Sorry to have been so quiet, gentle reader. I have been away on a little vacation for the last month in an attempt to recharge my creative batteries – three weeks in Japan, and another week at home to recover from the horrible jet lag that ensued. I will not bore you with my many photos of wild Totoros, but suffice to say a good time was had by all. This was our first trip abroad for many years that didn’t involve visiting Moscone West…
However, while I was still answering support emails while on my trip – the plight of the indie developer – I haven’t been writing any code, nor indeed keeping a close eye on sales. I had a good look at the latter this morning. Ouch… But kind of expected.
In my experience, you need to do an update to an iPhone app about once a month to maintain interest (and therefore sales) and to keep it in the public eye. PCalc was last updated on March 25th, so we’re getting perilously close to two months without anything new to show. So, sales have been understandably slowing a little over the last month.
I have actually been working away on my iPhone OS 3.0 update though – the future PCalc 1.6 already has copy and paste support. But, clearly, I’m not going to be able to release that until version 3.0 of the OS ships.
So what to do in the meantime to stimulate sales?
Well, I’ve been loathe to do it, despite numerous people telling me that PCalc costs far too much at $9.99, but here goes nothing…
PCalc is now on sale at half-price at $4.99 and will remain so until the 3.0 OS ships and I can release the new version alongside it. I don’t know when that will be, but I would suspect around June, given when WWDC is scheduled. I’m not planning to charge anything for the new version, so now would be a really sensible time to buy before the price goes back up again.
The real question is, will this price drop more than double sales again, so we’re actually making more money? Many people tell me yes, my gut says no.
Let’s see what happens!
Just what I’ve been waiting for! Lite was good enough, but I cannot resist a sale. Thanks.
–Woof!
There are holidays that do not include Moscone West?
Wow.
I know, I should be quiet or everybody will be wanting actual holidays.