Just over a month ago we launched our new app Discovr Apps to help you find apps for your iPhone and iPad. Things have gone pretty well and we’re very excited to announce some of our most recent stats:
* In the last 4 days alone, Discovr Apps has had more than a quarter of a million new downloads (256,719 downloads in 4 days).
* In the same 4 day period we’ve served more than 4.8 million requests in the app, averaging more than 1 million requests per day.
* On a single day in that period, our users spent the equivalent total time of 9 months and 1 day using the app.
* Discovr Apps also went straight to #1 app in 17 countries including the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Germany.
* We’ve released three updates in the 6 weeks since launch, and we’re very fortunate to have an average App Store rating of 4.5 stars.
* We’ve also seen an entirely new business model emerge in the last few weeks, with lots of developers wanting to advertise in the app.
**Update: We didn’t spend a cent on marketing the app. No mobile ad campaigns, no paid installs, no google ads, no seo, nothing. The only money we have spent on marketing since we started Filter Squad has been to make up some stickers, and to print some tshirts / hoodies for the team. Really, it’s more about the power of the App Store – it’s an incredible distribution channel that lets you reach huge markets in a very efficient way.
All in all, we’re completely blown away by the response. We’re a small team based in Perth, Australia, and we just can’t believe it.
Thankyou so much to everyone who has had fun with the app. We’re just getting started. Get in touch to tell us what you want to see next!
The Filter Squad Team
Stu, Matt, Tamas, Ben, and Dave
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Figure 1: 256,719 new downloads (average 64,180 per day)
Figure 2: Daily stats over the four day period.
Figure 3: #1 ranking across the globe
Figure 4. We’ve served 4,881,971 requests in the app in 4 days (average of 1.22 million per day)
congrats guys! Its always great to hear about Australian startups doing so well
So, who did you buy all these installs thru? And for such a small company, how were you able to afford purchasing ranking like this?
HI Engineer,
Actually we didn’t spend a cent on marketing. No paid installs, no google ads, nothing. The only money we have spent on marketing has been making up some stickers, and printing some tshirts / hoodies for the team.
I remember when I first demoed your app, I thought it was awesome! You are going to help a lot of iOS users. Keep up the good work.
this is a great story.
as a web/software product management type who’s worked on a ton of content discovery systems (tag systems, browsable directories, lists, user ratings, related content, etc.), i’m curious to know how you built this (i’m an android user so can’t check this out myself).
without divulging your secret sauce, i’d love to know how you designed the product to make it so useful!
Congratulations to the Discovr team and all the best!!
Press for the app (Gizmodo, lifehacker, mashable) have it as a payed app, but its free on the app store now, I’m guessing the price change has to do with the shift in business model mentioned but it’d be great to hear more about this, hope you guys keep us posted on how that pans out.
Also, funnily enough I’m a dev based in Perth, and my first iOS app toyed with force directed graphs for note taking. I remember reading about you guys in the West and being blown away by the coincidence. Congratulations guys, keep it up.
Seems like an interesting app. I will check it out. Congratulations to your success. :)
Guys,
I can’t imagine anything more exciting than this happening for a team. Congratulations on the successful launch and all the exciting opportunities that are going to follow!
Thanks everyone. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind.
I think I might do a follow up post that talks about some of the marketing things we did to get the app out there. Just quickly, it was mainly: reaching out to bloggers; the shift from paid to free; cross-promoting the app from within our other app Discovr Music; and having a network on twitter. Also, we built some sharing functions into the app (like sharing a map via twitter) which definitely helped a lot. I’ll go into more detail soon. Thanks again everyone. Dave
So nice to hear about your success story! But I wonder “printing T-shirts” & “stickers” can only make a traffic boost like that! It is amazing! Haven’t you really done anything else? :)
BTW, It would be great if you can add a Feedburner subcription widget into this blog so that readers like us can be motivated all the time :)
Thanks for the great post!