The last App Store Experiment update was on August 2, 2020. The series started on June 20, 2013. That is a long gap.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this experiment over the last few months. Nearly 1 million people read The App Store Experiment from 2013 to 2020. But the App Store has changed a lot. ASO has become much harder. Ad spending on Meta and TikTok has exploded. AI is flooding the store with thousands of apps each week.

I recently shared on LinkedIn some thoughts about AI that seemed to connect with people:

AI is an incredible accelerator for building products.

But the stories about someone “vibe coding” an app on a weekend and hitting $100k MRR a week later? Almost all noise.

For every viral win, there are thousands of posts that say: “I built an app with AI… and nobody downloaded it.”

Version 1 is maybe 2% of the journey, if you’re lucky.

AI has made building easier, but distribution is still very hard. It hasn’t made product intuition or trust any easier.

The hard part is still:

• Iterating for months
• Talking to users
• Improving relentlessly
• Figuring out distribution

AI has changed V1 build time. It doesn’t change the grind.

I want to see if the same approach to grinding and iterating still applies. I also want to share some of the wins and losses I’ve had since.

If you’re building for the App Store, I’ll share the experiments, the data, and the decisions, plus what moved the needle and what didn’t.

Quick Timeline (The Short Version)

• June 20, 2013: built a 7 Minute Workout app in a night and launched quietly. (Part 1)
• Going free in 2013 led to 216,718 downloads in 3 days and a top 25 overall ranking in the US. (Part 1)
• By August 14, 2013: 520k downloads, ~2k per day, ~$6k revenue, and IAP converting ~2-3% of daily downloads. (Part 2)
• By 2015 the app had reached 2.3 million downloads and was acquired. (Isolation, COVID-19 and the App Store)
• December 4, 2019: I re-acquired the app to continue the story. (The Resurrection)
• August 2, 2020: switching to subscriptions reached $1k MRR in just under 2 months. (Switching To Subscriptions)

Where It’s At

There are no turntables or microphones, but there has been some growth since I last posted.

MRR

When I last shared about switching to subscriptions, 7 Minute Workout had just hit $1k MRR.

As of March 2026, it has grown to about $10k MRR (before Apple’s cut), but the road has been bumpy. Some of that is my lack of effort, and some is the changing market.

As you can see, it grew nicely for a year until about $4.5k MRR. Then the dreaded churn kicked in. New subscriptions didn’t quite keep up with churn, so it gently fell away.

In June 2024 I went to WWDC, which inspired me into action:

• Worked on ASO and localisations
• Doubled the price of the subscriptions
• Improved the onboarding and added the paywall to it

This kicked off another year of growth. And then, more churn!

Downloads

Downloads are at about 150 to 200 per day, not like the old days, but enough to work with.

Sales

Sales are better than ever, but not growing. Still, I can’t complain for a side project.

Apple Love

I’ve been lucky enough to be featured by Apple a number of times, especially around the launch of iOS 26. The features were mainly in Australia, so didn’t have the impact that you’d hope for a US feature. But I won’t be complaining.

For example, 7 Minute Workout was chosen in the 26 apps for 2026:

I’ll share some more specifics in an upcoming post.

Current & Upcoming Tests

I’m prioritizing tests that can move the core funnel, measured by trial starts, paid conversion, churn, and payback period.

• New screenshot A/B test (in progress)
• Professionally designed screenshot A/B test
• Pricing changes based on a country’s ability to pay
• Custom Product Pages (CPPs)
• Apple Search Ads
• Meta Ads
• Any suggestions? Ping me on one of the socials below.

Future Updates

I am aiming to post at the end of every one or two major experiments, whenever there is something interesting to share. I’m estimating 3-4 times a year.

If you want the results as they happen, subscribe to the newsletter below. I will send each update as I publish them.

Previous Posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale
• The Resurrection
• Isolation, COVID-19 and the App Store
• Switching To Subscriptions

Subscriptions

As mention in the last post, I swapped the business model to subscriptions for 7 Minute Workout. I went with a monthly, yearly and lifetime option as shown below. Any previous purchases of Pro or "All The Things" were grandfathered as if they had bought the lifetime option. I used RevenueCat for the implementation and most of the charts below are from their service.

Getting Approved

Getting the new update with subscriptions approved was a real challenge.

I couldn't get the new subscriptions approved until the app fully supported them.

But I also couldn't get the app approved until the subscriptions were working in the app.

I bounced back and forward about 6 times with App Review, submitting new binaries, trying to explain to them. Googling around I found several other people who were having the same issue and the advice said to just keep trying.

I ended up requesting a call with App Review, a few days later they left a message on my voicemail at 3am saying they had approved the subscriptions and the app. For anyone else stuck in the same situation in the future I'd suggest taking the call

MRR

Since it was all approved, it's taken just shy of 2 months to hit $1k USD in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).

The 2 month growth in MRR has been fairly steady.

I tried a number of pricing experiments along the way. I tested different prices as well as free trials.

I decided to start with no trial, as the app already has significant free functionality, and a low price point ($1.99/m). Then I increased the price ($4.99/m) and then finally enabled a 3 day trial. You can see the impact of each below.

The flat line when trials were introduced was caused by nobody converting until they came out of trial, shifting the growth to the right.

Interestingly the growth rate in MRR at the higher price point with and without trials was almost identical.

If we take the growth rates of $1.99/m and $4.99/m and look at them from the start of the period it shows the difference it makes. If I hadn't of changed the price I'd predict I'd be at ~$800/m MRR. If I had of started with $4.99/m I'd predict I'd be somewhere around $1400/m MRR.

Revenue

A low priced lifetime option meant many more people took that option, unsurprisingly. It did mean there was more revenue earlier in the experiment.

Because it's early days I'm yet to see if churn is low enough and renewals high enough that I will be better off in the long run.

If we look at revenue broken down by lifetime (teal), annual (brown) and monthly (blue) we can see the impact of the up front payments is significant on revenue now. Hopefully we see blue grow over time as renewals start to really kick in.

Active Subs and Trials

The subscriptions and trials have also been pretty steady.

There's an obvious change in the growth rate of subscribers and trials when the price increases, going from approximately 9 per day to 6 per day.

The drop off in lifetime purchases in preference for monthly purchases and trials is obvious as the price increased.

Conversion rate from trial to paid so far has landed at 79%. Which seems very solid to me.

Conclusion

There's a number of things to consider when you switch your app to subscriptions:

• You may have a temporary (hopefully) drop in revenue when you switch to a subscription model
• You won't know conversion and churn rates for months
• Trials may not be effective for your app if it already has free functionality
• Let the market decide the price, test, test, test

Given the price change was very effective in growing MRR, the obvious thing to try next is an even higher price point.

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale
• The Resurrection - How I got 2.3 million app downloads
• Isolation, COVID-19 and the App Store

TLDR; In 2013 I made an app in a night, grew it to 2.3m downloads before being acquired in 2015. In 2020 I re-acquired the app.

Here's the results from experimenting over the last few months.

Product Hunt

Like all good (and bad) startups I thought I should give Product Hunt a go. In December, thanks to the awesome Robleh Jama from Shopify, it was listed.

It went pretty great, ended up on the front page. 483 upvotes and the #4 Product of the Day. It even got the shiny badge below.

I was pretty excited to see the results. I assumed front page and 400+ upvotes meant many thousands of downloads.

The results were pretty underwhelming. 257 people click through, 56 of those people ended up downloading the app, with a grand total of $12 in sales.

Is this normal for Product Hunt? Maybe it was a bad fit for my app \_()_/

Price Increase

Given I have had good success previously with price increases, I tried increasing the in app purchase from $1.99 to $9.99. It made zero difference, the volume of conversions went backwards at the same rate.

Apple Watch

An interesting book was released in February claiming to share valuable business secrets of the App Store.

Given my German is non existent I relied on other's interpretations. One that caught my attention was the requirement to support Apple Watch to have any chance of being featured by Apple. Unsurprising, but good validation.

This had also been been requested a number of times in my app reviews.

It took me until April to get around to it, but I added an Apple Watch app!

It didn't have any direct impact on downloads or sales. Unfortunately still no Apple feature yet!

COVID

The world turned upside down in mid March. COVID-19 meant many of us stayed home to work. Gyms closed and people started looking for alternatives.

This resulted in a big spike in downloads for the app.

And also a spike in sales.

There's definite signs of the spike easing as some countries start opening up again.

New Icon

Our amazing Appbot designer Corey Ginnivan offered to make me a new icon. He smashed this together in about 15 minutes and I loved it. Better than I could do in a lifetime.

It hasn't had any positive, or negative, impact on conversions so far. But I love it.

Ratings Progress

As mentioned in the previous post I implemented a ratings prompt. Lifting the app up to 4.8 stars in the USA.

The volume has been on an improved velocity as well.

Subscriptions

Going back to the book that leaked all the juicy App Store information it also mentioned how Apple loved subscriptions as a business model. This is pretty well known, but a good reminder.

A new update has been submitted swapping over my business model to subscriptions using RevenueCat (Thanks to Matt Comi for the recommendation).

Right now I'm stuck in a loop with App Review where they won't approve my IAP subscriptions because my app doesn't support it, but also won't approve my app because the IAPs aren't approved. I'd love to hear from anyone that's been stuck in the same situation.

I'll let you know how it goes in a few months :)

Observations

To me the most interesting stat is the change in sales per download. Back when I sold the app in 2015 it was averaging around 3,000 downloads a day, but each of those downloads would only average around 10c in sales. Now the downloads average closer to 500 a day, but on average generate 60c in sales.

Would 6x more downloads now result in 6x more sales? Hopefully I can find out in the future. Follow me on Twitter

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/7-minute-workout/id650762525?amp%3Bat=11l4LZ&mt=8

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale
• The Resurrection - How I got 2.3 million app downloads

Back in 2013/2014 I published a series of blog post here on how an app I made overnight reached 2.3m downloads in 18 months and was acquired.

The response to the blog post was overwhelming.

467,000 people have read the post.

I've been asked to speak at conferences all over the world:

People have reached out about how it inspired them.

And we have turned the feedback driven growth approach into my dream company, Appbot. I have the best co-founder in the world, Claire, and the most most amazing team.

The Offer

A few weeks back I received an email from Chip, the CEO of Wahoo Fitness (who acquired the 7 Minute Workout app).

We have since completely neglected the app for years, doing just enough to keep it working with each update to iOS. The question of what to do with it came up last week and I thought I'd reach out to you and see if you might be interested in taking it back and having a shot at another chapter in the blog post...

Wahoo have been so successful with their core business that the app never became a priority for them. Everyone I have dealt with at Wahoo has been fantastic. I think it reflects a great culture at the company that they would consider sending the app back to me rather than seeing it die.

The Decision

So what does a CEO of a startup to run with no free time say to that? This one said HECK YES.

I have such great memories of the experiment and it seemed to be useful to so many people that I couldn't resist the opportunity to continue the story.

I'm am also recently back from the very excellent Product Led Growth Summit in San Francisco which gave me the inspiration to give this a go.

So buckle up, hold onto your direwolf, the experiment is back on.

The Decline

So Chip did mention a decline, but really, how bad could it be?

Turns out it's pretty bad.

The downloads have been in rapid decline:

And the revenue followed the same trend:

Interestingly the active users has held up better than the downloads:

Maybe people have just lost interest in the 7 Minute Workout? Maybe the people of today need more, 8 minutes? Maybe they need less, 4 minutes?

Turns out the interest has dropped a bit, but nothing like the drop in the app.

The State Of The App

The app hadn't been updated for over 2 years. It was 2 iOS versions behind and didn't support the full resolution of iPhone X and newer.

It was over 110Mb thanks to a number of analytics packages and the Wahoo hardware was pushed really hard.

Bringing The App Back To Life

So I pondered for a while:

And started planning out a minor upgrade.

• First off I wanted to make sure it supported iPhone X, XS, etc. Pretty easy, just a rebuild
• I removed all third party analytics packages (reducing the bundle from 100Mb to 20Mb, before I added the videos)
• I never loved the navigation on the main screen, so I kept it really simple and turned it into the standard table view

• I put the duration options up front when you start the workout rather than buried in the settings

• I added video demos to the workout screen (thanks to my son Lachie for editing the videos)

• I improved the conversion screen after a bit of feedback from Apple "IAP screen looks a bit uninspiring" - ouch, but they were right

• I slightly updated the keywords based on the words used most often in their app reviews

• I updated the screenshots to reflect the new look

The Release

So keeping the tradition going, I quietly released 4.0.0 on Nov 10th 2019. No Twitter announcements, no fan-fair just release and watch.

https://apps.apple.com/au/app/7-minute-workout/id650762525

The Fallout

So some people loved the updates:

Some people are upset it no longer supported the Wahoo TICKR X in the app reviews:

I forgot a feature that was available on the previous version, voice prompt to swap sides half way through one exercise, 27 people emailed me wow So I fixed it in a quick update.

And some people were really upset (republished with their permission):

The Early Results

On the revenue side it looks promising. Sales have gone from averaging around $35/day to $150/day. it's up over 400%! Looks like the new In App Purchase screen is doing it's job.

But unfortunately the downloads are still looking a bit sad.

Ratings Prompt

I've blogged before about how effective the SKStoreReviewController ratings prompt is. Given there were a few upset people with the update about some removed functionality the ratings took a bit of a hit.

Remember you can only prompt three times in a 365 day period. So I went for the 2nd completed workout and every subsequent 50 completed workouts. I suspect there will be an early bump and then tail off. But I'll let you know in a future blog post.

What's Next?

I'm sure it's probably pretty obvious what to go for next. More downloads. Short of some miracle love from Apple, that's going to take some work.

I'm still a huge believer in Feedback Driven Growth so user feedback is going to be the main driver. I look forward to see what users (and you) send me and leave in the app reviews.

Wahoo also added an Apple TV app which I'm keen to have a go at updating. I'd love to re-introduce Apple Watch support as well.

I'll give it an hour a week and see how it goes :)

Want To Help?

I'm going to keep messing with the app and publishing the results. Do you have any ideas or are you an expert at app growth? Maybe you can help the 7 Minute Workout app reach the Iron Throne. Reach out on Twitter with your ideas, I'll be sure to credit you in future posts.

Otherwise, I'd really appreciate a clap below and a share on social media.

Thanks

Thanks to Chip at Wahoo for making this possible. Thanks to the Appbot team (especially Claire) for the proof reading, Corey for the GoT images and my son Lachie for editing the videos. And thanks to my amazing wife Jo for understanding I'll be losing even more of my free time.

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

A bunch of interesting things have happened since part 4. Why is it the finale? Read on.

All The Things

In part 4 I added "All The Things" as an in app purchase option.

This resulted in an overall increase in revenue compared to before "All The Things" was introduced and it also became the major revenue stream.

I'd call that experiment a success, and I highly recommend you consider adding an option to bundle in app purchases to your own apps.

HealthKit

As Apple describes it: "HealthKit allows apps that provide health and fitness services to share their data with the new Health app and with each other. A user's health information is stored in a centralized and secure location and the user decides which data should be shared with your app." - Sounds like something that would work in 7 Minute Workout.

I wanted the app to offer HealthKit support as soon as Apple released it, so I made sure I added iOS 8, HealthKit and iPhone 6/6 Plus support well before launch and submitted to the App Store.

iOS 8 rolled out during the night in Australia and I woke up to this:

I also had a missed call from a U.S. number. After some frantic Googling I found some headlines like this one suggesting "Apple reportedly has pulled HealthKit-compatible apps from the App Store" and that "Apple appears to have discovered a significant last-minute issue with its HealthKit services". Phew, at least it wasn't just me.

Apple were actually amazing during the process, constant calls keeping me up to date and getting my app (sans HealthKit) approved and back on the store within 36 hours with no loss of rank or search position.

I had a bunch of confused users who had the app update with HealthKit, only to have it removed soon after. Luckily being able to add a FAQ remotely via (shameless plug!) AppbotX dried up the support requests.

App Preview

Even though HealthKit didn't come through for me on the iOS 8 launch I did manage to get my App Preview live and Apple Australia were kind enough to feature it.

A big shout out to fellow Perth app dev Adam Shaw who helped me create the App Preview. You should checked out his app called Dressed, it's very cool.

HealthKit Take 2

With iOS 8.0.2 came the actual launch of HealthKit.

I was away speaking at a conference in Melbourne (and then for two weeks of travelling with my family) when the app was featured in a special Apps For Health promo on the App Store home page in the US:

Which resulted in the following sales:

The best ever days for the app, bigger than even the New Years.

It also generated a bunch of press over the next few days like this, this, this and many more.

Getting Featured

A big lesson from both adding HealthKit early and the App Preview was that you need to give Apple every opportunity to feature your app. Believe it or not Apple are on the lookout for apps to feature.

What better way to stand out than being one of the first to get behind a feature that Apple is about to launch.

How is your WatchKit integration going?

Acquired By Wahoo Fitness

Wahoo Fitness produce great app-connected sensors and were featured at the 2014 WWDC Keynote. Their new TICKR X sensor is a heart rate monitor and it can also track exercise repetition movement.

So when Mike at Wahoo emailed me back in May about 7 minute workout, and how it might integrate with their suite of products, I was intrigued.

Over the next two months we had a few discussions, but it stalled as I didn't feel finished with the app, and they weren't quite ready with their device.

Fast forward to November and things changed. I'd been head-down working on Appbot and Wahoo came back with an offer to buy 7 Minute Workout. The timing was right and I'm confident it will be in good hands.

Everyone I have dealt with at Wahoo has been amazing. From Chip and Mike early on, JP and then Dave and Ben during the handover, thank you.

They have big plans for the app: there are already multiple custom workouts, new videos and integration with TICKR X to count repetitions. I know later this month there are some more great features coming, and even an Android version in the works.

I can't wait to see it develop over the next year.

Final Stats

• 2.3 million Downloads
• 7.7 million Updates
• $72k Profit
• Dozens of amazing emails, Tweets and messages from people who were in part inspired to start developing apps thanks to these blog posts. Thank you to everyone that sent feedback or read the posts.

What's Next For Me?

My plan now is to concentrate on Appbot full time, which is something I've wanted to do for some time. We have so many exciting features coming soon, many of which have been inspired by this experiment like the new Sentiment Dashboard. The excitement of an early stage startup, the highs of adding and serving a new paying customer, talking to customers and building what they want is amazing. It's pretty addictive.

There will definitely be more app experiments ... in fact maybe they are already happening :-)

Final Words

One thing that Chip (the CEO of Wahoo) said to me on the first call we had will stick with me for a long time ... "We probably wouldn't have considered buying your app if we hadn't read the story".

I was just looking back at the first point in the first paragraph of part 1 of the experiment.

"How important is it to create a story around your product?"

I think I'll call that a "very important".

Thanks Bernadette.

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4

If you need to catch up first, here are the previous posts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

More IAPs

Part 3 left off where I had just submitted an update with some extra workouts as in app purchases.

By March everyone was over their new years resolutions (Unfortunately mine finished on January 1).

Ignoring the spikes (I'll explain them in a bit), downloads returned to where they were leading up to the silly season, between 2k and 2.5k a day.

Adding the new IAPs had almost zero impact on the original Pro upgrade (staying around $50-60 profit a day), but they did help to lift daily revenue to around $70 - $80 profit a day. Around a 40% increase in profits compared to late last year with similar download numbers, not bad.

If we break it down individually you can see the Pro upgrade was still the major income stream, but the workouts help supplement it.

Educational Downloads

The big spikes you saw above were educational downloads, 25k, 25k and 5k. I believe it is part of Apple's education program. I love the thought of entire schools out there doing the 7 Minute Workout. If you know any of the school please reach out to me.

All The Things

One thing I had noticed in a number of apps with IAP is their top download was an option to buy everything, forever.

So I tried it (this is Australian pricing, US it's $4.99 / $1.99).

And people seemed to like it:

Except it's meant the other in app purchases have taken a nose dive. But overall profit is up to around $145 per day for the first week or so. Update spike or long term trend? I guess we'll see by Part 5.

Reviews & Feedback

One problem I've always had is after an update is the reviews reset and I am stuck back at square one.

I recently launched AppbotX to help developers get app better app reviews and communicate with their customers.

I put in the FAQs, Feedback, Notifications and Review Prompt from the service.

Thanks to the FAQs general support has dropped from ~2 a day to 1 in a week.

I put the review prompt after a positive interaction, in this case when they finish a workout.

If they like the app it asks them to leave a review:

Otherwise it asks for feedback:

The results are awesome, here's the current reviews on the US App Store:

And here is an example of some of the reviews Appbot sent through in it's daily digest.

I've also received great feedback, 80% of which can be grouped into two things:

• Lots of people want an abs workout.
• They want an easier way to review how to do each exercise during the workout.

I may be a little (a lot) biased, but you should check out AppbotX.

Indie Development

Much has been written about being an indie developer on the App Store recently, with not much of it positive.

I think this experiment has shown us a few really important things.

• Go with pricing models that are being proven to work.
• As much as we all hate it, market is more important than product (but both are extremely important).
• SEO and ASO are extremely important, and often overlooked.

I been doing a bunch of consulting recently where I go through apps for developers and give them feedback on how to improve their downloads. Many of these apps are getting only a handful of downloads a day. They have the same thing in common, they have done no work on SEO/ASO and if you look at their App Store page you'd have no idea what their app does.

You know how much development work you put into the app? Put at least half that again into your communication, visiblity and story.

The Stats

• 1.95m downloads.
• 5.5m updates.
• $60k in revenue.

What's Next?

Next I want to experiment with the pricing of All The Things, are people willing to pay more? I'll also add an abs workout and better prompting based on the AppbotX feedback.

What to know what happens next? Join the mailing list below.

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale

It turns out that nothing has been pretty interesting.

Why Have I Done Nothing

The startup I was co-founder of Discovr went through a relaunch and eventual wind up. It's been a pretty draining and emotional time over the last few months. I love the team and expect them all to go on to great things.

Part 2

Part 2 of the experiment was really well received. Links from well respected blogs drove a lot of traffic:

• Marco Arment - Stuart Hall's App Store Experiment
• Mac Stories - Stuart Hall's App Store Experiment
• iOS Dev Weekly - An App Store Experiment

Downloads

For the rest of 2013 the downloads didn't achieve the levels of the early days:

But if we look past the early craziness, downloads are still strong and flat, in the vicinity of 2,500 per day.

Note, that all these downloads were achieved by either App Store discovery or word of mouth. I didn't do any other promotion.

Sales

So with steady downloads I'd expect steady sales numbers, right?

Sales were in steady decline over 2013, which can be seen even more easily with a cumulative graph.

Almost 70% of the profit was from the US.

In App Purchase Price

Here is the one place I did a little bit of work, I experimented with the in app purchase at 99c, $1.99 and $2.99. I ran each of them for one week and as you can see from the profit charts above it was very flat. Any increase (or decrease) in price was offset be the number of purchases.

Australian Feature

Apple were kind enough to feature the app on the front page in Australia, which isn't the biggest store but this still had a very positive impact on sales and downloads. The app even reach number two overall on the free charts, just behind Apple's 12 Days of Gifts.

Christmas and New Year - Resolutions

Christmas saw the millionth download and some significant spikes in both sales and downloads. The new year took it to a new level. Profits were steady through most of November and December at $50 a day. During the first half of January that figure quadrupled to $200 a day. New year resolutions are definitely a positive for fitness apps.

The Stats

• 1,412,803 downloads (5,697 per day)
• $27,317 in revenue

Part 4

Even though the stats look pretty healthy, the revenue per user is crazy low at at around 2 cents per user.

So the big unanswered question left for me is what would people be more willing to pay for? I've had complaints about having to upgrade for features, so would people be more willing to pay for more content instead?

As of today version 2 is available with two new workouts as in app purchases. The updated version also has some great new videos from efit30.com.au who are in the process of remaking all the videos for the app.

What will this do to sales? Stay tuned! You can follow me on Twitter - stuartkhall.

Continue to part 4

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale

The Charity

In part one I asked for suggestions for charities to donate the sales to. I received many great suggestions but I settled on a local Perth charity @Footprints2013. I hope it helps a little to their goals.

The Blog Post

As many of you guessed part 1 of this blog post was the next experiment. The blog post did reasonably well, almost 20k page views, 220+ Tweets, 50 Facebook shares and number 2 on the front page of Hacker News.

And everyone knows the front page of Hacker News is instant success for any product, right?

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

When the downloads began to fall, they kept falling in a very neat curve. As you can see the front page of Hacker News didn't have any noticeable impact.

In App Purchase

I have a love-hate relationship with in app purchases. They are the best way currently to provide a trial, but in my opinion are abused by many developers (Kids games are often the worst offenders).

I had many requests to make the workouts a bit more flexible in time and sets, so thought this was the perfect opportunity to add a pro upgrade.

Pretty simple, some decent extra functionality for a few bucks.

How does In App Purchase (IAP) stack up against a paid download? For this app it's been an increase of over 3x from around $22 per day to around $65 per day. The IAP converts at approximate 2-3% of the downloads per day.

Translating App Store Descriptions

More than 50% of the downloads have always been from the US, with countries like Canada, Netherlands, Philippines and the UK all being about 1/10th of the US.

Something I have seen work well in the past is local App Store description translations. So based on a few recommendations I translated to Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, German, French and Chinese (Simplified). Using https://www.icanlocalize.com this cost approximately $100.

Overall this part of the experiment was a total fail having almost no effect on the number of downloads from any of those countries.

Listening To Users

One thing that was continuously asked for in reviews from AppBot and from support emails was a workout log. So I added one as part of the IAP:

This lifted the IAP sales to around $75 per day:

Flat Design

Flat design has been an interesting one, two major issues have repeated themselves consistently, both around what is tap-able.

First one is the actual rows being tap-able, which I seemed to solve by adding a little disclosure indicator.

The other is the workout log button, people don't realise this is tap-able (and why would they?).

Lessons Learned

• IAP increases revenues — For better or worse for the ecosystem as a whole, it's been proven over and over again it makes more money.
• Get your IAP ready before going free — I'm sure a big opportunity was missed in the initial rush of downloads to convert IAP sales.
• The big run of downloads won't last forever — It won't last forever, but it does settle into a consistent range you can work with.
• Flat design isn't obvious — derp.

Current Stats

• 520k downloads
• ~2k new downloads per day
• $6k revenue
• 1.5 million app updates
• ~10k DAU
• 71% iPhone, 22% iPad, 7% iPod Touch
• 7 million screen views
• 3,500,000 minutes of usage (over 6.5 years)

Will There Be A Part 3?

There wasn't going to be, but I've almost been talked into it. You can follow me on Twitter if you want to find out.

Continue to part 3

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale

• How important it is to create a story around your product.
• How the actual coding takes a back seat.
• How hard it is to market your app.

Two things inspired me to commit to finishing this blog post:

• Reading an advance copy of The Fortune Cookie Principle - The 20 keys to a great brand story and why your business needs one. You must read this book.
• Reading advice from the One More Thing conference about how to write a press release.

This is how you should write a press pitch to @lexfri about an app, oh and wear a red shirt ;) #omtconf

May 24, 2013

Is that really all journalists and reviewers want? I wanted to find out. I wondered what would happen if you made an app in a few hours, stuck it in the App Store and didn't bother telling anyone? So I tried it out.

The Idea

When I set out on this experiment the 7 Minute Workout was getting a lot of press (if you're interested in the underlying research and history, check this paper). Everyone else on Hacker News seemed to be building an app for it and I was doing the workout as a way to start exercising (boy do I need it). Using the existing web apps my iPhone would lock in the middle of the workout, which I found frustrating, and I wanted a decent native solution.

I had a couple of key goals for the app:

• Explaining the 12 exercises (I had been digging around in Google, I had no idea what a plank was).
• Adding a voice-prompted timer for when it was time to swap exercises and to tell you what was up next.

Many other ideas and features ran through my head, including:

• iPad support.
• Adjustable durations.
• Randomise exercises.
• Adjustable repeats / sets.
• Log book.
• Social sharing.

Given a short time frame all this had to be cut (for now).

The Build

So I sat down at 7pm one night with the aim of having the app submitted for review by 12am. Five hours of hacking is actually my idea of fun.

Five hours later I emerged with a couple of screens (dynamically filled with different data) and some text to speech. I'm no designer so there were no graphics, all flat views — thanks in most part to the awesome FlatUIKit.

Another hour (yep I went over) was spent throwing together an icon (again a flat colour with the number 7, as my design skills are limited) taking some screenshots and writing up a basic description.

I was amazed that the name "7 Minute Workout" was still available. I assumed there were other apps waiting for review. I was right.

Built and submitted in 6 hours. The wait begins.

Version 1 Approval

After 6 days and a couple of minutes review time it was approved. Nobody else knew I had made it (I didn't even tell my wife).

By this time there were several other 7 Minute Workout apps in the store. So the aim in the first week was to just let it run without telling anyone and to make no attempt to get press.

I was expecting very little, but was surprised to see that it actually sold a few copies with a steady rank.

Nothing world changing, but still not bad when relying 100% on people discovering it via the App Store.

Version 1.1 - Marketing

So version 1.1 was all about marketing. I added social sharing when a workout was completed (Twitter, Facebook, and Email) and a review nag on the third completed workout.

Following the guide for the perfect press release above (except I attached 4 promo codes each) I sent emails out to ten of the biggest app review sites.

Guess what happened? Absolutely nothing, not one reply. One site gave away their 4 promo codes on Twitter, the only 4 promo codes used. So it appears none of them even installed it with the promo code.

So for the next week sales basically ticked along pretty flat.

That was 3 hours wasted. What I learned from that confirmed what I already believed — you need to sell your app with a story, preferably to people you have built up a relationship with previously to get noticed.

Version 1.2 - Universal

The next stage of the experiment was to expand the market size by adding iPad support.

Again keeping it really simple, exactly the same views were used within a split view. So this only took about 2 hours, another 30 minutes to create some screenshots and submit the update.

Again it made almost no difference to sales.

Going Free

It was time to go free. Late one night (I am in Australia), while the US was waking up I set it to free and went to bed. Wow did things get interesting.

I think the chart says it all.

I was floored. 216,718 downloads in 3 days, an average of 72,000 per day, up from an average of 28 per day at paid, or over 2500x.

It became the #1 fitness iPad app in 68 countries. The #1 fitness iPhone app in 49 countries.

And top 10 overall in 12 countries. It even made top 5 overall in countries like Netherlands. Here it is on the front page:

In the US (where the majority of downloads came from) it made the top 25 overall.

It also led to some amazing reviews (tracked thanks to my service AppBot).

This led to many, many emails from "free app of the day" sites as well as companies trying to sell paid installs. One of my work mates came up with a good response.

I'll admit at this point I couldn't keep it in any longer, four people knew about the experiment and promised to keep it quiet.

At this point I am staring at the stats not knowing what to think. I still have no idea why it has done so well at free. It definitely wasn't me promoting it and it wasn't the press covering it.

The Competition

My app wasn't the first to market, it wasn't the first free one either.

Lessons Learned

• Simple can still do well. Build something topical that solves a simple problem, preferably something that you'll actually use.
• It doesn't have to take a lot of time to test out an idea. I've spent 12 hours so far.
• You don't need to be first to market. There were several other 7 Minute Workout apps in the store when I launched. Many were free when I launched.
• Keep focused. Don't try and solve every problem you can imagine or implement every feature that might be wanted.
• Marketing is hard. It's not just a matter of sending off a simple press release, you need to build contacts and a story (again, get Bernadette's book).
• The App Store is an amazing marketing channel.
• Try and get a really descriptive name.
• It doesn't have to be perfect. Take a risk.
• Anyone can do it.

The Sales

The profit from the period the app was paid stands at $440.90. I want to give this to charity. I'm open to suggestions but cancer is something that has affected people close to me recently, obesity is an obvious one. Got a suggestion? Tweet me @stuartkhall.

Where To Next

So I guess this is the official coming out party. My friends and family are going to be very (very, very) surprised that I made a fitness app — I really need it.

I've just submitted a version with an in-app purchase as the next stage of the experiment. I'd like to get an icon designed and test that out. I'll continue to experiment.

Does The 7 Minute Workout Work?

I've been doing the workout almost every morning since. It's a great way to kick off the day, and I'm 3kg down. That's a big win for me.

To Be Continued

I'm going to keep writing about my experiments with the app, so if you'd like to know how it goes follow me on Twitter.

Want to try out for free?

Other posts

• An App Store Experiment - Part 2
• An App Store Experiment - Part 3
• An App Store Experiment - Part 4
• An App Store Experiment - Part 5 - The Finale