at http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figures-that-might-help-an-indie-developer.html that gives a clear picture of challenges in front of me.

2. Traffic
Where will my traffic come from? It will come from 2 sources: distribution channels and promotions. These two are not to be confused, they are not the same (easy way of understanding that would be shopping vs. advertising.) Distribution channels are simple the places where customers can buy my app. First, and the biggest one of course, is Apple store, than my website, new releases listings, other websites, etc. Promotion strategies will depend on time and money and might include advertising, press releases, contests, social networks, forums, reviews, viral marketing, etc.

3. Conversion
I decided to structure my game as a freemium game. The freemium games are currently a leading model in the industry and are accounting for more than 65% of app revenue right now. There is a lot of analytic tools to help us track different events and conversions in a game. Apsalar and Flurry are probably the most commonly used tools at the moment, but there are tons of others as well. Two things I definitely want to track are number of active daily users in my game and the overall conversion rate (% of users who download the game and decide to purchase an IAP.)

4. Product
After 4 months of hard work and busted budgets; through ideas, concepts, 4 different programmers and 3 different graphic designers; endless late nights on skype; many hours spent learning about different tools for tracking and promotions and implementing them within the game, I am proud to say “Sinbad the VOYAGER” game is in the store and had more than 15,000 downloads in first 3 days, working slowly its way up the list of the best, top iphone games currently on the marking. It is universal game, meaning it works on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Check it out at
Sinbad the VOYAGER !

So, would I do it again? Yes, yes and yes, at the time of me writing this my second game is already being worked on!

Feel free to leave your comments on Sinbad’s Facebook page, I would appreciate it.

Everyone’s Articles – The 919 Business Network – Local Business Networking