Think Before You Price

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Majesty Software hasn’t broken any sales records with its iPhone apps. It’s most recent release, Contactile, barely made a blip on the sales charts when it debuted a few days ago. I can count the total number of paid sales without taking off my shoes. The sheer number of apps on the store makes it quite challenging for small, obscure vendors to gain traction.

So, after a brief time in the lowest price tier (that’s just 99 cents in the US), Contactile is now a free app. The next planned release will sport a few enhancements and is likely to include iAds as a potential means of generating revenue. I’d rather not alienate the handful of people that paid for their copy, but the sales numbers are just so small that the burden of maintaining separate paid and lite versions is hard to justify.

In hindsight, I wish I had made Contactile ad-ware from the outset. That would have avoided the dilemma of having an ad-supported update go to people that paid for the initial release.

Experiments in Work Models

All of my posts to date have been highly technical in nature.  Here’s one that has a different flavor.

Over the course of the past year, I have had opportunity to work in a variety of modes including

• Full time for a small software company
• Part-time for a large government contractor
• Government sub-contractor
• Independent software developer for iPhone
• Consultant
• Freelancer (remote work for hire on small projects.)
• Flat-rate software developer for a large-ish desktop application

My current mix of income streams includes the part-time job and the large-ish desktop application work.  I’ve also got some fairly straight forward web site consulting in the pipeline, but that queue is moving rather slowly.  I’ve maintained my iPhone developer status, but I haven’t earned enough there in over a year to pay for one dinner out with the family so I don’t count it as an income stream.

It’s been quite an experience and I’ve learned a bit about what sort of work models suit me (and my family) well.  Some lessons learned that I can share at this point are:

• It’s possible to find reasonable work on the various freelancer sites, but you have to choose your projects wisely.  I found that smaller, flat-rate projects in areas I knew well worked best for me in that arena.
• For large jobs in areas that you have no track record in, flat-rate work will most likely favor the buyer.  I entered into an arrangement of this sort knowing that I would be working cheaply (considering the number of hours required) for one reason:  I wanted to gain expertise in Cocoa desktop programming and I was presented with a project that suited that purpose.  I’m working cheap by the hour, but it’s a trade I willingly made since I’m learning a lot along the way.  I view it as if I’m being paid to learn rather the other way around.
• Be careful what payment terms you enter into.  If you are relying on freelance/contract work for a good portion of your income and agree to payment terms on, say, a 45 day basis, be sure you have a cushion of money built up in advance to cover expenses between the time you complete the work and when you get paid.  Forty-five days can seem like an eternity when you are waiting for payment.