The first big success I had with an app was an interactive guide for the popular video game Halo 3. Because I was a fairly amateur appreneur and developer, I needed app content that was relatively simple. Also, The app market was already stocked with guide apps, so I needed to make mine better. I partnered with one of the top professional gaming teams, OpTic Gaming and KontrolFreek, and had them advertise the app in a lot of different ways: run ads on their YouTube channels, post on their Facebook and Twitter, talk about the apps at events, and e-mail their followers. This was a fantastic way for me to maximize my exposure with absolutely no out-of-pocket costs. Of course, not every app will allow for this scenario, but if you think outside the box, you can always come up with unique marketing techniques. The app reaped great results: number 2 in reference and number 188 overall! I had tens of thousands of users, and for an app in a market this specific, it was about as viral as it could be. I did everything in my power to keep my users happy and engaged. I was able to keep this app at the top for almost a year. Of the scores of lessons I learned from this app’s success, how to handle the viral potential of an app would be the most crucial.

Going viral is when something becomes immensely popular at an exceedingly fast rate. In the app world viral apps are a developer’s dream because of the huge profit margins gained. However, as an amateur appreneur, if you do not know what to expect and how to prepare for this good fortune, you may not reap all the benefits possible. You will need to plan for this in the beginning by devising strategies to handle the potential immense amount of downloads. I neglected to do this for one of my games, and this oversight sure came back to bite me. In the spring of 2012, Draw Something took the App Store by storm; you literally couldn’t open a blog or e-news article without reading about it. I decided to have my team at the Idea 2 App Store (www.idea2appstore.com ) develop a spin-off of the game. Everything went smoothly, and in approximately two months we had a nice working version. Recall my warning in Chapter 5 against requiring your users to login via Facebook. Zynga purchased Draw Something, and, within a few weeks, I saw that Facebook login was now required in order to play. I was amped! Normally, my development team doesn’t bother going up against the big companies, but this opportunity was huge. I took a look at the reviews for Draw Something in the App Store. Just as I had expected, the game was getting slammed with one-star reviews by annoyed users. This was our opportunity, something I had dreamed about for years. Before I continue, I want to underline a difficult lesson I learned from this adventure: if you have an app that uses a database, buy quality hosting. Sadly, I did not do this, and because I don’t want to be accused of libeling anyone, I will leave the guilty party unnamed. Basically, the company offered dirt-cheap hosting, which was something we initially saw as a good move, as the game we made sends and receives tons of data. Assuming we only had a few hundred users, our hosting choice would have been a nonissue; instead, we had tens of thousands of daily active users within a few hours. I was very excited—until I played the game. Everything was timing out;essentially, the puny virtual servers couldn’t handle the load. I was beyond upset. In retrospect, I should have planned for the possibility of going viral instead of trying to save a few bucks. The game is now hosted on a dedicated server and has no issues; unfortunately, it was too little, too late. Our chance to take down a big name had passed. A positive aspect of this missed opportunity is that I am able to pass on the valuable lesson I learned to you today.

Tracking Trends and Producing Results

You need to keep an eye on your trends. As you start to see a rise in downloads, you have to prepare yourself. Not all apps have servers and databases, but that is just a minor part of the overall scheme. Before you get too excited about the prospect of low-maintenance apps’ equaling no responsibility, let me correct your thinking. With a large influx of users, you are going to be bombarded with e-mails, Twitter and Facebook posts, and publicity. To the inexperienced, this may sound like no big deal, but it is super stressful and, at times, overwhelming. The added responsibilities will test your time management skills. In addition to dealing with the publicity and inquiries from reviewers, you will still need to interact with your community in whatever way you can. Be sure to continue your communications with any users asking questions via e-mail. If you neglect this commitment to users, your app will not be popular for long. A key component of business longevity still applies: if you are able to keep your users happy, your application will continue to trend upward. Once users feel neglected, interest will wane, and your app will inevitably trend down.

Tracking trends is a requirement for any successful appreneur. Fortunately, there are a variety of tools available for tracking necessary app data. Expect a short-lived appreneur career if you think tracking trends consists only of logging in and downloading sales. These are some of the categories you need to track as an appreneur:

• Downloads/Sales: This is fairly self-explanatory. You need to know how many people either purchased or downloaded your app.
• Ranking: This is the rank of your app in its respective category. Rank is determined by the number of sales, or downloads. These numbers will fluctuate daily. Keeping a close eye on rank will help you know if any new changes you have made are working in your favor.
• Reviews: The review system is a bit flawed. Typically, happy users don’t leave reviews as often as unhappy users. If you are getting bad reviews, take note of what the users are saying. You will always have users who leave one-star reviews saying, “bad app” or “stupid app.” Generally, these are comments generated by competitors. You can always submit these reviews to your respective App Store and have them removed. To do this, simply contact Apple with your app’s name and app ID and ask that the review be taken down. Apple is usually pretty good about dealing with this issue. You should pay attention if you see a few one-star reviews pointing out the same problem, and quickly address it.
• Keyword search ranking: This is similar to download ranking; however, it is purely based on how your app stacks up for searched terms. The majority of the users who download your app will have searched for a particular term to find it. Knowing what number you come up for a search term is valuable information (for information on how to effectively track this data, see the next section, “Tools for Tracking Keyword Rankings”).
• Featured in the App Store: If your app is doing well, there is a chance it will come up in the “What’s Hot” or “New and Noteworthy” section of the App Store. This is a major accomplishment, so if your app gets one of these mentions, take a second to congratulate yourself. Usually, you will only be able to track this manually for your country of residence. Remember, the App Store reaches more than 150 countries, each of which has its own rankings and featured sections.
• Featured on the web: Many web sites feature and review apps. In the event that, fortuitously, your app becomes featured on one of these sites, you will see a sizable jump in downloads. You need to know if and when your app has been featured on these sites. From what I have seen, there is not a better tool for this than a simple Google search. Search your app’s name, and run through approximately four pages of results. If your app is not listed, then you know it has not yet been featured.

The sheer magnitude of app data available makes tracking it all manually impossible. Lucky for you, my appreneur experiences have led me to discover some awesome tools to help you do this. Best of all, most of them are free, and the ones that are not are well worth the investment.

Tools for Tracking Downloads

Here is a listing of some of the best tools available for tracking downloads.

Tools for Tracking App Store Ranking

Next are tools you can use to track App Store ranking.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/caption-me/id528817199?mt=8

Tools for Tracking Keyword Rankings

Following are great tools for tracking your keyword rankings.