Experiences selling area of interest software program | Profitable Software program

It is a visitor put up from fellow software program developer, Simon Kravis.

It’s typically stated that software program growth is barely 10% of what’s required to earn cash from software program and I can attest to that. Since 2018 I’ve been creating picture captioning and associated software program, extra as a retirement diversion than a critical supply of earnings (after a profession principally concerned in writing scientific and engineering evaluation software program), within the hope that gross sales earnings would at the very least cowl working prices. My finest advertising and marketing device has been writing opinions of the category of software program that I produce, and the internet hosting web site (Hub Pages) offers some helpful analytics on how typically these are accessed and for the way lengthy. Under is the graph for an article on tagging.

The decline since early 2022 is tough to clarify – the article is periodically up to date so the regular decline shouldn’t be as a result of diminishing ‘freshness’ – which for Google might be a file Modified date.

Right here is one other overview article profile (Scanning A number of Pictures) displaying an identical decline:

However one other (Finest Picture Captioning Software program) has held up, although at a low stage.

I supply digital photo captioning software (Caption Pro) on Home windows and Mac platforms, and an iPhone captioning app (CaptionEdit), with the Home windows model courting again to 2017. I additionally supply a part of the performance of Caption Professional on Home windows for auto-cropping scans of multiple paper photos (ImageSplit). On Home windows neither Caption Professional software program downloads or gross sales appear to correlate with overview accesses, regardless of about 1/3 of website accesses coming from the overview. Nevertheless, downloads do present some correlation with Caption Professional website periods, as proven within the graph under.

Gross sales don’t correlate with downloads, which maybe explains why most promoting for area of interest merchandise shouldn’t be profitable – it could improve downloads however this doesn’t seem to extend gross sales. The noticed proportion of downloads leading to gross sales for ImageSplit and Caption Professional are 6% and 9% respectively. The dearth of correlation between gross sales and downloads could also be as a result of small variety of gross sales per 30 days, which leads to random fluctuation dominating the outcomes.

The choice to enter the Apple “Walled Backyard” of software program was partly on the prompting of pals relatively than a industrial analysis. Apple Developer membership (costing ~US$100 per yr) is required to forestall software program being blocked from set up via being from an unknown writer. Additional prices had been buying a reasonably trendy Mac on which to carry out growth, because the App Retailer will solely settle for software program developed utilizing latest variations of the Xcode growth surroundings, which is able to solely run on pretty latest {hardware}. The App Retailer takes a fee of 15% on gross sales, which is kind of cheap when in comparison with the issue of implementing e-commerce on Home windows, the place a PayPal account eases the issue of low-value foreign-currency transactions, however e-commerce plug-ins could cease working after years for no discernible cause. The overview course of for software program acceptance into the App Retailer is usually quick, however seemly trivial points can require resubmission. Options which have handed one overview could also be rejected in a later one. The overview course of is usually quick, however on one event took 4 weeks.

Caption Professional for Mac has been obtainable (by way of the App Retailer) solely since Sep 2021.It seems inside the prime 6 outcomes for a search utilizing “Caption Pictures”, which is the supply for many downloads. About 3.5% of downloads lead to gross sales. This determine is way lower than the Home windows model of the identical app, regardless of Mac customers’ fame for being extra prepared to pay for software program. The iPhone app didn’t seem in any respect initially when trying to find “Caption Pictures” within the App Retailer. After 6 months it started showing as outcome quantity 140, after it had 360 downloads. This poor rating efficiency might be as a result of “Caption Pictures” is a very fashionable key phrase utilized by many apps, together with those who solely caption movies. It has had only a few downloads and gross sales, regardless of Apple Search Adverts and Apptimizer campaigns. The variety of downloads elevated dramatically through the Apptimizer marketing campaign between Jan 24 and Feb 2 (as they had been bought) however the change in rating from these downloads didn’t lead to any gross sales, maybe as a result of no installs had been bought. The Apple search advertisements marketing campaign (which resulted within the app being proven as an advert 1 in 50 instances when the search phrase “Caption Pictures” was used) didn’t tremendously have an effect on downloads or gross sales. A Fb advert marketing campaign to indicate a hyperlink to the app every time “Family tree” or “Family tree Software program” was looked for was additionally unsuccessful, and really costly, as Fb costs by impressions relatively than clicks. Further backlinks to the website had been bought in September 2022 from Hyperlinks Administration in an try to enhance the website Google rating, however this didn’t seem to have any impact on net visitors.

Mac and Home windows customers contacting me with issues have had a variety of expertise stage – from fully naïve to former programmers. Most have been from the US, which displays the geographic distribution of gross sales. There have many downloads to non-English talking international locations however only a few gross sales.

Some outcomes from the Mac and iPhone Apps are proven under:

On stability, creating for Apple platforms was not a very good industrial determination, as some great benefits of a principally captive viewers (fully captive within the case of the iPhone) don’t appear to lead to greater charges of downloads or gross sales. Competitors for iPhone apps is so intense that area of interest merchandise with out huge promoting budgets are unlikely to succeed. The identical is more likely to apply to Android cellphone apps, which anecdotally have a much less rigorous overview course of. My expertise is that promoting and backlink buy for any platform will not be efficient in growing gross sales for area of interest software program.

Simon Kravis runs Aleka Consulting, a small software program and consultancy firm in Canberra, Australia specializing in info administration and providing plenty of software program merchandise. He has primarily developed scientific and engineering packages, beginning within the period of paper tape.