One step forward, two steps back

Continuing last week's trend, it's not always easy to run a business. Apple have just taken my whole business model and turned it upside down, I'm not happy but I will have to get the best from a bad situation. There's of course also good news in this week's blog post. But you can, as always, read more about this in this blog post.

This week's progress

Oh well, there's haven't been much progress the last week, because of obvious reasons, but I will go through what I have been doing. I begun looking at doing marketing with Facebook and Instagram, and found that it's more work than I first anticipated. The other big thing was my conversation with Apple. At last there's a big milestone, my first tester (from outside my nearest family) has just begun testing!

Advertising

Marketing and advertising is probably the most important part of making a business successful, of course a good product is also a good part. Marketing gets you the customers, a good product keeps them, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Having had communications in gymnasium (danish equivalent to high school), I've been very excited to begin this journey. There's of course a lot of "questions" I have to answer before I can make successful marketing. What's my target group? How do I influence this target group? These are the absolute top questions, I need to answer one before I can answer the other. Once I can answer these, I can have an effective marketing campaign.

What's my target group?

For now I'm focusing on students on universities in Denmark. That's the overall target group, but since I'm not on the biggest of budgets for this campaign, I will be keeping my focus on Aarhus University. Once I have a bigger budget for marketing, I will be expanding my focus to all universities in Denmark. At some point my target group could of course expand to other types of people or other countries. But for now the target group is the 150.000 students in Denmark. A realistic ambition is to get 5% of those using Mellonn Speak every year, that would be about 7.500 users. As a start, I think it's a realistic but ambitious goal, and I'm hoping that I will be able to aim for more in the future.

How do I influence this target group?

It doesn't really come as the biggest surprise, that this target group i extremely reachable by social media. That's why I will start with Facebook and Instagram, in Denmark these are by far the most popular social media. With those two being the most social media in Denmark, they are both a no brainer. But one I will also be looking at doing is of course Tik Tok, being a newer social media, that's beginning to show it's power to stay relevant. I will be focusing mostly on Instagram, since that's the platform where most of my target group is spending most time. But this is something Facebook advertising (Meta), will do automatically. When starting a campaign on their platform, they will test where the click rate is best, and how the advertising is most effective. It's extremely smart, and clearly shows why Meta is as big as they are. It's unfortunate with the backlash they've been having lately, but that doesn't change the fact that they have the best product.

Phone call with Goliath

Tuesday evening I got a call from California, I was unfortunately eating when I got that call. But Wednesday they called, an I talked with a very sweet guy Raphael. Raphael told me that I had misunderstood the Review Guidelines, and that the 3.1.3(e) only applies to physical goods. I personally don't think I had misunderstood the guidelines, but I do think that they're not clear enough. Let's take a look at it:

Taken directly from Apple's webpage, it does state that physical goods does count, but right after it says "or services that will be consumed outside of the app". I would argue that if it only applied to physical goods, they shouldn't put that second part on. I'm sure that I didn't misunderstand the guidelines. But I have asked the Apple support for a more in-depth answer to this. I don't really want to take this fight much further, but I will probably never give up my pursuit to getting better conditions for developers.

But why did I call Raphael sweet? I must give him that he gave an extremely nice experience. He was very talkative and he gave me 30 days to implement IAP (In-App Purchases), and until then they will accept me using the current payment system inside the app. This means I can send out updates, even though it isn't implemented yet. But I've already begun doing this, and there should soon come an update with it, but I just have to find a way to use it with my business model.

Getting started with my first tester

There's not much to say here, other than that I'm excited to hear the feedback coming from her! This will be extremely valuable for me, coming from a place where it's mostly me who have been using the app. I don't think I have much more to say here!

Implementing IAP

This isn't as easy as I would've thought. The actual payment itself was quite easy to implement in the app, that I've already done, but the way IAP works screws with my whole business model. IAP is very clearly made for two different things: Games using consumables and non consumables, and services using subscriptions. These things aren't made to be mixed and matched. Let me shortly explain the different types of products:

Consumables

These, as the name states, are products that will be consumed inside the app. They can be bought multiple times, but only after they've been consumed. This is mostly used with currencies inside games.

Non consumables

These are as an example, an upgrade to an app, like removing ads from an app. They can only be bought once per user.

Subscription

This I don't think I'll have to explain.

Non renewing subscription

Again, I don't think I'll explain this.

Okay, I can work with this, can't I? The most fitting for my situation is definitely the consumables, but, there's a big but, they can't be bought in quantities. This means that I will have to create a product for each and every single scenario... Let's say that I will wan't to make users be able to upload interviews of up to 2 hours in length. This means that I will have to create at least 8 products. But the prices I can't control precisely, they have to be from the selection that Apple gives you. I wan't to take 50DKK for 15 minutes of transcription, but I can only choose 49, okay then I can live with that. Then 30 minutes will of course be 98DKK then? Right? WRONG it will of course be 99DKK, 45 minutes will be 149DKK and one hour will be 199DKK. For the people that knows me, it won't surprise that this totally triggers my OCD. Let's just take it one step further, I wan't to be able to give some students better prices. At first I though about 40DKK per 15 minutes, that's 20% less. But with Apple's prices it will be 35DKK for the first 15, and then jump to 79DKK for the next and up from there. On an ending note, the reason I haven't mentioned Google in this, is that they both support buying multiple of one product at once, and they let you specify the prices. And they haven't questioned my use of payment method in the app.

See you again next week

I'm hoping that there will be some more progress in the next week to report on, this has been a frustrating few weeks to be totally honest. I'm hoping for the best though, and I'm believing in my product, and it's ability to help the people I'm seeking to help!

Have a good weekend every one!