[cribasoft]

Things have definitely changed over the years, and I've had to pivot many times along the way. I think it remains a good opportunity today. In fact, maybe even better because the market is much more stable and the right way to do it is more evident. I made mistakes along the way that probably cost me a lot of money.

[sixdimensional]

Your use of metrics to track performance and ability/desire to experiment clearly had an impact as well. In these kinds of situations where you can get good quality metrics relatively easily, and experiment so quickly, it is still surprising to see folks not collecting those metrics.

Of course, it's not ALL about metrics, and in some ways I reject the line of thinking that you can't improve what you don't measure (qualitative research/understanding can go a long way). But with quantitative research/data so easily available... it only makes sense to make use of it.

Thanks for sharing your insight!

[cribasoft]

No doubt. That could be a whole article by itself.

I track a lot of metrics and keep a custom dashboard that I can look at any time to see how things are going long-term/short-term/real-time.

[rcorin]

Can you elaborate on those mistakes? :)

[cribasoft]

A lot of it was just trying the wrong things to convert users to customers. Giving away too much for free or not enough, things like that. I can see the graph change directions when different strategies were at play.

Not jumping on the IAP train fast enough was probably the stand-out one. Over time, it seemed like people got used to buying via IAP and almost resisted doing anything else. Sometimes it was as simple as being afraid they'd have to start over with their data if they purchased a whole different app (they wouldn't).

I think its important to let people pay when they are ready with as little friction as possible. If you have the friction of returning to the App Store, you will lose a lot of them in the process.

[andrewtbham]

I agree. In the old days there were tons of crap time tracker apps. I suspect that as they didn't make much money and as they had to pay the yearly fee, the dev shut them down. Now there are only about a dozen fairly good apps.

[jbigelow76]

Congrats on your success. Have you launched any other apps in the app store, and if so are they performing similarly to how HoursTracker did at the same point in its life cycle?

[cribasoft]

HoursTracker was supposed to be app #1 of a shotgun approach to find something that stuck. Things worked out differently.