One Week Today

So its been one week since my product Wine Pad has been available for sale. App Shop is doing pretty well in the first week in spite of a few dings. I got a lot of encouraging email about the product which is very nice and this gives me some indication that people are buying it. The reviews on iTunes have been mixed, some people have encounted a bug that crashes the app. The bug is pretty serious, if you put a single quote into a text field the program can crash. Luckily, I indentified the problem and a fix is in the works.

The bottom line is that my work is just beginning and there is a lot still to do. I am putting off starting some other products and refocusing due to some other customer feedback (there appears to be a demand for Wine Pad clones (Beer Pad, Coffee Pad and even Scotch Pad). Also, there is a pretty strong interest in a desktop application.

My plan is to make sure Wine Pad is solid and has an edge over its competition over the next few weeks. Once I am satisfied with this I will make some clones but customized for the subject matter. The next step is to consider releasing free "lite" versions to help drive traffic to the paid product.

I am starting to become convinced that this business model will work out.

First Product Released!

Well, this blog has not gotten much attention lately because I have been pulling all-nighters trying to get my first product released.  So, I am happy to say that Sunday nite I officially launched App Shop's first product, Wine Pad!

Now, I can officially call myself an entrepreneur.  Since Sunday, I have gotten about ten emails and 8 official reviews so the product does seem to be selling.  Most of the feedback has been positive or has suggestions that will go into the next update of Wine Pad.

Also, the app-shop.com website is getting much more traffic than any other blog I have used.  Chalk that up to iTunes...

This is a huge personal success for me, four months ago I never would have even thought of starting a business.  Today I have a registered business, bank accounts, web presence and customers.  This is a start and the actual cash situation is still uncertain - but at least there now is a cash flow situation.

Now, I have a lot of work to do.  My main focus this month is to establish a community around Wine Pad by over delivering to my present clients.  Well, off to work!

A Small Victory

I cannot go into the details because of NDA, however, today I just got through one hurdle in the process of making a product available. Its a small victory, but I believe that at least it will be a human in the partner company that is looking at my work.

Very excited, if all goes well I cannot describe how happy I will be with this. Either way, I will be spending a lot of time over the next month on company housekeeping (bank accounts, web sites, VAs). Also, I want to release the version 1.0.1 of my product as soon as possible after things have settled down and the community comes back with some feedback.

Next on the list is that I need a real live version control system. Right now the contenders are Subversion and Git; both are open source solutions; however I will probably go with Subversion because its a cool name and intergrates with my developement environment.

Very, very busy

Even though I didn't officially start my new work schedule I have been very busy with my new company.  Since I have made much quicker progress that I anticipated learning how to do iPhone programming I decided to try and do a series of all nighters in order to get an app on iTunes by Friday. 

Sadly, I did finish my first product but for a lot of technical reason I couldn't actually get it submitted into the system.   However, I am very happy with my work and all I really need to do now is to deal with the details of putting the product on sale.

Other than that I have started work on my company's website (app-shop.com), but its not quite ready for public consumption.  I am considering hiring a VA to help setting up the various blogs and other content I want on the site.  Also, I need some help with search engine optimization.  I plan on using GetFriday and I will let you all know how that goes.