I think I'm going to love this gun - everyone that I've talked to about it seems to hold Kahr in high regard.

Here's a video of me shooting it at the range.

I've been writing software for almost 10 years now and decided that 2011 was the year I started writing iOS apps. I've been a fan of Apple products for a while and dabbled with iPhone development when the tools and the App Store first came out, but nothing so serious to the point of releasing an app. That all changed this year.

I decided in January 2011 to pony up the $99 developer fee to release a simple, free, ad supported iPhone app. I was interested in in it and wanted to see if I could do it. It also had the added "cool-factor" benefit of  being able to say, "I have an app in the App Store" to friends, prospective clients at work, etc. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to write a "hit" business app and start making major coin from something I was just doing in my spare time, but that's what happened. So far, I've grossed over $11,000 in the App Store...  $10,000 of it in the last 6 months.

My First Free App

I learned a lot from releasing my first iPhone app: Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator... primarily that you shouldn't release an ad-supported app that does not have high user engagement times. The app was a utilitarian "one use and quit until you want to use it again" type of app. I can see an RSS reader or a Facebook client being free with ads, since there's a long user engagement period, but this revenue model simply didn't work with my application type.

To date (Jan 17th, 2011 - Jan 9, 2012) the app has netted me a total of $11.50. Yep, that's less than $1 a month. Most of that revenue was front-loaded when the app was brand new. So far 624 people have purchased that app and I've earned about 1.85¢ per user. Not great, but then again, I wasn't expecting huge sums of money and a heavenly chorus from my first free app.

The Next Idea

With my first app published and the pennies rolling in, I decided to go after a more lucrative market that might actually make me some money for my precious time. I decided to write an app for people in direct sales (no, not pyramid or ponzi-schemes... legitimate network marketing businesses). I had a few reasons for picking this market:

• My wife and I are in the network marketing business. We are independent distributors for Premier Designs High Fashion Jewelry, so I know the challenges the distributors face on a day to day basis.
• I have family members in the direct sales industry, so that would give me a beta tester base that would be willing to help me test.
• People who would purchase the app are business people, therefore my app would be a business expense. People are more willing to lay down a few bucks when they know they can write it off on their taxes.

Version 1

I wanted to create an app that my wife could use when she was out and about selling her wares. The app would quickly add up multiple items and then add tax and shipping to give her the total for the order .Everything would be displayed and she should then write down the complete order details onto the customer's receipt and give them the hard copy. I called it Checkout Helper.

The first version of the app was ugly, with a capital U. I didn't really know how to properly use, manipulate, and style the UI elements that Apple provides developers. I priced it at $1.99 and released it on February 24th, 2011. I had one purchase that first day. WOW! A whole $1.40 (after Apple's 30% cut)! That was more than double what I had seen so far from my free app.

Warning: watch out, your eyes might hurt when you look at these screenshots:

Checkout Helper chugged along at 1-3 purchases a day. I was high on the hog one fateful day in July when it brought in a whopping $19.60. Version 1 of Checkout helper netted me $418.64 over the first 4.5 months. Not bad... I had more than made back my $99 developer fee.

Version 2

I wasn't happy with so many things about the app. I really wanted it to look nicer and do some extra stuff (like more shipping options for direct sales companies that use percentage based shipping or some combination of flat+percentage).

So I went to work in June redesigning and recoding the application from the ground up. I completely updated the layout and the graphics. I also added a bunch of new features like item discounts and generally made the application better. After all, I had become a better iOS programmer since the first version was released.

Version 2 went live on July 13th, just in time for an industry convention I was attending ("Rally" as it's called at Premier Designs). I had come prepared with business cards that had a QR code on them and handed them out all week to people I saw that had iPhones (they were everywhere). I think I gave out a little over 200 cards that week.

Here's how version 2 was updated, with a better look and feel:

Well I must have done something right, because sales shot through the roof. My app started gaining popularity amongst a few different direct sales companies and I did very little marketing other than Facebook. Within a day, Checkout Helper was the #29 top ranking business iPhone app. The rankings topped out on September 17th at #13.

In September, I added in-app purchases to change the background of the application. Soon after, I made the application  universal so people could enjoy high resolution graphics on their iPads.

From July to around the middle of December, I netted $10,000 from Checkout helper. Let's not forget that <$1 a month from my free app too! I'm hoping that the trajectory stays going up. December is typically a slow month for direct sales, so I expected worse than average sales.

I started an LLC to be a legal hedge around all my apps in December called, Mohawk Apps, LLC.

Conclusion

So here's some advice from a guy that has been relatively successful in the App Store (at least I think I have).

1. Find a real world problem you think you can solve and solve it. People will pay for it.
2. Know your target market and cater to them. Provide ways OTHER than iTunes reviews for them to tell you about what they like/dislike, and what features they want. I have a contact form on my website and a link in my apps to contact me.
3. Release early and release often. My first version was OK. It worked and I put it out there for people to use. Then I made it better. Then I made it even better! I'm sure those people who bought v1.0 have been on a fun ride with the successive improvements (and sometimes annoying bugs). I released updates as often as I could.

   "Real artists ship"
   - Steve Jobs

4. Start developing the project as a universal application if you ever plan to make it universal. It's easier to make it universal from the start instead of adding in iPad support after the fact.
5. Play with your pricing a bit to try and find the "sweet spot." Not all apps need to be $0.99, especially ones that don't have mass market appeal.
6. Utilize the in-app purchasing mechanism to keep monetizing current users. I know the StoreKit framework is a pain in the butt to work with (especially when Apple's sandbox servers are down without notice), bit it's worth it in the end.

I've found that I really enjoy writing iOS apps. I have a total of 4 apps through Mohawk Apps, and another 4 that I've created for clients at work (wrote by myself, primary developer, or contributing developer).

Last week, I released a new utility application, specifically for Premier Designs Independent Distributors, called The Show Closer. With the money I earned from Checkout Helper, I was able to get professionally designed icons and loading screen, and I think the app is my best one to date.

...but there are just a few things I think could be improved upon...

Graphs created using AppViz 2 and AppSales-Mobile.

Update - to answer some questions

Hackernews throttled me and won't let me post anymore tonight (not sure why), so I'll answer these here:

coryl asked:

Thank you for sharing, its appreciated by people like me who are new to mobile development.
Question: Can you disclose any information about your in-app sales? You mentioned you sold customizable background art, what was the price point? How many did you sell? Roughly what percentage of app owners end up doing an in-app purchase?

No problem. Those are some pretty complex stats, but I'll try and simplify them for you.

Total In app purchase revenue to date: $460.73. That came from 545 total transactions averaging out to about $0.85 per transaction ($1.22 before Apple's cut). I have some art that's $0.99 and some is $1.99, but nothing over that. You can see the percentage of the whole by looking at the last graph. Anything at the bottom of Sept-Dec that isn't that large maroon color was an in-app purchase.

During that same time frame, I had 3,007 purchases of the app, which means on average, 18% of my users made an in-app purchase (not taking into account users that purchased more than one item or users that upgraded from previous versions and then bought an item). If I take into account my total user-base of 4,748, then about 11.5% of users made an in-app purchase so far.

As I understand it, the in-app purchase for a game like Jetpack Joyride hovers around 1% or so (read that somewhere, can't remember where). So 18% and 11.5% are pretty dang high in-app purchase numbers.

brc asked:

I'm curious - if the UI has changed - are people just picking this up from screenshots? With no trial mode, I'm interested in how you think improvments[sic] in the software improve sales. Note that I totally agree with this position, but I'm curious as to how this plays out on App Store purchases

We've all done it: We look at an app and immediately judge the quality of the application by the screenshots. I think that making the application a lot "slicker" looking as well as good screenshots in the app store could have contributed to its success. I don't have any hard data on this and data would probably be impossible to capture about this metric.

I'm to look for a new car? lol.

Yum.

Anyone notice that's the "Mark special"?
Yeah - triple-decker grilled cheese FTW!

I wonder if he envisioned himself in this video when it was made? The world has lost a visionary and an incredible man.

As I was walking around, I needed something FAST to eat cause Ignite was starting soon. So I ducked into this little deli/sandwich shop and had a great sandwich. It was a cool little place called "Salvador Deli" and the outside was painted in the style of Salvador Dali. Brilliant stuff.

The sandwich was even more brilliant! It was buffalo chicken on focaccia with lettuce, cucumber, and their special spicy remoulade sauce.

I will go back when I'm in that neck of the woods again.

How a bad idea starts: “That looks easy… I could do that.” How a good idea idea starts: “That looks fun… I should do that.”

via Terry Richardson's Diary

I've recently started using aliases a lot more for common tasks I perform in the Terminal. Things like pulling a github repos and then immediately pushing it back to the server, connecting to an SSH server, or navigating to a common directory.

UNIX has had this functionality all along, but because MAC OSX is based on the BDS kernel (a variant of UNIX), we get all this cool, geeky, terminal stuff for free.

Here's how to set up some aliases.

Open Terminal.app in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder.

Enter the following commands and it will create the .profile file for you and open it in text editor (no need to worry - it don't overwrite the file if it already exists):

cd ~/

touch .profile

open .profile

Now it's time to make some aliases. Enter some of these commands into the text editor (modified for your own purposes, of course) and then save the file.

alias library='cd ~/Library/'
alias myserver='ssh myaccount@myserver.com'
alias gp='git push'
alias gpp='git push && git pull'

After you've saved the file, quit the terminal app (CMD+Q) and then re-open it to load the new profile into the application.

Now try it! Type: "library" and you should be automatically taken to your /Users/yourusername/Library/ folder!

Neat, huh? Pretty much any command you type into the terminal a lot can be turned into an alias.

This is a particularly troubling subtraction from the OS for those of us who use DMG (Disk Image) files often. The old workflow used to be:

1. Open DMG file
2. Do what you need to - usually dragging a .app file into your applications folder
3. Click the lozenge to reveal the finder sidebar
4. Click the eject button next to the mounted disk image's name
5. Delete (or move) disk image file.

Well, now that the lozenge is gone, Apple has forced us into an (what I feel is an) easier workflow:

1. Open DMG file
2. Do what you need to do
3. Make sure nothing is selected in the disk image (just click the background of the finder window)
4. Hold the ⌘ button and hit "E". This is the shortcut for "Eject" - CMD+E. It will automatically unmount and eject the disk image for you, closing the Finder window in the process.
5. Delete (or move) disk image file

As you can see, it's actually easier (but  less intuitive if you don't use keyboard shortcuts) now without the lozenge.

There's plenty of things that will take getting used to in Lion, and this is one of them for me.

So after the upgrade to OSX Lion, everything is pretty much smooth sailing except for that the driver for my Microsoft Natural Keyboard is now missing a bunch of functionality and the shortcut buttons across the top of the keyboard are completely useless... even the calculator button fails to launch the Calculator.app.

After a reinstall of the software, the settings are there, but the buttons don't work.

Anyone have any insight into this? It's going to drive me batty!

There's now a bunch of boards there and it's spray painted with the words: "Please, no parking beyond this point! "

It took me about 10 hours to install all by myself and I literally gave my blood, sweat and tears to get this thing installed. It was a beast and came form UPS in 27 different boxes weighing over 200 lbs!

Dana absolutely loves it. I also took the opportunity to paint the closet before I installed the new system. The old wire racks found a new home on the walls of my garage.

Here's the before:

http://www.vimeo.com/17766437

And an iPhone stitched together panoramic photo of the new:

French cheeses to be exact:

The gym certainly works up an appetite. I've been making a two-egg omelet with turkey and cheddar cheese with tomato. I pair it with a thin (11o calorie) bagel and some home made (thanks mom!) strawberry jam.

It took me a while to get the technique for making omelets down-pat, but I think I'm getting pretty good at it!

Yum!

This year was my first time and it was absolutely amazing. So many awesome panels, sessions, parties, and networking opportunities.

Rather than recap the entire thing in words, Check out the gallery of photos I took. I'll try to label everything so you know what you are looking at. Bear with me - this spans 5 days and I took TONS of photos.

There was free food everywhere (and free alcohol). I think I probably paid for 2 meals the entire week.

PHEW! Wow... you made it all the way down here. Good job!

I didn't jump headfirst into the SSD world, but I followed a Lifehacker.com post on how to add an SSD to a MacBook Pro by removing the optical drive (which I hardly use anyways) and using the SSD in conjunction with my regular magnetic drive. It was a daunting task, but my computer escaped unscathed.

I bought a 64gb SSD with a Sandforce II controller. It fit perfectly in my laptop and now I use it as my boot drive as well as my /Applications folder. All my data is stored in my user folder which resides on my magnetic drive. Applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, GarageBand, and other huge applications start in less than 7 seconds now. My computer boots in less than 15 seconds from completely off to a usable state whereas before, it used to take almost a minute.

Will I buy another one? Heck yes! I think that SSD is where the mobile computing arena is headed. I know that there are still reliability issues, but with regular backups to an external drive using Time Machine and the 3 year warranties on most drives, I don't think that is a huge point of contention. My next Mac will probably have a huge SSD and no magnetic drive whatsoever, I love this drive that much. With Moore's Law, I can see the affordability factor of these drives increasing in the very near future.

My productivity is up because of decreased application start times, and my computer is generally more "snappy". I'd recommend an SSD to anyone looking for a new drive for their computer... especially a mobile computer since there are no internal moving parts of an SSD to get damaged with frequent jolts that mobile devices take..

I just wish I had taken photos of the install process since it involved removing my MacBook Pro's optical drive. Oh well. Here's a pic of the drive before I put it in the computer for posterity.

Update to address Melissa's question in the comments: I think that the only negatives I've found so far is with the particular configuration that I chose to use with eliminating my optical drive altogether. Before, the main board of the computer was only transferring data through one channel: the primary hard drive SATA connector... the optical drive was rarely used so power consumption on that part of the main board was rarely an issue. I find that with my dual drive configuration, there are two SATA interfaces going at full speed all the time and I've noticed a dramatic decrease in battery life on the laptop. That's the only real negative effect I've encountered.

We had a great time while they were here. Thursday we went out to a fabulous tapas restaurant in Kernersville, Bistro B.

Friday, the girls went shopping while Dana's dad and I played 27 holes of golf at Oak Hollow Golf Course at the recommendation of a friend. I had never played there, but the course was great! It was challenging, but not frustrating, and the day was beautiful. We had an awesome time.

We then headed off to Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery in High Point to meet the girls.

Saturday we drove about 45 minutes up to Pilot Mountain State Park to do some hiking. It was a great time (lots of exercise too!). THe views from the pinnacle are amazing, and it was neat to see all the rock climbing groups on one of the trails.

We ended the weekend exhausted, but it was totally worth the great time we got to spend with Dana's parents.

I may be schizophrenic …but at least I have each other.

via I Can Has Cheezburger?.

In 2007 Irish police noticed an alarming trend: They had written more than 50 tickets to one driver, a Prawo Jazdy. In traffic stops he had offered Polish credentials with varying addresses, and the repeated citations had failed to improve his driving.

In June they realized their mistake: Prawo Jazdy is Polish for “driver’s license.”

via Most Wanted | Futility Closet.

The eagerly-awaited 1.1 update to the Sparrow email app US$9.99 has landed in the Mac App Store, adding the promised features and bug fixes.The app now supports general IMAP, so for those of you who were waiting to add Yahoo, AOL, or MobileMe accounts to Sparrow and totally ditch Mail.app, you can now do so. For the many Mac users who use the app to access your Gmail accounts, Priority Inbox is now integrated into the app.

via TUAW- Sparrow 1.1 lands in the Mac App Store.

Here are a list of churches in and around Downtown Austin, TX with service times. Don't forget Daylight Savings Time is Saturday night!

As with everything at SXSW, plans are always subject to change based on other people, circumstances and general craziness. I'm going to try and hit up Central Presbyterian Church's 9am service. Good intentions? Yes. Probability of actually making it to church in a town I've never been to at an industry conference? I'd say 30%.

Central Presbyterian Church
200 East 8th Street
Services at 9 & 11

St Mary's Cathedral
203 East 10th Street
Mass at 8, 9:30, and noon

Central Christian Church?
1110 Guadalupe
9:45 Sunday School, 11 worship

First United Methodist Church-Austin?
304 West 13th Street
Services at 9 & 11

First Baptist Church?
901 Trinity Street
Worship at 11