First 100,000 installations

[CarBUZZ]

We finally reached 100,000 installs
Spent ~$8,000 on advertising.
Much more on development.

Some findings:
After digging virtually all marketing directions I can say make good connections with gadget-tech blogs. That's the cheapest human traffic you can find.
Banners dont work.
Big gadget site can make your king in one night if you success to sell your developer story there. They like stories.
iPhone is a great device.
Kathy is in fuzzy mood after vacation.
Be in love with your app.
Dont forget your family.

[Bertrand21]

Originally Posted by CarBUZZ

We finally reached 100,000 installs
Spent ~$8,000 on advertising.
Much more on development.

Some findings:
After digging virtually all marketing directions I can say make good connections with gadget-tech blogs. That's the cheapest human traffic you can find.
Banners dont work.
Big gadget site can make your king in one night if you success to sell your developer story there. They like stories.
iPhone is a great device.
Kathy is in fuzzy mood after vacation.
Be in love with your app.
Dont forget your family.

Congradulations, In what time period? Why spend all the marketing on a free app.

[CarBUZZ]

Originally Posted by Bertrand21

Congradulations, In what time period? Why spend all the marketing on a free app.

1 Month.
Why? Targeted audience. Plan is to take over automotive niche on mobile devices.

[bignoggins]

100,000 is not that great for a free app. For a paid app that's pretty impressive.

[CarBUZZ]

Originally Posted by mightybao

100,000 is not that great for a free app. For a paid app that's pretty impressive.

I agree.
Bear in mind it's not a game app, moreover it's a niche app. Probably it's in same class where epicurious or any other niche apps from big publishing house like conde nast but without offline backing.

Being top5 in lifestyle is a milestone for us

[Not_Appy_At_All]

What's the bottom line?

Are you in the black or still in the red?

If in the red, then you've done a ton of work...but no profit.

If in the black, dividing by hours spent, what is your hourly rate?

Enough to quit that day job?

[CarBUZZ]

Originally Posted by Not_Appy_At_All

What's the bottom line?

Are you in the black or still in the red?

If in the red, then you've done a ton of work...but no profit.

If in the black, dividing by hours spent, what is your hourly rate?

Enough to quit that day job?

Deep red as it's not supposed to be positive cash flow cow another few month from here.

And there's no bottom line only sky is a limit

[Not_Appy_At_All]

Originally Posted by CarBUZZ

Deep red as it's not supposed to be positive cash flow cow another few month from here.

And there's no bottom line only sky is a limit

Why do I get the feeling that you will be surprising us in a very positive way a few months from now.

Conviction like that demands success.

[CarBUZZ]

Damn you're right

[rocotilos]

Congrats, 100K in one month is quite good.
One of my free apps gets about 400K downloads in 6 months (though I spent <USD100 for marketing)

[CarBUZZ]

Originally Posted by rocotilos

Congrats, 100K in one month is quite good.
One of my free apps gets about 400K downloads in 6 months (though I spent <USD100 for marketing)

400K that's a milestone in 4 months.
Crowded niche with big players.
Thus beating monsters like Motortrend and Car&Driver is a nice feeling

btw can you share how many active users Cars.tomizer lite has today?

[akubeejays]

Originally Posted by CarBUZZ

Deep red as it's not supposed to be positive cash flow cow another few month from here.

And there's no bottom line only sky is a limit

-_- i'm not that into cars.. never have been...

But ur just a ray of sunshine.. I'll download your app and try to learn something

Originally Posted by Prince Edward

Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough. But you also tilt when you should withdraw... and that is knightly, too. .

[bluelobster]

Originally Posted by mightybao

100,000 is not that great for a free app. For a paid app that's pretty impressive.

time to jump off a cliff I guess...lol

The free version of my app has been out for a month now and I think it has received around 6K downloads.

100k looks pretty good to me, congrats carrbuzz.

[Lgchris]

CarBUZZ, I tried to send you a PM but wierd things are happening on this site with my browser today, it keeps getting blocked saying malware is on it, I'm not sure if my PM's are getting through, they do not show in my outbox so I sent you an email through your site.

Laurence

[ziocleto]

Originally Posted by bluelobster

time to jump off a cliff I guess...lol

The free version of my app has been out for a month now and I think it has received around 6K downloads.

100k looks pretty good to me, congrats carrbuzz.

100k is a great achievement!

Let's not forget that just because free apps tend to have very big numbers at the very top it's also true that is very very hard to break through.

We have our free app (first in the link below) that is no where near those numbers, and we think it's quite unique etc etc... But it's in a category where there's far too much noise.

So 100k in 1 month it's terrific. a couple of stats:
- Most of the number 1 singles in UK charts dont get 100k in a month
- Four square got 60k the first *6* months
- Gowalla is/was getting 1.2k downloads a day, so that's 36k a month.

So dont be fooled by some 60k a day free downloads wonders, that's 100k in a month is a great great achievement.

Congratulations.

[rocotilos]

Originally Posted by CarBUZZ

400K that's a milestone in 4 months.
Crowded niche with big players.
Thus beating monsters like Motortrend and Car&Driver is a nice feeling

btw can you share how many active users Cars.tomizer lite has today?

CarBUZZ, I have no idea how many are still using Carstomizer lite. Quite embarassing to say, but I have not put any kind of "tracking" codes in all of my apps. I just make em, and put it up for sale. If it catches on, great, if not, I try to improve all I can, and if its still not working, then, i just move on to the next app. The 400K downloads app is the one in my signature. That initial "featured" boost helps a lot in that 400K figure, of course.

[CarBUZZ]

Found this topic from one year ago
I think it would be interesting to share current stats versus where things been a year ago.

So CarBuzz app has been launched 13 months ago.

- Since then we've recorded over 1.5M downloads.
- Added iPad version.
- Combining iPhone/iPad versions we're counting now around 75,000 unique visitors every day.
- 250,000 articles been read per day.
- Bottom line: most popular automotive app on the App Store.

Hell of the project

[LuxHQ]

Congrats, great user numbers. Are you making a good profit out of it now, or is that still not the objective?

[rodgo]

Thats great news and i am sure you are proud but does it generate any revenue?

[CarBUZZ]

Originally Posted by LuxHQ

Congrats, great user numbers. Are you making a good profit out of it now, or is that still not the objective?

Originally Posted by rodgo

Thats great news and i am sure you are proud but does it generate any revenue?

The app generates revenue. The strategy from the beginning was to work directly with automotive brands skipping all low income mobile advertising companies like Admob, Millennial etc. Of course you should generate really big numbers of impressions and be very targeted on audience to work with car brands. But it's worth the effort. We ran successful sponsorship campaigns with Toyota and Audi, and in the process of booking next year spots.

[eMedTools]

Congratulations!

Would you be willing to share some details on how you spent your initial $8k promotion budget?

ROI numbers would be great.

[appezzy]

Awesome to see! Thanks for sharing.