July 2021 Updates
Posted onJuly continued to be a quiet month for sales, so I’ve decided to think a little bit bigger with the business and have moved some contracting work in. There are a few advantages to doing this for my particular situation, but as far as my goal of making the business profitable this year, it feels like a bit of a cheat — the goal was to make the app business profitable, and so I’m going to continue to focus on that part here.
That said, having a little bit more money flowing into the business gives me a bit more breathing room month-to-month as far as what I think of as “long-game” expenses — things relating to the app business, but that won’t pay off until later. I’m trying to be careful about adding such expenses; it’s easy to find a justification for spending money, but every dollar that goes out is coming from a very limited supply of dollars coming in.
So with all that said, here’s what the download numbers looked like for July:
- Per: 7 downloads (-13% ▽)
- Thought Detox: 3 downloads (-25% ▽)
Revenues and proceeds on June sales are estimates based on the information I get from Apple, in US Dollars.
- Revenues, July 2021: USD$8.14 (what customers paid Apple)
- Proceeds, July 2021: USD$6.35 (what Apple pays me)
- Expenses, July 2021: CAD$38.21 (approximately USD$30.46)
Sales were down again in July, and I didn’t release any updates to apps. There was one larger expense: I registered a domain name for an idea I had, which is what I mean by “long-game” expenses. Were it not for that, my expenses for July would have been CAD$12.17 (approximately USD$9.70), so a loss of a couple of bucks.
What’s Coming Up
Thought Detox
I’ve finished, but not yet released, the translation of Thought Detox to French — it does need a little bit of a tweak to the UI, as I mentioned last time. I think I spend a little bit too much time trying to pack more stuff into updates than I should, so I’m going to make that tweak and submit it for review ASAP, then move on to making sure things work properly in the iOS 15 betas.
I was hoping to also bundle in some more updates, but it’s already been months since I shipped anything. There’s always the worry that people will think the app has been abandoned, and regular updates help with that.
Per
Speaking of apps that people think have been abandoned, I’ve gotten some preliminary designs for the Per rewrite! We’re taking a fun, playful approach to the app and I’m looking forward to tackling that. Will it launch before the end of the year? Who knows!
One More Thing
I have a few other little projects in my backlog that I’m aiming to tackle soon. The tricky part is, of course, trying to figure out how to move everything forward at the same time — this isn’t my full-time work since it can’t support me financially (yet), but it is what I love to do, so I’m looking forward to tackling these things.
As always, more TK.
