Success Story on the App Store and beyond

Hi this is Marin - the author of Touch Code Magazine, I hope you are enjoying my tutorials and articles. Also if you need a bright iPhone developer overseas contact me - I do contract work. Here's my LinkedIn profile
Success Story on the App Store and beyond

If you think success has a universal definition – get this – you are wrong. Everyone wants something different, therefore “success” – it’s a personal thing.

In this post I’ll tell you the story of the last year and why I consider it being a success; luckily the App Store plays a big role in this story and I can’t be more happier.

1 year ago

September 2010 I left my job in Berlin, Germany – I was disappointed by it to a degree that without any plans for the future I just didn’t want to look for another job, but do something else instead of being an employee. Further – at the time I was destroyed both physically and mentally, way too many trouble on my head back then. I had worked very hard for a long time and together with couple of friends we have released “Pimpy” to the App Store just to find out sales were low, people enjoyed the app, but many of them didn’t get what it can do; and also some people cracked it quite fast and spread it around torrent web sites.

So … what happened after that and changed things so much?

Moving and changing mindset

As I didn’t really find anything to keep me in Berlin I decided to move back to my home country Bulgaria and have time off until I figure what to do. It was definitely a wild move as back in Bulgaria standard of life is much lower and I haven’t been back there for a while, but in the end I decided to go for it.

So with a bit clearer head, back in Bulgaria I did the following in late Autumn 2010:

  • secured a web dev contract and put some extra effort into it, which resulted in a long-term still going engagement, which brings in cash regularly
  • found a new place to live in a nice city and did set it up in a way I can live good and have place to work at
  • invited all my friends from around the country to visit me any time they find fit
  • got together with a friend who is a painter and designer and decided to put serious effort into iOS development
We focused on developing a new app called “Doodle Booth” and released it in January 2011. I put many long nights in dramatically improving the UI and included some crack protection, and finally I changed the business model compared to “Pimpy”. In its first day on the App Store the app was downloaded more than 7K times (it was a free app) grossing to 20K+ in the first week. It had horrible reviews, but even more people were happy with it and we saw a lot of conversions to the paid upgrade (as an in-app purchase).
So, lesson learned – don’t give up and make a much better product instead.
Much excited with the small success, we released quickly another similar app, but on a different topic “Blood Booth” which didn’t do so good, but also brought in some cash. Eventually we decided to make “Doodle Booth HD” and “Doodle Booth HD Free” for the iPad – they also scored pretty well on the much smaller iPad market.

All of these apps I’m mentioning were featured in one way or the other by Apple(also all other apps till the end of the post). They appeared in various countries as “New and Noteworthy” and “What’s hot”. How did I do that you might ask? I did put everything I had in those apps, and … Apple is apparently following what’s coming out and taking relevant decisions on featuring.

Meanwhile I have started to work seriously on using Cocos2d – I have released “Match Kana“, which is an educational game to help Japanese learners. It does never see too many downloads, but I’m sure the target group is way too small; anyhow I was happy there was something out there built with Cocos2d.

Synthesized like that this could surely sound like a lot of work. But actually I had maybe 50/50 split on party and work. So pretty good! When you don’t go to an office you work only at the times you’re most productive, and you enjoy better results and faster turnaround times, while having tons of time for your friends and family. In 2011 I was 8 times in vacation – 7 of them to international destinations. (I actually cancelled nr.9 because I can’t find anyone anymore to come with me – my friends are out of vacation days and money, lol)

Going beyond the App Store

Late summer 2011 Udemy contacted me and asked me to create a video course on their web-site. I honestly didn’t know a thing about them, so I said why not and created a short Cocos2D 101 video course. Introduction of the Cocos2d basics to the Udemy platform out. Without having any expectation at all, I was pleased to see lot of people purchasing and enjoying it. It has more than 1,000 subscribers up to now and growing. Here’s part of a message a subscriber once sent me “Many thanks Marin :) If you are planning to do a “level two” course count me in” – it’s very rewarding to get such messages I tells ya.

So … even if I had absolutely no success with trying to publish edu materials in the past, I didn’t give up and just made a much better product. And it paid out.

About that time Ray (from raywenderlich.com) asked on his blog for people who’d like to write iOS tutorials for him. I have had bad experience with trying to write for different blogs in the past (people don’t follow through, discard ideas, etc) but I said why not? I’ll just write better than ever. And it wasn’t easy – in between creating the video course, releasing a game on the App Store and vacations in Malta and Germany, I also put extra effort into writing great tutorials for Ray. And it paid out – awesome feedback for my posts and lots of incoming traffic to my own site.

And it still wasn’t much work! I concentrated few day periods of non-stop work and then went into week long partying or travel!

Making a ripple in the continuum

Then … came an invite from Ray to co-author an iOS5 book with him and other guys from the tutorial team. (Should I mention anymore that I had unpleasant experience before? Just assume it from now on) It had to be pulled off in a record time and to tell you the truth the documentation on iOS5 at that time was quite sparse. But we did it – on the 12th of October, couple of hours after Apple lifted the NDA our book was on sale. And it did (and does) awesome and the feedback is just fantastic. This book really feels like I left something meaningful out there.

Meanwhile I released a game called “Pew! Pew! Starblast” which did horrible and saw about 7 sales (ha, I finally experienced what so many people in the iOS community are talking about) and right after the book was out – “Fun Photo Booth” a new photo app. “Fun Photo Booth” is doing decent on the App Store and shortly after I released also a small free app called “Perpetual Calendar“. Yeah, I should admit my designer friend is a machine, he draws better and faster than anyone I know.

So … why is this a success story?

I am stress free, travel regularly in vacation, financially stable and, I can work only on things I like and at my own pace. This is success to me. If it wasn’t for the App Store probably not much of this would’ve happened. But it did.
Lot of people when hear success would imagine a yacht, Bentley, and dumping dollar bills in the toilet. Just spend some time and think whether this would really make you happy? Define success for yourself and aim for it.

And next?

I’ve had my time off in Bulgaria and it’s been quite enough to change my mindset, and to make me enough self-confident and relaxed. (Also music is a disaster in here, so I need to go) I’m moving again to work on a contract in Berlin for a year. I have few long term clients, which I enjoy working with.
Also have 5 half finished Apps waiting their day. Working right now on another big product and I hope it will have success.

Future is bright – just don’t give up and do much better every next time.

Marin
The post was originally published on the following URL: http://www.touch-code-magazine.com/success-story-on-the-app-store-and-beyond/

 

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Marin Todorov

is an independent iOS developer and publisher. He's got more than 18 years of experience in a dozen of languages and platforms. This is his writing project.
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Comments

8 Comments
  1. Josh Jones on Monday 12, 2011

    I’m having similar effects, but not on the scale of what you’re doing. Hopefully I’ll be in the same place soon.

    Great read! Keep up the good work!

  2. Ric Fink on Monday 12, 2011

    Good attitude man, the right way to live and understand life.

    Always wanted to go to Bulgaria, call me a friend so I can use your invite !! ;)

    Keep coding, I’m doing the same. Best to you.

    -Ric

  3. Jialing on Monday 12, 2011

    Hi Marin,

    Your success story is amazing.
    I also enjoy reading your teaching on iOS stuff. They are helpful for my app works.

    Let’s keep doing the things we love, be happy, enjoy and share… :)

    Jialing from Los Angeles

  4. Nirmal on Monday 12, 2011

    Hi Marin,

    Thanks for sharing your success story.
    Most of the people are forced by external situations to move away from doing something great things which they like to to do. Sometimes they could not get complete freedom to express or implement their ideas to the fullest creativity.

    Freedom comes in where there is courage and faith
    Creativity comes in where there is Freedom
    Success comes in where there is Hardwork with Creativity

    Regards
    Nirmal

  5. Deepak on Monday 12, 2011

    I enjoy reading your blog. I’d like to make a suggestion. Create a Facebook page for this site. This way your updates will appear on the wall of people who like your site. I get most of my updates this way and I assume that many others get them same way.

  6. Joel Pablo on Monday 12, 2011

    Hi,

    Inspiring post and practical indeed. There’s no shortcut to success indeed. I got here via Ray’s site and it’s really a tremendous help for me – for only less than 1 month, i get a hang on iOS development (although i came from Actionscripting for 9 years) – and now im writing my own app as well. Thank you for sharing knowledge to fellowmen.

    God bless!

    -J

  7. Marin on Monday 12, 2011

    Joel, thanks for dropping me a message – good luck in your iOS endeavors ! Marin

  8. Jeremy Shock on Monday 12, 2011

    I love posts like this. All the success I’ve had so far in life has started with me being able to visualize my life the way I wanted it to be before I reached my goal. You’re living the dream man! You’re exactly where I intend to be by the end of 2013. Thank you so much for sharing. It’s very motivating.

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