The iStrip Free Experiment - Part I
The story of iStrip began in May 2008, when we first came up with the idea of the making a stripper pen iPhone app. This was before the launch of the App Store and it seemed like a funny idea.
After learning a bit of Objective-C and Cocoa, iterating many times over the app to get to something that was a little ironic and not too seedy, we subitted it on August 20. It was rejected within 5 days due to “lack of utility” (really?). We gave up on it for a while and made some other apps with more utility, a few clocks, including the (really quite cool) Tokyo Time.
In November we started making some renewed efforts to get iStrip into the store, after Pull My Finger was approved, followed by an avalanche of Fart Apps. After several iterations and making the app ludicrously unoffensive, iStrip finally got approved on February 6, 2009.
We sold a few copies, about 200 over a week or so. We tried to get blogs and media folks to pick up on the iStrip story and how long it had taken us to create some awareness, but nobody seemed interested. The extensive covereage of farting apps had, rightfully, annoyed many readers and I think people were a bit tired of this whole topic. So nothing stuck and iStrip was on it’s way into obscurity.
Since we were only selling a handful of copies per day, we decided to make the app free, at least for a while. The effect was fantastic. Downloads instantly went to about 2,000/day and in those countries where the download numbers on the first couple of days had been enough to get iStrip into the Entertainment Top 100, downloads typically kept increasing and the ranking improved every day. In some countries, especially in New Zealand and Australia, iStrip took off. It went to about 5,000 downloads per day. We have written about this before. But we did not get traction in the crucial US market.
Then we had an update approved and suddenly that gave us the visibility in the store, just for that one day, which sent iStrip soaring to new levels. Downloads went to 10k, 15k, 20k, 25, and finally 30k/day in just a week. The app was in the Top 100 Entertainment charts in all countries, mostly in the Top 25 with a few No.1 spots. iStrip had also become one of the most popular apps overall and went into the Top 25 Free in quite a few countries, including No.2 in big markets like Canada. It was still not in the Top 50 in the US, which was really our goal, but it was well ahead in the charts of the awesome Google Mobile App with Voice Search. (Seriously people, are you insane?)
iStrip as a free application
And then we decided to take the big risk and change it back to $0.99 in the hope that it would stick. We were not exactly sure what the effect would be on ranking, but assumed it would just disappear (which it did). Still, we had to give it a go.
On Saturday March 14, 2009, at 9.45am GMT, iStrip was holding the following chart positions around the world. We also include the total number of downloads the app had had over the preceeding seven days (you can sort this table by column for interesting results :) NOTE: The table will not show in your feed reader. You have to come to the site, sorry.
We submitted the price increase at 10.25am GMT and by 11am iStrip had disappeared from all charts around the world, both free and paid. It had become invisible. Fear set in. But by 12pm it started appearing in some, seemingly random, smaller countries again. And since then iStrip has steadily made progress everywhere.
At 8pm GMT today, the app is back in the Entertainment Top 100 in 36 markets, including, crucially, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany and others. It is also back in the Top 100 Free in 8 countries and trending upwards everywhere. We sold just over 800 copies yesterday, but don’t think that this will be a sustainable level, maybe for a few days. We shall see in Part II of this story.
Today the very first application we ever wrote for the iPhone has finally been approved! It’s original name was iStrip and we submitted it in August of 2007 for review. iStrip was a virtual stripper pen, a gimmick that boys used to play with when we were young in the 1970s.