Our campaign to geocachers combined with our decision to increase the size of the coin packages is paying off! In the last week, we've had two people purchase our Unlimited Nets package for $14.99 and a few more purchases at $11.99 and $3.99. With server costs of $30 a month, it looks like we will be profitable this month! We have to take 30% out of that for Google and Apple, and one person bought the exact same $11.99 package twice in a row and may ask for a refund if that was a mistake, but even then we should still be close to profitable.
Some stats so far....
473 signed up players
$136 total purchases
after 30% to Google and Apple that leaves
$95.73 for us, which is
$0.20 per signed up player
That's not bad if we can get our registered users into the tens of thousands.
Blog about the development of Monster Cache, a virtual geocaching game for Android and iPhone platforms
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Feedback from Geocachers
Its been exciting for Monster Cache the last few days, after we sent emails to lots of geocachers. We've had about 86 sign ups so far, and 25 of those have found a monster so far. That's about 30%, which is about average, maybe a bit more. So 136 on the Legends board now.
One critical thing an iOS user found right away was in the Store. Since our in-app product of "Unlimited Nets" was rejected in iOS, I had just added more and bigger coin options. I didn't realize that made the list so long that it scrolled off of the bottom of the screen on iPhones. So the "CLOSE" button was not visible, so if you decided not to buy coins, you couldn't close that window or go to another tab, so you were stuck and had to exit the app. Ideally, I would like to keep all the coin options and have that window scroll, but that means a new app version. So for now I just disabled some purchase options. Turns out there was the same issue on Android for my small phone, so I did the same thing on Android.
I also noticed that referral emails were coming from my kcwebprogrammers.com address, which wasn't good. Google wasn't letting me authenticate with lanitek.com, and monstercache.com was still forwarding from GoDaddy. So I had to set up a new email address on GoDaddy and do SMTP through them. Worked fine, just took a while to figure out what was going on.
For the email fix, and to add an answer about binoculars to the FAQ, I had to do a web release. Naturally, Windows Azure decided my release credentials had expired or something. I'm really not sure why it stopped, or what credentials I had before. But luckily I figured out how to create a certificate and found a good comment about where to upload it, so I got past it.
Last interesting thing (for now) was I got two nearly identical emails from two different people that were disappointed that they couldn't play forever for free. Here is one, and the response I sent to both:
"This is going to be a very short lived game if the ONLY way to earn coins without spending real money is referring friends. What happens if your friends don't want to play or or you run out of friends to get signed up? The game HAS to be self sustaining. People will quit playing if they have to spend real money."
My Response:
"Hello,
One critical thing an iOS user found right away was in the Store. Since our in-app product of "Unlimited Nets" was rejected in iOS, I had just added more and bigger coin options. I didn't realize that made the list so long that it scrolled off of the bottom of the screen on iPhones. So the "CLOSE" button was not visible, so if you decided not to buy coins, you couldn't close that window or go to another tab, so you were stuck and had to exit the app. Ideally, I would like to keep all the coin options and have that window scroll, but that means a new app version. So for now I just disabled some purchase options. Turns out there was the same issue on Android for my small phone, so I did the same thing on Android.
I also noticed that referral emails were coming from my kcwebprogrammers.com address, which wasn't good. Google wasn't letting me authenticate with lanitek.com, and monstercache.com was still forwarding from GoDaddy. So I had to set up a new email address on GoDaddy and do SMTP through them. Worked fine, just took a while to figure out what was going on.
For the email fix, and to add an answer about binoculars to the FAQ, I had to do a web release. Naturally, Windows Azure decided my release credentials had expired or something. I'm really not sure why it stopped, or what credentials I had before. But luckily I figured out how to create a certificate and found a good comment about where to upload it, so I got past it.
Last interesting thing (for now) was I got two nearly identical emails from two different people that were disappointed that they couldn't play forever for free. Here is one, and the response I sent to both:
"This is going to be a very short lived game if the ONLY way to earn coins without spending real money is referring friends. What happens if your friends don't want to play or or you run out of friends to get signed up? The game HAS to be self sustaining. People will quit playing if they have to spend real money."
My Response:
"Hello,
Thank you for your feedback on Monster Cache. Almost all phone applications try to generate revenue in some way -- either by advertising, or an up-front purchase price, or in-application purchasing. For Monster Cache, we have chosen in-application purchasing. We want people to evaluate the game for free, and hope that they will enjoy it enough to purchase more coins, or refer friends. If you feel that you did not have enough time to evaluate the game, then we are happy to give you some more coins so that you can play a while longer. We have added another 100 coins to your account. Also, if you reach Level 4, then there are some Treasure Chests with small amounts of coins that you can find as well.
Again, we appreciate the feedback. Best of luck in your monster hunting!
Monster Cache Team"
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Emails to Geocachers
After I got back from my fishing trip on September 8th and we wanted to send emails to geocachers that weekend of the 13th. Somehow, we didn't get around to it, but we did try one new promotion that weekend. We put up a poster at Kansas Coffee Company in Olathe that had a picture of a Cyclops Bunny and said "There is a Cyclops Bunny here", with a short description of the game and some QR codes for download links. Very nice of our friends there to put the poster up. It has its own referral code, but I haven't seen anyone sign up with it yet.
Anyway, we thought about sending the emails on the Sunday of the next weekend, the 22nd, but realized we'd rather send them out on a Thursday so that people might use right away on the weekend without forgetting about it. So finally, we started sending out emails on the 26th. Kathleen had a list of 230 or so emails she got from web sites. We sent them in batches of about 30 at a time and sent all 230!
Soon, we got rejection notices from Google saying that all of the email but one had been rejected as potential junk mail, i.e. spam. I guess technically you could say they were spam, in that they were unsolicited emails trying to promote something to a large number of people we don't know. But on the other hand, they were very specifically targeted to people who put their emails online because they weer interested in geocaching. We do think they'll like it and they can try it for free to decide for themselves, so we don't feel too bad about sending the emails.
Since only 30 got out that first night, Kathleen tried sending more the next day and only got another 10 or so out before getting the message again. And then maybe 10 more the next day. That resulted in about 8 sign-ups, and 2 more people on the leader board, consistent with our ratio of about 75% of signups never finding a monster. And interestingly, one Like of Monster Cache on Facebook, so that was nice. But still not quite yet the impact we were hoping for.
There were 111 on the Legends board last week, and 113 now after the first 50 emails.
Anyway, we thought about sending the emails on the Sunday of the next weekend, the 22nd, but realized we'd rather send them out on a Thursday so that people might use right away on the weekend without forgetting about it. So finally, we started sending out emails on the 26th. Kathleen had a list of 230 or so emails she got from web sites. We sent them in batches of about 30 at a time and sent all 230!
Soon, we got rejection notices from Google saying that all of the email but one had been rejected as potential junk mail, i.e. spam. I guess technically you could say they were spam, in that they were unsolicited emails trying to promote something to a large number of people we don't know. But on the other hand, they were very specifically targeted to people who put their emails online because they weer interested in geocaching. We do think they'll like it and they can try it for free to decide for themselves, so we don't feel too bad about sending the emails.
Since only 30 got out that first night, Kathleen tried sending more the next day and only got another 10 or so out before getting the message again. And then maybe 10 more the next day. That resulted in about 8 sign-ups, and 2 more people on the leader board, consistent with our ratio of about 75% of signups never finding a monster. And interestingly, one Like of Monster Cache on Facebook, so that was nice. But still not quite yet the impact we were hoping for.
There were 111 on the Legends board last week, and 113 now after the first 50 emails.
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