Now that it’s 2013, I thought it would be a good time to look back at the past year. It was my first year of blogging and iOS app development, and it was full of successes, failures, and surprises.
The Goals
A year ago, I came up with a number of goals I wanted to achieve for the year. Time to see how I did!
- Sign up for the iOS Developer Program
Success! - Release my first app to the app store by the end of January
Success! Well, technically I was slightly late, but close enough! - Release some open-source Objective-C code
Success! I have released the virtually unnoticed ReallyRandom class for grabbing truly random numbers from http://random.org, and the reasonably popular ios-queryable, which makes writing Core Data queries far easier. - Start answering Objective-C or iOS questions on Stack Overflow
Success – although I would’ve liked to have answered a few more. - Blog at least twice per week
Failed. It looks like I am averaging about 1 post per week. - Come up with 10 legitimate ideas for App Store apps
Failed. I am currently at 9 ideas. - Implement and release one of those 10 ideas every month or so
Failed. I currently have 8 apps in the app store, with another one inches away from being submitted for review.
The Apps
As mentioned above, I currently have 8 apps in the App Store, and another one almost out the door.
My most successful apps have been Which Episode? and 20 Rep Squats. Which Episode? has sold the highest number of copies, and 20 Rep Squats has generated the most revenue (despite being a niche app for an incredibly small niche) thanks to it’s $2.99 price tag.
My least successful or most disappointing app has been Photo Todo. Despite being what I think is a nifty take on the typical todo list app, it has sold an amazingly low number of copies.
I think that my biggest weaknesses on the app side of things are a lack of marketing and a lack of UI design skills. Combined, these two things make it harder for my apps to stand out from the crowd.
The Website
Traffic has been steadily increasing every month (aside from a minor hiccup at Christmas), and I am now averaging roughly 250 visits per day. All website-related metrics are trending upwards, as this chart shows.
Looking Ahead…
Here are my goals for 2013.
- Release at least 8 more apps
- Double my average monthly website traffic
- Double my average monthly app revenue
- Step up my marketing efforts to increase sales of existing apps
- Try to blog a bit more often
- Keep better stats on downloads and sales (since the Apple-provided tools are woefully inept, and using third party app analytics services violates Apple’s developer agreement)
So, how did you do in 2012? What are your goals for next year?