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.