Artgig Holiday Party 2013 - Soundgarden

Once again we scheduled our holiday party for the coldest night of the year.

And once again we lined up a stellar sonic performance to celebrate.

Here's a short graphic novel (made with Comic Book! and Snapseed apps) to catch you up on our adventures...

Marble Math is Hot! Hot! Hot!

After an impressive five week run as a featured iTunes New and Noteworthy Education app, Marble Math Lite: Multiplication came crashing down to earth yesterday.

We expected that.

But we didn't expect to see it reappear as a featured "What's Hot" iPad selection.

Thanks Apple!

Take a break from the cold and download something hot (and still free):

Marble Math Lite: Multiplication

Episode 8 (Finale) - Developer Diary: Locked Up For The Holidays

Well, I’ve finally received medical clearance to leave the infirmary, where I spent most of the Holidays, so I’m free to join you in the year 2013.

Funny thing happened on the way to the New Year, all that talk about the App Store lockdown - like the Mayan Apocalypse...it never happened.

Crazy, I know.

As iOS developers we’ve been trained to overreact and plan for the worst. So when Apple says iTunes Connect is shutting down for the Holidays, we assume that means a total freeze as in years past:

No new apps or updates, no price changes, no app description changes and no app rankings.

From what I saw from my sickbed, some new fish arrived during the lockdown, in the form of new apps and updates and there was virtually no change to app rankings data except for a small blip on December 29th. Otherwise, the charts showed regular app movement through the Holidays.

I never tried logging in to iTunes Connect to see if I could make any app description or price changes.

And I don’t think Apple updated the App Store lists on Thursday, December 27th.

So there may have been a partial closure but it certainly wasn’t the slamming door and throwing away of the the key we were expecting.

So how did our apps do over the Holidays?

Well, we’re a little surprised and very pleased to report that Marble Math Lite: Multiplication remains a New and Noteworthy selection today. Downloads spiked nearly 300% on Christmas day as people flocked to free apps for their shiny new iPads.

But our best paid sales days came on Dec 27th and 28th, driving our overall app sales profit up 45% in the period Dec 21 to December 28th.

Marble Math and Marble Math Junior both jumped into the Top 100 Paid Education iPad Apps in the same period.

Now it would be nice to draw a straight line between the release of Marble Math Multiplication and the success of our two paid Marble Math apps, and it’s clear the free Lite version has helped, but we also had a very favorable media splash right around Christmas that obviously gave us a boost.

Respected independent kids media nonprofit, Common Sense Media, featured both paid Marble Math apps in their “Essential Apps for Kids and Teens” buying guide.
It’s a quick, easy read and worth a look. And it’s the kind of thing you can’t plan for, just the result of good, hard work.

So, overall, Santa was pretty kind to us.

Now it’s time to start working on this year...

Episode 7 - Developer Diary: Locked Up For The Holidays

Today is the big day.

Or should I say the end of days, if you believe the Mayans. It certainly looked, felt, and sounded like the apocalypse when I stepped outside this morning, dodging fallen garbage cans and overturned recycling bins, in a relentless assault of howling wind and rain.

But I made it to work and what I really want to talk about is the other big day. Today, the App Store will officially go into lockdown and us developers will be locked out until December 28th.

If you’ve been following our story, you’ve seen a small indie development company strategically target high App Store visibility with a new app launch and an app promotion right before the expected holiday ranking freeze.

Our game plan paid off, and today our new Marble Math Lite: Multiplication app is a featured iPad Education New and Noteworthy selection for a second straight week, and our Alien Buddies sales are up over 30%.

Even more important than short term rankings and sales spikes, it does appear that our plan to drive up sales of Marble Math and Marble Math Junior by offering the Lite Multiplication version as a free test drive, is working.

One thing we’ve noticed about the iPad App Store featured window space, If you hold your iPad vertically and view the New and Noteworthy picks on the main category page you’ll see that the apps are presented in neat groups of 6 (8, if iPad is in landscape). You have to swipe to get to the next group, for a total display of 18 apps in 2 swipes. There are however 24 New and Noteworthy selections in all. The only way to see the entire collection is to tap “See All” at the top right of the list.

So what, you ask?

Well, every time you ask a user to do something, like swipe, you’re losing downloads because the act of swiping takes effort.

If the user has to swipe and tap - forget it.

Marble Math Multiplication landed on the New and Noteworthy features at position 8 last week which means you had to swipe once to see it, if you hold your iPad like a book, but you wouldn’t need to do a thing to see the app if your iPad was in landscape.

We’re thrilled to still be a New and Noteworthy pick and viewable on the Education category page going into the holidays, but now we’re at the back of the line. It takes 2 swipes to find the app and that means an instant drop in downloads and rankings. We went from #40 to #70 overnight which means a drop-off of something like 300 daily downloads from the previous week.

And if you end up somewhere in the last group of 6, and you can only be found by locating and tapping “See All”, you’ve probably only got a week in the New and Noteworthy holding pen before you're released back to general population with all of the other 70,000+ apps in the Education category that aren’t featured. And I’m pretty sure the holding pen is where you’ll find Marble Math Multiply next week when we return from the holiday break.

But we’re not complaining.

We’ve got a new app set to launch in 2013 and we’ve got lots of hope heading into the Holidays.

We’ll wrap up this diary in January with a full report of life on the inside during the lockdown.

Enjoy.

Episode 6 - Developer Diary: Locked Up For The Holidays

How was your weekend?

After a sudden turn of good fortune, we found ourselves strutting around the App Store with the big dogs in the Education category.

It’s exciting to see our marketing strategy and efforts to promote our new app, Marble Math Lite: Multiplication, pay off handsomely in a featured App Store Education window spot.
In an instant, Marble Math Multiply went from New and Not Possible to Find, to New and Noteworthy - and what a difference that visibility makes.

Before the New and Noteworthy feature, Marble Math Multiplication was struggling to stay above the Top 300 fold, averaging around 200 downloads/day, today it’s holding steady at around #40 in Top Free Education apps.

That’s about 1,000 downloads a day.

We also ran our free Alien Buddies promotion on App Friday.

App Friday is a weekly web event and Facebook party, featuring select family-friendly developers and their discounted apps, and it’s been a really good platform for us to mingle with folks who use our apps, as well as other developers.

The simple act of switching your paid app to free triggers the alarm for all of the app price change aggregators, but you also want to reach out individually to reviewers, bloggers and friends in your network ahead of your promotion, to make sure they are prepared to lend social media support.

With the full force of our social media network behind them and a generous push from AppAdvice Apps Gone Free, our little Buddies raced up the charts on App Friday, leaving even Marble Math Multiplication in their dust as they reached exalted Top 10 territory, settling at #7 with only the likes of Mickey Mouse and Toca Boca ahead of them. We waited until Saturday afternoon to manually switch Alien Buddies back to Paid to make sure everyone worldwide had a chance to download the app during the promotion.

Alien Buddies was downloaded over 11,000 times.

It’s always hard to pull the plug when you’re staring at your app in a Top 10 position, and when you do, your app ceases to exist on the charts at all - it falls into a black hole as the charts re-calibrate and that’s when the fear creeps in.

“Will I ever make it back?”

Before the promotion, our Alien Buddies were hanging around in the 250-300 chart range.

Today, they’ve jumped about 100 spots and look quite content around #150.

It remains to be seen whether they can hold their turf higher up the charts. Typically, sales and free promotions are good for a quick rankings injection and a short-lived status bounce, before things settle  back to their natural order.

But sometimes the bounce is just enough to get some extra attention.

With any luck, Alien Buddies will hang on to their new chart territory and Marble Math Multiplication will still be a New and Noteworthy app when the dust settles from the App Store changes this Thursday, before the holiday lockdown.

There it is again - hope.

Without it, we’d be working in a shoe repair shop or delivering pizzas or something.

* The author actually worked in a shoe repair shop and delivered pizzas once upon a time.

Episode 5 - Developer Diary (Special Report): Locked Up For The Holidays

Special Report:

Marble Math Lite: Multiplication is a featured New and Noteworthy Education app.

It's good to be a big dog.

Check out previous Locked Up For The Holidays episodes to follow the story behind the app.

Episode 4 - Developer Diary: Locked Up For The Holidays

If you’ve been following our Developer Diary, you know tomorrow signals a changing of the guard in the App Store - every Thursday the App Store features get a scrubbing and the stale apps get rotated to the back of the shelf to make way for the New and Noteworthy big dogs.

When we launched Marble Math Lite: Multiplication, a couple of weeks ago, I assumed the established success of our two paid Marble Math apps and the news of a new free app would land Marble Math Multiply on the Top 300 Free Education Charts.

I was wrong.

The plot to launch a free app was designed to take purchase price out of the equation and throw open the doors to parents and educators who really want to try before they buy - and what better way to get their attention than with a shiny new app?

You can always make your app free, but your app can only be new once.

Apple used to give each new app a few minutes of fame at the top of the lists when viewing by release date but with Marble Math Multiplication we suddenly realized that there is no list to view by release date anymore - it’s been eliminated from the iPad (I don’t even bother searching on my iPhone - do you?)

But don’t think for a second that being new doesn’t matter - it’s still your best time to share your excitement with others and entice app reviewers, bloggers, educators and parents to commit their impressions to writing and/or video for all of the world to see.

Marble Math Multiplication may be the first app we’ve launched as a free download straight out of the gate, but we’ve run free promos before and we know it takes a lot more downloads to crack the charts when you’re free - roughly 10 to 1.

So if it takes 20 downloads to get a Paid rank of 300, it will take 200 downloads to get a Free rank of 300 in the Education category.

And it’s hard to see quite how those 200 trigger happy users will find you if you’re choking on dirt, buried below the App Store fold at #301 with over 70,000 other helpless apps.

Apple doesn’t hand out floodlights and mining gear at the front door.

But we had a breakthrough Monday.

A sliver of light.

Marble Math Multiplication finally popped up and made an appearance on the Top 300 Free Charts and it’s been hanging around doing little jailhouse chin-ups above and below the fold, ever since.

It’s not much, but it’s a little bit of hope.

And when you’re locked up in the App Store, sometimes hope is all ya got.