Successful iPhone Applications

In this talk, I discussed all of the things that are important for making a successful iPhone application. A lot of this information I pulled from my experience working on Bible (an iPhone app used by over 12 million people world wide) and various client applications with Tasteful Works.

I mentioned Remember the Milk's unique model for making money, as well as Pinch Media's AppStore Secrets blog post regarding how much to charge for iPhone applications and various other things.

Transcript

1. Successful iPhone Apps
2. Me
3. Sam Soffes @samsoffes
4. I write software (and music)
5. What I made
7. 5.6MM+ unique users
8. Where to begin...
9. How?
10. It’s difficult
11. 140,000+ Apps
12. ...but possible
13. Make it awesome.
14. What is awesome?
15. Awesome Features ≠
17. Choices
18. “People like choices a lot better than actually having to choose” David Heinemeier Hansson
19. Keep it simple
20. Awesome = Pretty + Easy
21. Pretty is important
22. Hire a designer
23. or don’t
24. It’s easy to be pretty
25. Pretty ≠ Easy
26. Easy is difficult
27. “In our days simplicity is very rare” Latin Proverb
29. The iPhone is easy
30. The iPhone is awesome
31. More awesome
32. Stay fresh
33. Update often
34. Think big
35. 23% Foreign users
36. Localize
37. Be first
38. But I’m not first
39. That’s okay
42. How much do I charge?
43. It depends
44. Why?
45. Money or Exposure or unicorns?
46. Free = more people
47. Money
48. Make it free anyway
49. Cheap
50. Get creative
52. In-app purchase
53. Ads?
54. No.
55. You have to bombard your users to make money
56. Needed: $8.75 CPM http://www.pinchmedia.com/blog/appstore-secrets/ $0.70 per 80 sessions
57. Actual: $0.50 CPM http://www.pinchmedia.com/blog/appstore-secrets/
58. 9x more http://www.pinchmedia.com/blog/appstore-secrets/ $6.25 per 80 sessions
59. You should charge $0.99 or make it free. No ads.
60. Questions?
61. Thanks! Get my slides at http://samsoff.es/mobilex