The integrated iPhone camera app even tells you about the objects within the picture.
"I simply gawped when one blind woman pulled out an iPhone then snapped a perfect shot, guided by the built-in Camera app [..] One face. Small face. Face near right edge. Autofocussed."
To put another data point out there: I recently released a little kids puzzle game[1]. I payed a friend to help out with the coding, contracted out illustrations and purchased the sounds from stock sound services. I've put in around 10k$ to develop the app and it's generating around 2$/day. It will take me roughly 13-14years to break even :)
However I also see the app as a advertising for my consultation business and plan to use it to cross promote my next kids app[2], so it's hard to figure out the real cost/benefit structure.
I released a free game [1] recently which had been performing rather poorly with IAP. But in a recent release, I reduced the amount of free gameplay and allowed users to use (and spend) more than one hint per level (and of course I sell hint packs). Since then it's been doing much better.
If you don't mind unsolicited advice (and I've only seen your screenshots):
a. How about releasing a paid version of your app with everything enabled but no IAP? If nothing else, you'll come up in the new releases chart again.
b. I'm not sure what your in-app store looks like, but in my game I sell a 'combo' pack which includes two regular packs and 10 hints, all available separately, for a discounted price. I call it a 'combo super-saver' and even put a yellow star in front of it to draw the eye. It is the biggest selling SKU by far. Can you try something like that?
"Having a budget to spend tens of thousands EACH DAY on generating downloads" implies that you are probably generating more than that from your apps.
Do you have tips on each of the mentioned points? Details would be very interesting. Also how do you evaluate app ideas for example to come to apps like "Ghost for G+", the "Menu Tab" series and "Ask A Girl"?
Selling the car and cashing in 401K is generating cash flow. The hardware they bought would be around 8k-10k$ expenses (4k-5k$ per person). I don't consider this as a lot. Or is your point that they should have put that money into marketing instead?
Car & 401K is a terrible idea for generating cash. Keep your day job (or find a day job) and build apps on the side until you think you've found a winner.
Putting money into marketing is a difficult question. I feel like it works if you have apps that are already generating money, so that you can use that revenue stream to fund the marketing for your other apps.
But if you are just starting out, you should try the $0 marketing approach of contacting bloggers in your space (in their case, educational app blogs) to see if they'll review your app.
Selling the car and cashing in 401K is generating cash flow.
So is selling a kidney, but that doesn't make it a good idea. The wife had a job and quit. The husband appears to have some IT skills that he could have used to bring cash in on the side while looking for that hit game.
Heck, if they both kept working they could have had someone make these games for them for way less than they loss in money and opportunity costs.
"Mocava has done a decent job of streamlining the setup and installation."
Thanks :) Usability wise, the hardest part was to explain that you have to install a profile to deactivate an existing profile. Also people associated the word "profile" with a facebook profile and thought it contains their personal data like name & address. To prevent confusion, the page I removed (almost) all instances of the word profile from the page.
The whole "profile" and "mobileconfig" nomenclature is confusing to most people, I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't put more effort into this area.
Sorry if I came across as damning you with faint praise, you really have done a nice job of setting up the service for non-technically minded people who want to keep their kids safe online.
I can't find any reference to your privacy policy or terms of service. You appear to use a unique string to identify profiles, what are you doing with the data you collect?
The unique identifier was really just the technically simplest way to do it. I might eventually deduplicate the data and aggregate profiles with identical settings into a "canonical profile" if I can find the time.
rada got it right, that's exactly how it works. It installs a configuration profile with restrictions on when you want to lock the device and a configuration profile without restrictions (an empty restrictions set) when you want to unlock the device.
One more nitpick. During installation, I noticed the use of two app names, "ParentControl" for the app itself, and "Parental Control" otherwise. Could become a problem from SEO standpoint.
And one last nitpick/question. It looks like the app requires a connection? Was it simply easier to develop, or did you want to simplify the sign up process by tying users' settings to their email? It would obviously be much better if this worked in Airplane mode. However, it's not a dealbreaker, and the unusually low friction of getting set up may be worth it (in fact, if that were the goal, I think it's kinda genius).
Didn't know about the group, thanks for the pointer.
Seems like the group is invite only (my signup is pending for approval).
If you have a minute, would be great if you could help me post the link
there, otherwise I'll wait for the approval and do it later.
