★ APPY TEXT ON THE WINDOWS STORE: THREE MONTHS IN NUMBERS

Before releasing Appy Text, beyond knowing that there are ~500 million Windows 10 potential users, I had no idea how it would do as it was my first UWP app. I did however expect it to do better than my previous app, Appy Weather, because 1) Windows has more users than Windows Phone and 2) Appy Text was going to be free with an in-app purchase, whereas Appy Weather had a three day trial before you needed to pay. For a $3.99 weather app on the number three mobile platform, Appy Weather performed admirably. In general though, it did okay. It's now been a few months since Appy Text was released on the Windows Store, enough time to re-calibrate my expectations moving forward for Appy Text as well as the Windows Store. Here are the numbers.

Firstly, to get an objective feeling for the quality of the app that the numbers are linked to, please consider its review rating of 4.7 based on 116 reviews so far.

4.7 average rating based on 116 reviews

Also worth considering is that although I'm not a famous developer on the platform, I've a bit more reach than someone who is releasing their first app.

Appy Text has been downloaded 7,861 times in three months.

7,861 downloads

For comparison, Appy Weather has been downloaded 24,328 times. That is, Appy Text has in three months reached one-third of the downloads Appy Weather managed in three years.

These are the daily download numbers:

833 downloads the highest in a single day

Those spikes occurred whenever the app was mentioned on a reputable website. Michael Allison's MSPoweruser review helped the app hit a peak 833 downloads for a day on April 23, less than a week after the app was released. The least number of downloads it's managed in a day is 23; however, outside of the aforementioned spikes, the app was on average downloaded around 50 times a day in the first three months.1 Obviously this isn't anywhere near Windows 10's estimated user base, but it's nonetheless a solid number to work with. But, remember, the app is free with a Premium in-app purchase that was on sale at $0.99 for the first couple of weeks before changing to $3.99. There are 472 Premium users.

472 Premium users from 24,328 downloads

That's around 6% of downloads becoming paid users. That may seem little but it's actually normal. I'm okay with this free-to-paid user conversion ratio2 but I'm not with the percentage of users activating the free 30-day Premium trial. This warrants a separate post where I'll elaborate on what who is responsible for this (me) and steps I'm taking to address this (first changes have already resulted in a meaningful bump). For comparison, Appy Weather has a respectable more-than-nine but less-than-ten percent conversion ratio with 2,312 paid users.

The app's been downloaded the most in the United States. This is the top 10:

  1. United States - 2,477
  2. Germany - 787
  3. Russia - 644
  4. India - 464
  5. United Kingdom - 422
  6. Poland - 319
  7. China - 308
  8. France - 237
  9. Canada - 174
  10. Italy - 152

United States is #1 in downloads

Worth mentioning are a couple of countries in Appy Weather's top 10 downloads that are nowhere near Appy Text's top 10: Vietnam (third, yes third, behind the U.S. and U.K.), and Mexico (10th).

As for the spread of Premium users, it's mostly similar with China and Italy making way for Australia and the Netherlands:

  1. United States - 173
  2. Germany - 60
  3. United Kingdom - 44
  4. Russia - 21
  5. Poland - 19
  6. India - 12
  7. Australia - 11
  8. France - 10
  9. Netherlands - 9
  10. Canada - 9

Finally, and this is possibly the thing that took me most by surprise, although the app has been downloaded mostly on the PC, as was expected, phone downloads are not insignificant. Tablet downloads however are - they're less than a hundred. Special mention to the one user who downloaded the app from a Windows Server device.

PC makes up 61.7% of downloads, phone 37.1%, tablet just over 1%

These are my key takeaways:

  • The Windows Store is bigger than the Windows Phone Store.

  • But Windows Mobile 10 users shouldn't be ignored. Not yet anyway.

  • Being a free app makes a big difference in terms of downloads.

  • However, it's easier converting trial users to paid users when the app stops functioning at the trial's expiry.

  • And so I've ended up with (many?) free users who I'm not making any money from.3 Unless ads.

  • But if I continue to reject monetising through ads then Appy Text is highly unlikely to ever make generate revenue per month to enable its development to become a full-time gig.4

1. This number is continuing to increase and has entered the 100+ region in the last week. It's managed to maintain this average for more than a few days suggesting this isn't a temporary bump. ↵

2. Unfortunately, I'm unable to tell how many users who went on the trial then decided to go Premium. ↵

3. Unfortunately, I'm unable to tell how many of the app's now ~200+ daily active users are Premium users. ↵

4. In these first three months, Appy Text has made me around £600. This is after the 30% Microsoft sales tax as well as VAT but doesn't include UK income tax deductions.

I've rejected ads thus far because I know it will spoil the writing experience for free users. When I decided to make the app free with an in-app purchase, my aim was for the free version to match Notepad, and for the IAP to help one-up it. Introducing ads for free users may make it inferior to write in than Notepad. That's not something I've been willing to concede, even though I'm aware it would not only bring in money I would otherwise not have made, it would also incentivise more free users to go Premium. ↵

Wednesday, July 26, 2017


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