If you are are one of the three or four people who occasionally visit this blog, you may have noticed there haven’t been many posts lately. Sorry….that is to say I’m sorry I haven’t given you more free blog posts. BTW, clicked on an ad recently? Didn’t think so. That is not to say I would click on them, they are typically uninteresting.
I’ve been consumed with two things lately and those have been a new iOS app I’ve been working on, as well as trying to improve my digital painting skills (which is highly related). The app is going pretty smoothly so far, and as always, is a learning experience. You really can’t expand your knowledge of objective-c and the iOS SDK without actually planning a project, writing the code, and testing it out.
With regard to the artwork for my new iOS app, there is just so much to do; it is a bit overwhelming when I step back and look at the workload, and then look at how much time I can devote to it around my day job. I would probably be best served by improving the speed at which I can produce graphics. I would be even better served by hiring out the work, but I’m cheap and a control freak. This is a combination that will not let that happen until I’m working on a project much larger in scope.
The artwork is where my new app will need to shine as it’s not the first of its kind. Like Robodamus (which I feel is the best fortune teller in the app store right now…not that I’m biased in any way 
), I hope it can be the best of its kind. If it’s not, then I’ll just proceed with the Seppuku.
Making a few more sales wouldn’t hurt, either, but I’m not sure how I’m going to approach this yet. I do know that I can’t do what I did last time marketing Robodamus and expect a lot of sales. With Robodamus I burned a lot of calories with very little to show for it. I did, however, discover which sites where charging people in exchange for reviews (presumably positive ones). Scumbags…
With regard to marketing, analytics will be something I insert into the app this time around. I would love to know how people were navigating through the app, where they were spending their time, and how often they were using the app in general. Beyond a natural sense of curiosity, I’d like to improve and add to the graphics and animations on the pieces of the apps that people use the most. If people are using the app consistently, maybe I’d like to modify the graphics for when holidays come around (so the app would enter Halloween mode in October, for instance). If most people use the app once and then never use it again (a failure on my part), then I would have the information to decide whether to bother with special holiday graphics. If most users start using the app and then the use begins to slow, I would be able to create an update and gauge whether it has reinvigorated use. It’s like I want to be a helpful version of a “Peeping Tom”; I’ll creepily peer into your living room at night, but once a month I’ll shampoo your carpet while you’re out. Win-win!
On a related note, I’ve started a small business, Pixel Cloud Studios. It seemed prudent to take advantage of the tax benefits afforded to small businesses since I do actually create things that I sell to the public and am attempting to make a profit. So far, I’m only selling Robodamus in the app store, but with the second app on its way the time is nigh to pay the government for a piece of paper and claim my name.
This blog will eventually also be the blog of Pixel Cloud Studios. I don’t expect anything to change with regard to this blog as a result of this.
-James
