Aditya Kothadiya’s Blog

4 months ago I launched my part-time project – a Voice Call based reminder iPhone application – JustRemindIt. When I launched it, I had promised that I’ll keep writing my experience about launching, marketing and running an iPhone application business. But, I didn’t keep up my promise and didn’t write anything about it. I just launched the app, and then that’s it. I didn’t work more on the app after that. I did some basic feature enhancements and bug fixes, but not major feature announcements. I didn’t push for any marketing either – absolutely nothing – I know, it was a big mistake. No, I didn’t loose any interest in the project, it’s just that I got too swamped up with my other social commerce startup Shopalize that I couldn’t give enough attention to this project.

JustRemindIt is probably one of my best part-time projects. It solves a real problem for many people, it has “wow” effect in how it solves that problem, it has paying and happy customers, it is growing steadily without any efforts, and it still has great potential in future. Though I was not actively working on this project, whenever I used to get some time, I kept improving it bit by bit. I plan to launch a big update for this service very soon, so stay tuned. But there is one thing I was quite regular about this project – monitoring the stats pretty much once in every few days. I just looked at the stats today morning and thought I would share those with you all to give an perspective on how iPhone app economy works. Hope these numbers will be useful to you in your endeavors.

Setting the right expectations

Since JustRemindIt is not a “gaming”, “social” or “local” iPhone app, I didn’t expect to have huge download success. In fact, it’s a reminder application to increase your productivity, I thought the targeted audience on iOS platform will be very limited. Since iOS platform is primarily a entertainment platform and not a productivity platform, my expectations of going it viral or featuring in top charts were very low. On top of that, I also have a freemium business model, so I kept my ambitions and projections quite realistic.

Ok, now let’s dive into the numbers, and then we’ll discuss some lessons I’ve learned so far.

Stats for last 4 months

1. Number of downloads

JustRemindIt iPhone app is free to download on the app store, and it gives you few free reminder credits to try out the app before you need to buy more credits. The whole business model was based on the “pay-as-you-go” premise. I think this model worked quite well instead of charging upfront money to download the app. In 4 months, the app was downloaded close to 1400 times. First month had the highest downloads, as I had done some launch publicity that time. After that, without zero marketing efforts, the download rate is quite constant. On an average, there are 10 downloads per day.

2. Number of registered users

JustRemindIt iPhone app requires users to register to JustRemindIt service. I knew that this design strategy had a flaw and I would loose some users, but I decided to use this approach from future plans perspective. I’m planning to launch a web application of the same app in few days, and wanted a way for users to sync up their iPhone and Web app reminders in a seamless way. I could have achieved the same results using different strategies, but it would have required more work and delayed my launch. So I launched with a strategy where users need to register before they start using the app. And sure enough, I dropped 40% of users. I’ve around 60% users of all users who downloaded the app registered with JustRemindIt service.

3. Active users

Since it’s a productivity based app, my assumption was many users will not continue using this service after first few uses. Typically productivity specific initiatives generally don’t last more than first few days when our energy is high. With this understanding, I assumed that if user schedules more than 3 reminders using JustRemindIt app, then she’s an active user. Currently I’ve little more than 25% of total registered users as active users. In active users also, not all users are equally active. Roughly, 20% of active users drive around 70% activity, remaining 30% activity is driven by rest of 80% active users.

4. Number of reminders

The activity by active users is to send reminders to themselves or other people. More than 1100 reminders have been sent so far using JustRemindIt service in last 4 months. That’s about roughly 10 reminders per day. Of course, weekends are less active than weekdays, but I’m just giving you a rough idea. Anyways, this is quite less than my expectations, so this is one area where I want to focus on and improve these numbers.

5. Paid users

As mentioned earlier, I give few free reminders for new users to try out, but once they consume all free credits, they need to recharge their account with new reminders. As of today, around 5% of registered users have recharged their account after using free reminders.

6. Paid plans

I’ve $0.99, $2.99 and $5.99 paid plans to recharge your account. The $5.99 is the most popular plan with 80% users purchasing this plan. $0.99 is the least popular plan.

7. Repeat paid users

Again, people might recharge their account once, and then might not come back to recharge again. So I wanted to measure how many of these paid users have recharged their account more than once. Approximately 15% users of paid users have recharged their account more than once. Those are the truly happy and loyal customers!

8. Revenue

Finally, revenue – probably the ultimate metric you want to track. First and foremost, this is my first project, which is making real revenue by “charging users to pay to use your product”. I had few other projects in the past which made some money through Google AdSense, but this project gave totally different satisfaction and sense of achievement. In fact, having paying customers is the ultimate validation of your idea. So probably nothing keeps me motivated and excited about this project than knowing that I’ve paying customers, and that list is continuously growing. Anyways, back to numbers, I’ve made decent few hundreds in last 4 months. I haven’t reached to 1K mark though, may be it will happen in few more months once I launch the Web application with Premium features and monthly Subscription plan.

9. Profit

The app is profitable if you don’t consider the time I had put in initially in developing it. Right now, it makes more money than what I’m spending on server and call expenses. So I might like to say it’s a profitable business, but as we know, technically it’s not if we consider my time involvement.

10. Customers

Though I launched and positioned my app initially for consumers on iOS platform, and though they are the majority of registered users, the most active users are actually small professional and personal service businesses. Businesses are actually finding this service more valuable than consumers. So definitely, my next focus will be to cater these business users with advanced features.

Lessons learned so far

1. Positioning your service uniquely is very important.

There was no dearth of reminder services on both web and on iOS platform when I launched this app. There are many Email/SMS based and some Voice Call based reminders services on the Web, and there are also many Email/SMS reminder iPhone apps and very few Voice Call based reminder iPhone apps on the app store. There are also few Text to Voice Call reminder services on the Web, but there was no iPhone app in the app store which was doing Text to Voice Call conversion for reminders. So I decided to start solely on the iOS platform to position uniquely and then expand to Web application once I have enough traction. I also decided to just focus on the Voice reminders than doing all Email/SMS reminders to begin with. I think it worked quite well. I don’t think I would have gotten these many registered users solely on the Web application in 4 months, especially given so much competition in this space. Definitely now I’ll expand to Web application, and will also add Email and SMS reminders, but if I would have done that before, then I think I would have gotten compared with all other apps and services out there, and would have lost my uniqueness or “wow” factor as explained in next point.

2. Having little “wow” factor makes a good difference.

Reminder services are not new. Voice reminders are also not new. But Text message to Voice Call was something new. Or at least, it was not obvious to many people. This feature or approach added “wow” factor to my app. Many people’s eyes light up when I explain them how my app works – just type a text message and our service will call the receiver as a voice call. And naturally they download it, tell other people, and so on.

3. Having a real business model for your part-time projects makes your efforts all worth it.

Part-time projects are fun to build and launch, but not after that. No one likes to “maintain” the project. Everyone wants to “launch” cool new things. As soon as your project gets into a maintenance mode, you start loosing the interest and motivation to maintain it. That’s where having a real-business model and paying customers makes a huge difference. Not because you’re responsible to provide your customers a reliable service, but because it’s a great satisfaction that you’ve build something valuable and useful that people are actually giving you their money.

4. To make real business on the iPhone app, you’ll need a lot bigger scale and hence lot more marketing efforts.

My goal for this project was not to build a real startup out of it, but more to study and understand the app store and SAAS based app’s economy. I also priced my product with low margins because my goal was not to make lot of money out of this, but was to get more people use it and have some of them pay you that covers its cost. I also didn’t work at all on the marketing front, which I definitely plan to do more now going forward. But based on my current revenues numbers, I’ll need lot faster execution, lot more focus on marketing and sales, and lot more volume to make this as a viable business that can support me.

Plans going forward

1. Support and new development

As said earlier, I’ll be launching a web application of this very soon – may be in couple weeks with basic features. It’s primarily targeted for professional and personal service businesses. Then I will continue adding new premium features with monthly subscription based plans for these businesses. I’ll continue supporting my existing customers, in fact that’s always a higher priority for me than adding new features. I also have lot of feature requests for iPhone app from existing customers, so I’ll definitely work on those as well one by one.

2. Marketing

As said before, I didn’t good job in this, and I want to fix it for future releases. I’ve some interesting ideas and plans for this, and I think it’s just a matter of time that I need focus on it and execute it.

3. Get help

As I’ll be super busy with my other startup Shopalize, I won’t be able to give lot of attention to this project to achieve above tasks simply on my own. I’m trying to find some ways to delegate this work in some ways. I’m thinking either I’ll outsource this entire Product Development efforts to low cost centers, and I just take care of Marketing, Product Management, and Customer Support efforts going forward. Or the second option is to get someone as a partner on the board who wants to learn and build this business in his/her part-time.

Anyways, I hope this information was useful to you and hope you’ll do more right things while launching your next iPhone app business. Also, if you want to join me, or know someone who would like to help me on this project, please feel free to contact me at aditya@justremindit.com. Also, let me know your thoughts and suggestions about how should I execute it in much smarter way in the comments section below. Looking forward for your inputs.

I’m super excited to announce that my first iPhone app “JustRemindIt” to send Voice (Phone) Call based reminders is ready do download in the App Store here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/justremindit-voice-call-reminders/id408330265?mt=8. The iPhone app is FREE to download in the App Store, and you’ll also get some few reminder credits to try the app and play with it.

The Gist

For those, who don’t know what this app is all about, essentially it’s an easiest and simplest iPhone app to send Voice (phone) call based reminders to your friends, colleagues, clients and yourself and get your tasks done.

You just enter the receiver’s details like name, phone number and timezone, then you enter reminder details like message (in simple text format) and date and time at which you want to send a reminder. And then we convert your textual message into voice and call the receiver at scheduled time.

The Approval Process

A couple of weeks ago I’ve shown the pre-view of this app and shared how I got started working on this app in my post – Preview of my first upcoming iPhone app – “Just Remind It”. At that time, app was almost ready, so I submitted in the App Store for approval after couple of days of polishing. Unfortunately, just within 4 days I received a notification saying my app got rejected. It was a minor issue from my side during submission process. After fixing that issue quickly, I resubmitted the app in the App Store. But unfortunately the iTunes Connect department got closed for Christmas holidays for almost 5 days, which delayed the app review process. Now, just a couple of days ago, the app is Approved and available to download from the App Store.

You can download it for free here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/justremindit-voice-call-reminders/id408330265?mt=8. You’ll need to create a new account to use the app and you’ll receive few free reminder credits in your account to play around with the app. You can also check out http://justremindit.com for more information on the benefits of this app and who is it useful for.

Help me spread the word

I need your help on few things -

1. Please use the app, and let me very honest feedback how did you find it? Is it useful to you? Was it easy to use? Do you have any ideas that you would like to see implemented in the next version of this app? Please, just write to me at help@justremindit.com
2. If you used the app and if you like it, then please write a review in the app store. This will be highly appreciated!
3. I’ll appreciate if you can share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Email. Help your friends to get more organized and productive by recommending this reminder app.

Next Plans

I already have more than 100 users from last couple of days using this app. Few of them were very kind enough to give me features and ideas they want to see to be implemented. I already have my prioritized list to release in the next version, so definitely, adding more useful features, and at the same time making this app even more simple will be top priority. On the side, spreading the awareness of app is also high priority. I’ll be writing to few bloggers and app review sites about app launch. I’ll see how the response is received from such PR efforts. I’ll definitely write about process I followed and ROI it generated in next few posts.

Overall, I’m very excited for accomplishing the first step, i.e. building the app and having it launched in the App Store. But this is just the beginning. The real challenge begins now – growing the usage of this app. I’m excited about all these challenges and ready to fight on!

I’m extremely thrilled to show you a preview of my first iPhone application – “Just Remind It” (http://justremindit.com) and also give you some early-bird discount for signing up early i.e. before I actually launch the app in the app-store. Here are some details about what does the app do, why I started it, whom is it useful for, how does it look, what are the next plans and early bird offer.

What does the app do?
“Just Remind It” is an iPhone application to send Voice (phone) call based reminders to your friends, colleagues, clients and yourself. It’s an easier and effective way to send automatic reminders and get your tasks done.

You just enter the receiver’s details like name, phone number and timezone, then you enter reminder details like message (in simple text format) and date and time at which you want to send a reminder. That’s it! And we do the rest i.e. send automatic reminder to receiver at defined date and time as a phone call.

Why I started it?
Well, this was basically a class project for my wife’s iPhone programming class when she was studying for her Masters. She completed the project and demoed it in the class on the demo day. Everyone liked this productivity related app, which was simple but impressive, whereas every other student was demoing a gaming app. We then showed it to our friends, and they loved it. We showed it to our colleagues at work, and they wanted one. Then I showed it to my lawyer, my dentist, and they wanted it too.

After all this demoing, we decided to commercialize it since so many people wanted it. But the app we were demoing was not up to the mark of commercial apps that are out there in the app store. We needed more native User Interface, more features, and more robust app. Then I started making it a commercial app from a class project. I learned Objective-C, revamped the entire UI, added lots of features but still kept it simpler to use, made it crash-free and as much as possible bug-free as well.

And now is the time, we think it’s ready to be launched in the app store and give it in your hands to try it out and make use of it.

Whom is it useful for?
Ideally, every person who wants to send any kind of reminder to any person.

You can use to send reminders to yourself about paying Credit card bills, buying grocery while driving home, or calling your friend on her birthday. You can also use it to send reminders to your friends or colleagues about bringing that note book in the class or work tomorrow, or reminding them about party you’ve planned.

If you run professional or personal services business, such as a massage therapy practice, a salon, a law firm, or a dentistry, you can send reminders to your clients about their appointment with you. As sometimes your clients, who also lead very busy lives forget about their appointments, which costs you revenue and disturbs your schedule. If you could just remind them prior to their appointments, that would increase your revenue and it looks very professional too.

How does it look?
Here are some of the snapshots of app’s current version. It’s very simple and intuitive to use. It looks native app like your other iPhone apps – Contacts and Calendar.

What are the next plans?
First and foremost, to spread this app to as many people and businesses as possible (and not to mention, I’ll need your help in doing that). Second, I already have many feature enhancements and requests to make this app even more simpler and quicker to use. I’ll launch many of those features in the next version. Third, launching a web application for those who don’t have iPhones and want to use this service irrespective of iPhones. Overall, the future to-do list is quite long, and there are many things to grow this business and I’m super excited to be part of this journey.

Early bird offer
The app will be FREE to download in the app store. But you’ll need to buy credits to send reminders. It’s a Pay-As-You-Go model. You pay only when you send reminders. You pay as low as $0.10 per reminder.

As an early bird offer, register your email address in the form mentioned on this URL – http://justremindit.com and I’ll redeem your account with 5 Free reminders so that when you download the app, you already have 5 reminders in your account to send it for free! Just make sure that when you download the app when it’s launched, you use the same email address for account registration.

Stay tuned…
I’ll be submitting the app in the app store in a day or two, and hoping to get it approved within 2 weeks time frame. So expect this app to get launched in 2-3 weeks time frame. I’ll announce the launch again on this blog, till then, stay tuned.