Blog*spark

Well, Note*spark is finally out at the iTunes Store. You can read about it at http://notespark.com.

So we’re very excited, but after a moment of celebration, reality set in. Man, we are going to have to sell a lot of these to make it worth our while.

To make matters worse, Apple listed our release date as Dec 11, which is the day we submitted the app for the store, rather than Dec 17, which is the day they actually posted it. That means it never showed up as a “new app” on the store.

Maybe they’ll fix that. Who knows? But when it comes down to it, being listed as a “new app” is just a momentary bit of mild publicity. After that, you’re just one of 10,000 other apps on the store.

Note*spark is a very simple app, but we ended up putting a lot of effort into it, and we feel it’s very good and very useful. That having been said, there are a lot of apps out there, and lots of them are about notes. For people searching on the iTunes store for apps, how are they supposed to know that ours is good?

So we’re doing the obvious: writing to blogs, magazines, and anyone who will listen to see if they’ll write about us. Beyond that, I’m at a loss. I’m an engineering guy but but from my past life (leading the Dreamweaver team, etc.) I’ve thought a lot about marketing. But you know.. I just can’t get my head around how you “market” a $5 app (which is actually selling for $1.99 right now as an introductory price.. even worse!) The economics are just too different.

Anyway, we knew about all this going into it. Ours was not a unique product — it’s no Ocarina — but we thought we could tackle the problem well and do a good job. We did this because we thought it would be fun, not because we thought it would make us rich. And it has been fun. It’s fantastically exciting to put a tiny team together to publish a tiny product, and the good and the bad of it is that you get to do everything yourself — the coding, art, promotion, business planning… everything!

So we’re scratching our heads over this and giving it our best shot. If you have any ideas or insights into how to promote a product like this, I’d love to hear them. Or, if you’d like to help us get the word out yourself, we would love that. Post about it, tell your friends, review it on the iTunes Store.

In the meantime, we’re also planning some Note*spark updates as well as thinking about other product ideas. Stay tuned…

As of last night, Note*spark is live on the app store. (!) It doesn’t seem to be showing up in the Productivity category just yet, but it shows up if you search for it.  Here’s the link (opens in iTunes):

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299925175&mt=8

It’s pretty exciting to see the app out there after spending all this time on it. Meanwhile, we’re already busy at work on some new features. (That’s also exciting — or at least fun — after spending more than a month polishing up the beta).

Earlier today, we sent Note*spark to Apple to put on the iTunes Store. Woohoo! Now, we wait. And sleep.

And think of the next thing to work on.

For those of you who are developing iPhone apps, you might be wondering how long it takes for Apple to get back to you once you apply for the developer program. For us, it took about six weeks.

I am guessing that this period isn’t a big deal for most people. You need the license to (a) download your software to the iPhone, and (b) sell your software on the iTunes store. Most developers will use the simulator in the beginning, so there is usually plenty of time to wait for your license.

In our case, we had been using Mike’s personal developer license. It was only when we were getting ready for launch that we decided to get a new license tied to the name “Metaspark”, because we wanted that name to show up as the publisher in the iTunes store, and not “Michael Schiff”. So our decision to get a new developer license was kind of last minute.

Because we were in a rush, it was kind of frustrating not knowing how long the process would take. For those of you in the same boat, here is a timeline (below the fold):

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And just for yuks, here is an early mockup of the Note*spark design. As it turns out, even a small app like this requires some time to think through various design decisions. I’ll try to dig up an even earlier design if I can find one. (I think Mike sketched one in a notebook).

Early Mockup of Note*spark

The final design ended up being not that different from this version.