FabFocus continues to be a great app. It's been a Top 25 Paid Photo app all year, trending slightly up over that time period. It's currently (4/27/17) sitting at #9.
So what did we learn?
• Price insensitivity! We raised the price from $2.99 to $3.99 and sales.... didn't drop. FabFocus is a tool, and as such my guess is it's less price sensitive than say a game. It's worth noting that since prices are so (painfully) low on the App store that even a small $1 price change is a big deal to developers; that change increased our profits by 33%.
• Apple Search Ads are good. After a lot of effort, and a decent budget, they're helping. They're a small minority of sales on any given day but they're constant and give us some buffer against the random pressures of the App Store. If 1 in 1000 apps have an ad budget, then those that do will have a bit more consistent "lift" then the other 999. So the ad budget means (if we're competitive at all) that we're competing with hundreds, not tens of thousands of apps for chart placement. There's a lot more to this topic, but beyond the scope of this post.
• Master of your own destiny. It's possible to succeed without any Apple App Store support. This is a liberating realization. While the visibility is always welcome and amazing if your app is competitive, you can get into the game with the right marketing and (indy-sized) ad budget.
• Peek behind the curtain! So what does a Top 25 Paid Photography app look like? Here's our product page views and app units for 2017. We're seeing about 14% of the people who check the app out decide to buy it. I suspect that's a healthy number. Additionally, our retention is running about 10% after a week, and then has a long fade over the next month or two down to the 2-3% range. That also feels decent.
And that's the FabFocus update. You can find me on twitter at the poorly named freeverse_ian (hey, I joined in 2007!).