Of course nothing is that easy :). Those 7000 copies sold are pirated copies… still, not bad for 2 weeks. Even if they are pirated copies.

Admittedly I have noticed some spikes in recent sales since the app was pirated, up from 3 sales per day to around 10. Unfortunately, that only lasted for 2 - 3 days, hmm… I might go celebrate my wonderful earnings by buying a pizza :).

Any new player will be able to imeediately try all levels, without having to go through the process of individually unlocking each level.

I have been asked to remove the high scores and repost the binary of Hexed Lite. No problem :)… but only if my Mac Mini had not recently had it’s logic board fried :(.

I’ve sent a reply email to Apple asking them to let this one through, as version 1.0 Lite already has a High Score board and I won’t be able to remove the high scores until my Mac Mini is repaiired.

I will just have to wait and see.

Unfortunately, due to ‘administrative’ errors, Paper Shot wasn’t available on the App Store for part of the weekend.  The reason for this is that after posting the version 1.1 update, I changed the release date for the product to the 14th April.  This was to prevent what had happened before and get the date that Apple approves the update to match its release date.

However, changing the release date of the ‘Updates’ also affected the release date for version 1.0.  Basically causing it to be removed from the App Store.  Once I found this out, I quickly changed the date to something closer and Paper Shot was eventually back up there.

Rather convoluted and probably makes little sense, but after all of this the release date of Paper Shot accurately reset back to 2nd April.  Which is what it should have been from the start!  I’ll leave this mess down to bugs on Apple’s part?

Anyways, observe the sales for both Paid and Lite versions below.  You will note the spike in sales over the holiday period and the massive drop for the times that Paper Shot was not available.  I do like upward trends!  Unfortunately, I just have the feeling that after the holiday period we will go back to the usual 3 sales per day. :S

Once you’ve published your iPhone App to the iTunes App Store one of the most valuable tools you have available to you are the user reviews.

Reviews are an excellent starting point for understanding where your app might be updated to increase it’s reach. Reviews can point out bugs that you may have not previously uncovered, users desires for additional features and functions, cumbersome or non-intuitive points in the UI, etc. Keep a tally of requested features and bug reports. Use this information to prioritize your development activities for future updates. (Will there be a future update? This in itself is a non-trivial decision and fodder for another discussion)

While some reviews may be harsh, their suggestions outlandish, there is value in reading every last review and keeping tabs on the new reviews as they are written. This is relatively easy to do in your native iTunes store: just open up iTunes, find your app and read your reviews.

Following the links posted, I found a site that was able to scrape all the itunes stores in the world, and return any reviews found to me. One such example is at: Moopf App Store Reviews.

The end result is that I was able to find two reviews from the US iTunes store that i have not previously been privy to:

“Cool” by (name not shown)
Its so stupid and simple it’s addicting
4 stars

“Needs some work” by (name not shown)
Lots of work before i will buy full verison
3 stars

Hardly the best of reviews, but. They have partly revealed where some improvements can be made. So, I’ll go ahead and add some background tracks to Paper Shot. I’ll also be looking at adding button click sounds when touching buttons and crowd cheering noises when the player scores. After the update, it’ll be back to the drawing board and fishing for user reviews to see where further improvements can be made.

Finally, the stats for the day. As can be seen, the downward trend continues.

Time will tell, literally.  If the numbers continue to slide through the Easter Long Weekend then it’s because of a lack of a visibility due to the app sliding further down the New Apps list.  If they spike again at the end of the week, well then, it’s probably just a Monday thing.

Two things that might affect sales, a review, some paid advertising or an update.  Being that an update is the cheapest at this stage, that is the road I’ll take.  Did I say two things? I meant three.

Oh yeah, Paid Unit sales stayed constant, another three sales.  If there is any interesting change, I’ll post and comment on them.

I originally had created my own music track as a background but it just didn’t add anything to the game when i ended up using it.  Plus, most people play their own iPod music in the background right??  This is all well and good, but the hope is that the percentage of people who enjoy the background track might be further influenced to purchase the full version.

Investment cost? $99.00 for the CD, little point in paying $59.00 for the track on it’s own.  Admittedly, the nice further bonus is that updating Paper Shot would mean it would be bumped up to the top of the ‘New Apps’ list… I think??

This was a mistake on my part, when I submitted the app for review; I made the release date the same day I submitted the app. I wanted it to be immediately available. However, the app was approved one week later (Thank you Apple :).), and my release date was still 24 March 2009. Which meant that my app instantly got dumped a few pages deep in the new apps section, behind apps that were released after mine.

The moral of the story? When submitting an app for review, set your release date at least one day ahead. Each day that the app is not approved, increase the release date by one day. Finally, on the day that your app is approved, you will have the correct release date and you will be at the top of the New Apps pile! Albeit, very briefly.

In closing, I have requested reviews from approximately eight different App Review sites. Hopefully when one or two are published, we might see an interesting shift in numbers.

The game is called Paper Shot, it is a recreation of that old office game of scrunching up a ball of paper and throwing it in the wastebasket.  The game seems fairly unique and is fun to play, not groundbreaking stuff but there is a possibility that there would be an interest in the product.

I will update the trends daily, including what I believe are factors in increasing or declining sales.

Enjoy