The anti-climax. After the exciting frenzy of the pre-opening weeks, our two heroes Martin and Dominik of TheCodingMonkeys have cooled down quite a bit. Since Apple does not provide any statistics and the download counter in the App Store still does not work (will it ever?) they have no idea how they are doing.
My last post on this matter produced two responses who drew my attention to Pinch Media, a startup providing free tracking of iPhone app usage to iPhone developers. Their offering provides a way to not only get an accurate count of your sales, but also of usage behaviour. I think it's a good idea.
Dominik doesn't think so. He is extremely sensitive to his user's privacy concerns and the idea that his app could help Pinch Media to collect personal information that can be used for context advertising, doesn't appeal to TheCodingMonkeys at all.
Unfortunately, that restricts their choices to waiting for the official app store balance sheet to arrive hopefully at the end of the month.
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Hmmm. At its most basic, Pinch Analytics aggregates number of users, number of application sessions, and the length of time the application was open. That information can't be used to target ads - advertisers are looking for demographic and geographic information. Not that I would try to get a developer to put ads in a paid application - that's a terrible user experience.
Dominik's not limited to waiting for the app store balance sheet, of course - he could always build his own basic user counting and update his application with it. That'd work, and because only TheCodingMonkeys would have access to the data, he wouldn't have to worry about his users' privacy. I'd recommend this - knowing how your users are using your app is key to making your app better.
One thing we can all agree on - having to wait until the end of the month for sales figures is terrible. How are you supposed to run a business?
It sounds like CodingMonkeys isn't interested in full usage metrics, just the initial purchase date.
Since they already have a website, connecting to their own server on the first run of the app sounds like a no-brainer. That can be a good enough workaround until Apple improves their reporting.
The download counter worked at the start and then was intentionally turned off by Apple. Possibly it was being abused in some way.
When I emailed them about a separate matter to do with their financial reports, they added "If you are requesting a live count, or daily/weekly reports, please send this request to xxxxxxxxx@apple.com."
So something must be possible.
(I don't want to quote the exact apple.com address here, in case of spamming)
I have to agree. Not knowing if your app is selling or how well only hurts the developers (and also Apple) in the long run. You really need to be able to have some sort of sales stats that are available at least daily. A month is just too long to wait in a market that moves as fast as this one. User privacy is always a concern. I've looked at Pinch Media and I like the tools and analytics. But, the possibility of having to place adds in my app is a deal killer.