Weekly Roundup: Surviving the App Store

Aaron Brethorst, August 09, 2014

Since last week, a couple more interesting posts have surfaced on how to survive in the App Store. In particular, Stuart Hall published an in-depth look at the value of driving revenue with in-app purchases. I find it distressing that an app with almost 2 million downloads can make as little as $60,000, but that's still a lot better than $0. Although I have no inside knowledge, my guess is that Stuart either already makes as much, or will soon, with his AppBot service. (Remember what I said about SaaS before?)

Amy Hoy offers up a wealth of information on this topic, and I highly recommend that you read some of her blog posts.

Also, another potential revenue model that I didn't touch upon last week, and one that some of you asked about, was advertising in your app. The data I've seen on the matter suggests that—unless you have a significant number of users—advertising is a dead end, and will never deliver a meaningfully contribution to your bottom line. But, I'd love to be proven wrong on this. What kind of advertising revenue have you seen from your apps?

Until next time,
Aaron


What We're Reading


Control of the Week

TOMSMorphingLabel

TOMSMorphingLabel

Configurable morphing transitions between text values of a label.

MIT licensed.

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Weekly Roundup

Sleipnir

Sleipnir

BDD-style framework in Swift

MIT licensed.

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AssetPicker

AssetPicker

AssetPicker is a UIViewController subclass that provides an alternative solution to UIImagePickerController.

MIT licensed.

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KSMManyOptionsButton

KSMManyOptionsButton

This is a button that allows users to perform up to 4 separate actions with a single button. This interface is similar to the interface used when the "Voice recording" and "Camera" buttons are pressed and held in iOS 8's message app.

Apache 2.0 licensed.

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M2DHudView

M2DHudView

M2DHudView is a simple hud library. You can show a hud with 3 styles and custom description on the hud.

MIT licensed.

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JGProgressHUD

JGProgressHUD

Simple but powerful and modern progress HUD for iOS. JGProgressHUD is a progress HUD done the right way. Vast extensibility, still simple but not lacking features.

JGProgressHUD also includes the newest APIs ex. the HUD is a blurred view on iOS 8. At the same time there is backwards compatibility to iOS 5.

MIT licensed.

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CropperView

CropperView

using CropperView Rect

You can apply multiple rect areas.

You can move it. each of corners.

You can move it. each of croppers.

and You can crop it.

MIT licensed.

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CYRKeyboardButton

CYRKeyboardButton

CYRKeyboardButton is a drop-in keyboard button that mimics the look, feel, and functionality of the native iOS keyboard buttons. CYRKeyboardButton aims to be the definitive keyboard button control for those looking to replicate iOS standard keyboard button functionality.

Features include: ridiculously simple configuration, UIAppearance support, extended input options menu, robust documentation, and more.

MIT licensed.

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AudioRecorder

AudioRecorder

A simple app to record, trim and export audio for Mac.

Written in Swift and took just 2 days.

If you are on IRC, feel free to ping me in #iphonedev/#macdev on freenode. I'm the pretty_function that idles over there.

MIT licensed.

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AITabBarController

AITabBarController

AITabBarController is a container controller that you can use to load your controllers. You can use a sidebar view and hide that with.

MIT licensed.

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MQTimeOut

MQTimeOut

MQTimeOut detects when an app goes idle/inactive (no touches) and sends a time out notification.

MIT licensed.

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HelpStack

HelpStack

HelpStack provides you with a simple way of adding a great in-App support for your iOS App users. You can integrate any of your favorite HelpDesk solution at ease. It currently comes with three plugged in Help desk solutions - Desk.com, Zendesk and HappyFox along with customizable and simple UI to interact with the user.

MIT licensed.

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MHYahooParallaxView

MHYahooParallaxView

Parallax implementation inspired by Yahoo Weather and News Digest :)

MIT licensed.

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CBZSplashView

CBZSplashView

A drop in animated splash screen as seen on the current twitter app. Add your icon and background color. It does the rest.

MIT licensed.

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YahooClassicalButton

YahooClassicalButton

Yahoo Classical Button is a cocoa version of yahoo flickr classical button.

MIT licensed.

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EMNotificationPopup

EMNotificationPopup

EMNotificationPopup is a customizable, easy and ready to use notification Popup.

It will be possible to use an already built popup just adding a title, a subtitle and an image or you can let a your own uiview acting as popup.

MIT licensed.

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BFPaperCheckbox

BFPaperCheckbox

iOS Checkboxes inspired by Google's Paper Material Design.

MIT licensed.

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MAFormViewController

MAFormViewController

MAFormViewController is designed to be used in tandem with MATextFieldCells for extremely quick and easy UITableView-based form creation that automatically handles form configuration, formatting, navigation, validation, and submission.

MIT licensed.

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MintAnnotationView

MintAnnotationView

UITextViews with name highlighting (mentions) like Facebook for iOS.

Animated GIF: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/soleaf/MintAnnotationView/master/cs_chatview.gif

MIT licensed.

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M13MarketKit

M13MarketKit

M13MarketKit is a complete backend for handling in app purchases.

MIT licensed.

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JTSActionSheet

JTSActionSheet

Replacement for UIActionSheet on iOS 7, with customizable fonts and colors, and block-based actions.

MIT licensed.

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AYVibrantButton

AYVibrantButton

AYVibrantButton is a stylish button with iOS 8 vibrancy effect. It is a subclass of UIButton that has a simple yet elegant appearance and built-in support for UIVisualEffectView and UIVibrancyEffect classes introduced in iOS 8. Yet, it can be used on iOS 7 without the vibrancy effect.

MIT licensed.

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JMMarkSlider

JMMarkSlider

Fully customizable slider that allows you to set marks on it. You can set the color of the bar, marks and handler, the width of the marks and even an image for the handler.

MIT licensed.

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Masu

Masu

Placeholder for iOS prototyping

MIT licensed.

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BKCardExpiryField

BKCardExpiryField

iOS control for credit card expiration date input.

MIT licensed.

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FrostedSidebar

FrostedSidebar

Hamburger Menu based off of RNFrostedSidebar (https://github.com/rnystrom/RNFrostedSidebar), written in Swift, and uses the new iOS 8 UIVisualEffectView for the UIBlurEffect.

MIT licensed.

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