EleMints has been in the App Store ever since October 9th, 2009. In just over a year, it has become a wonderful periodic table for the iPhone, if I may say so myself. Additionally, I have learned a lot since then, and I would love to share my knowledge with you concerning what it takes to create an App for the iPhone.

The Tale of EleMints

First off, you don't need to have perfect programming, design, or marketing skills. When I started working on EleMints, I was still a High School student (and still am). For me, it was simply a learning experience. I had no expectations whatsoever — after all, my goal was to get 2 sales a month. The first name I chose, "Periods", was a naive choice based on the periodicity of the elements. EleMints was later chosen with the help of one of my beta testers. The app itself was horrendously slow, and feature ideas that were initially planned (element pictures and a chemical database) have still never made it into the current version. It seems that the only two things I actually did right was make a nice icon, and set a good price, $4.99.

However, despite all the errors I had made, I felt quite satisfied, and decided to release EleMints version 1.0. For two weeks, I was over joyed to find out EleMints was averaging between 30 to 50 sales a day. For a student my age, I was making about half of what one of my parents made in a day. This entire time, I had never even advertised it — besides telling one or two people by word of mouth, EleMints was being found almost exclusively by students and teachers searching for "periodic table" on the App Store.

And then it happened. Apple, for whatever reason, decided to give me a heart attack at my age in the early morning of October 28th, when I found out EleMints was featured on the App Store's featured section. Once EleMints made its appearance there, it began averaging 250 sales a day. It ended it staying in the featured section for 3 weeks, with average sales dropping by 50 every week.

Once EleMints returned to an average of 40 sales a day, which slowly dwindled down to around 10 in the span of 2 months, I decided to release an update to address features and bugs users have asked for. On February 1st, I released version 1.1. A week later, following the trend of many developers, I released a free version dubbed "Mild EleMints." Both apps were based on a complete rewrite of the loading code, making the app in general much faster.

As downloads dwindled even more, I decided to run a one week sale at $0.99 to "celebrate" 1 year of App-Kainime. Changing the price to only a dollar actually decreased the amount of revenue I was getting. I changed it back to $4.99 soon after, learning that cheaper isn't always better.

However, what I found out then was that EleMints no longer showed up in the search results for "periodic table." In fact, you could only find it if you either searched for "EleMints", of browsed through pages of apps in the reference section. Despite this, EleMints was still getting up to 10 sales a day. To say the least, I don't believe Mild EleMints' downloads have pushed EleMints' sales much, but I decided to leave it available for students who just want a basic picture of the table to look at.

Just as the amount of users that have upgraded surpassed 80%, I released the current version of EleMints, offering a whole bunch of attractive new features and a shiny new UI. Users who upgraded responded with joy, but EleMints was still no where to be found for new users. On May 6th, I decided to fix this issue myself, and changed EleMints' name on iTunes to "EleMints: Periodic Table." I did the same for Mild EleMints, changing it to "Mild EleMints: Free Periodic Table." This little experiment seems to have fixed the search issues, bringing EleMints to the 6th position on the search results, and bringing its sales back up to 15 a day. As it gained a small portion of the spotlight, it gained more sales, and eventually rose to the third position. Mild EleMints on the other hand, surpassed its original download number, and has since been getting 500 downloads a day.

What I Had Learned

You don't need to be a pro to develop a successful iPhone app. However, what you do need to do is to work hard and finish what you started. Even if it takes you much longer to get to the same point, put all your effort into getting that far.

Even if you have a good idea, it means nothing if you can't make it happen. If it's implemented half way, someone else will just take the spotlight instead. There are currently over 25 periodic tables so far, but only a few are well designed.

Just because one application is successful, doesn't mean they all will. Choose a project you enjoy. Your users will feel the amount of energy and joy you put into your app if you had a good time making it.

Don't be greedy, but don't give it away for free either. Choose a price point, and bring your app up to that price's standards. Lowering the price will only lower the value of your app.

Design is everything. Users don't care what algorithm you chose to get something to work, they just care that it works. Your icon, your UI, and your programming design decisions all play an equal part into getting your users to remember your work.

A free version won't necessarily make users buy your app. Users that must try before they buy are users that will simply try and never buy. Instead, work on pleasing the users that will buy your app the first time they visit its page on the App Store.

Talk to your users. Respond to support emails promptly and listen to what they want. Happy users will suggest your app to others.

Some Other Interesting Tidbits

Apple seems to really love EleMints' icon. You can probably see it in 90% of Apple's there's an app for that ads, in the 1 billion downloads graphics, or in the App Store Turns 1 iTunes page.

EleMints has received hundreds of support emails from High School, University, and general interest students, teachers, and researchers.

Sales in the US account for 80% of users. UK comes in at 7%, Canada at 3%, Germany at 1.5%, and Australia at 1.2%.

EleMints has been "returned" a total of 5 times.

Since their release, 8,363 copies of EleMints have been sold, and 40,639 copies of Mild EleMints have been downloaded. See here for the complete numbers.

Lastly, because of EleMints' great design, I have gotten several job offers. Putting care into your work will help you build a great portfolio.

According to my work schedule, I was supposed to start getting the next update of EleMints ready… 4 days ago :(. As you could probably guess, I have hardly started, but I do promise to get the pace moving tomorrow (erm, today, depending on which time zone you are in), so the update should be out the door soon. I have also acquired some help, which should lighten my load a little, and get more data into this app as fast as possible (now that I don't have to type it up :P). As usual, the current status is posted on the main page, should you want to know where exactly I am in my programming adventures.

For those of you who might be wondering, both EleMints and Mild EleMints are completely iPhone OS 3.0 compatible. They should also run a bit faster than before, which is good news for some ;)

As for updates, a new version of EleMints is in the works, with many small and large improvements. Mild EleMints will also be getting an update at the same time, with the new table style, and a few more properties as well. Look forward to it, and expect more apps to be released this summer!

Busy, Busy, Busy! School is finally over, and I have a variety of projects that I'll be working on during the summer. Some of these are slated to be released in June, while others will just be started and will be released at the end of the year.

First off, I'm sure many of you have heard, I have been working closely with Slightly Pretentious Software on the Façade Project. Façade aims to become the best Mac OS X theming solution, bringing back what was lost when Leopard was released.

Due for June, Cliché Magazine, a new online based magazine focused on everything cliché, will have its very own iPhone Application. Development is almost finished, although a few hurdles have been hard to cross — expect to see it in the App Store soon!

Also due for late June, expect a new version of EleMints to be out, complete with much wanted features of isotopic data, chemical equation balancer and more!

Due later in the summer are two iPhone apps that have been in the planning stages for quite a while (since 2008!!!). In any case, I'm finally happy to introduce App Trends to everyone! This iPhone app and web service will be the non-stop resource for iPhone developers to track and evaluate how their apps are doing on the App Store.

The second iPhone app, #2 Pencil, has been on quite the hiatus recently. However, with all my school work over, be prepared for one of the best SAT study guides to enter the market! I have been working closely with an SAT tutor to provide students planning to enter college with an easy to use study guide that will guide them into passing the SATs with flying colors.

Two other apps, this time focused for Mac OS X, are also in the planning stages for late 2009 or early 2010. The first is LanguagePod101, the much anticipated upgrade to the JapanesePod101 App. This will bring a variety of other languages from the podcast-based Innovated Language Learning series to the app, along with iTunes syncing, premium account integration, and more!

Finally, due for 2010, is the Core Animation based graphic design application, First Draft. Although it is still in the planning stages, I hope First Draft will be able of accomplishing a variety of tasks, and will replace Illustrator with no regrets.

Thats all for now! This will be a short summer with everything thats going on, but I hope I'll make the most of it (and stay on schedule). I'll be making some more improvements to the site when I have time, adding a mailing list for starters. Please check back soon :)

After a week of waiting, EleMints 1.2 has finally been accepted on the App Store, and is available for purchase/updating. This version of EleMints contains a whole bunch of improvements, so I encourage you to check it out!

As a reminder, EleMints is currently on sale for only $4.99 until the end of April, so get it now if you want to save a few bucks. Much requested isotopic information and an equation balancer will be added in the coming months, along with a few other features and bug fixes as well.