Kelly White | Silvertail Software Inc. Microsoft MVP – Windows Phone Development Blog:

First Published  Alchemy v1.0 published on March 31, 2011 ○ (2 months + 4 days ago)  Alchemy Free v1.0 published on April 9, 2011 ○ (2 months – 5 days ago)  NOTE: 3 business days from submission to approval for new apps.

My Investment  $99 for Marketplace account  200 Hours (v1.0) +100 Hours (v1.7)  $500 in graphical assets Icon pack (IconShock.com) Individual vector images (VectorStock.com)

WP7 Marketplace  Over 20,000 apps 18% are games  39% of apps are free  Average price is $1.78 Average sale price is $2.93  Most Xbox Live titles are $ $5.99  Doodle God & Doodle Devil are $2.99

Pricing  Couldn’t decide between $1.99 and $.99  Initially settled on $.99 NOTE: Did try it at $1.99 after adding Hints.  Why? Haven’t spent enough time to justify a higher price. Will sell more than twice the quantity at $.99 compared to what would sell at $1.99.

Updates Process  Most of my updates turn around in 1-2 business days.  Exceptions v1.6 update took 5 business days v1.7 update took just over 12 hours

Auto-Publishing an Update

Publish/Delete the Submission  If you don’t select auto-publish You must login to app hub and then publish your app / update However, you do get the option to delete the submission instead of publishing it ○ For updates it means that update never goes live, but the previous version still exists ○ For new apps it means it never gets published and you will get a new app id if you resubmit

Rolling back an update…  v1.6 included a cheat that unlocked all elements.  v1.6 also included a button that a user could click to crash the app.  NOTE: Support could not interrupt the submission process.

v1.6 was approved. 

What were my options?  Allow people to get the v1.6 upgrade Submit a new update (v1.7) and hope it quickly gets approved.  Stop people from upgrading to v1.6 Delete the app and resubmit.* Remove the app from the catalog. *This would result in a new app with a new app id and I would lose all my current reviews, Zune rankings, etc.

Step #1 – stop the bleeding  Remove the app from the catalog. No one can see/download v1.6 I now had time to think.

Step #2 – come up with a fix  Get v1.7 update ready  Republish app to marketplace (v1.6)  Submit v1.7 update  Remove app from catalog (v1.6)  Wait for approval  Publish v1.7 update to marketplace

Rule #1 when submitting  Never say you want to auto-publish!

Back to the case study…  App had been live for about a month  Had fixed some bugs  Had added new features  Positive feedback  Ranked well in Marketplace

Ranking – April 25 (noon)  Paid / Free Overall:79 / 49 ○ Games:59 / 29 Puzzles & Trivia:14 / 10  Excluding Xbox Live Titles Overall:29 ○ Games:9 Puzzles & Trivia3

Downloads – April 19  Alchemy (20 days since released) Trial Downloads:1,221 Paid Downloads:745  Alchemy Free (11 days since released) Downloads:9,034

Ad Revenue – April 25 (noon)  Alchemy eCPM:$.19 Impressions:164,793 Revenue:$31.86  Alchemy Free eCPM:$.42 Impressions:804,353 Revenue:$334.05

Trial Conversions – April 25 (noon)  Since the update on April 18 Installed Trial:270 Upgraded to Paid:50  18.5% convert from Trial to Paid  NOTE: 18% is the number Xbox Live targets.

New Feature - Hints  Next update would add Hints.  Only available in the Paid version.  Both Trial and Free would prompt user to upgrade.  Anticipated this would sell like crazy.  Needed custom analytics to track trial conversions.

Update w/ Hints Feature  Alchemy v1.5 published on May 6, 2011  Alchemy Free v1.3 published on May 6, 2011

New Numbers  2,000+ paid downloads a day?!  Big jump in rankings #6 for paid #5 for free  Ad impressions dropped 100k to 70k per day

Validating the Numbers  AppHub Reports are 1 week behind After day #8… After day #9… After day #10… After two weeks… After three weeks…  AppHub was showing only paid downloads per day.

What could be causing this?  Users reinstall the app  Users install the app on multiple devices  AppHub reporting is wrong? e.g. mobile operator billing vs credit card  Silverlight bug in IsolatedStorage?  Piracy?

ApplicationSettings.Save()  I’d never been calling this.  Other features using ApplicationSettings were working.  Wouldn’t hurt to call it…  Don’t have any other ideas…  Might as well submit an update…

 IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings.Save();

Update v1.6  Also changed app to be fully featured in free and trial modes.  Hints were limited to every 6 minutes in free and trial modes.  NOTE: Checked to auto-publish

Already talked about this…

Last Update  Alchemy v1.7 published on May 27, 2011  Alchemy Free v1.7 published on May 27, 2011

Ranking – June 4  Paid / Free Overall:72 / 73 ○ Games:52 / 36 Puzzles & Trivia:10 / 12  Excluding Xbox Live Titles Overall:26 ○ Games:7 Puzzles & Trivia2

Downloads – May 29  Alchemy Trial Downloads:3,368 Paid Downloads:2,492  Alchemy Free Downloads:38,796

Ad Revenue – June 4  Alchemy eCPM:$.21 Impressions:285,572 Revenue:$58.76  Alchemy Free eCPM:$.76 Impressions:3,615,332 Revenue:$2,749.68

Resources  PreEmptive’s Runtime Intelligence  Certification Guidelines on AppHub  Get a phone and play with other apps  Portland Windows Phone User Group

Contact Kelly White | Silvertail Software Inc. Microsoft MVP – Windows Phone Development Mobile: Web: