An overview of all the lessons I learned while developing, marketing, and releasing Spend Stack.

1. Spend Stack:
A Case Study & Stuff

2. Ubiquitous “Who Am I”
- Run Dreaming In Binary
- Write for Sitepoint, Tuts+, and Sinch.
- Pluralsight Author
- Application Dev at HealthMEDX

3. So - Spend Stack
Spend Stack is a shopping list app that keeps a
running total with sales tax included.
The Big Picture

4. Marketing Video
Spiffy!

5. Target Audience/Goals
All cash spenders
Encourage predictable shopping or spending
Generic enough for most all shopping lists
Easy to use, pass the Deb-Mo test.
Who is it for?

6. The User Interface
Really takes place in two places
A list is open All lists

7. My Goals
•Segue for Dreaming In
Binary
•Help solve a common
problem
What I wanted to do with Spend Stack
•Build up portfolio
•Hook into the iOS
community

8. Believe it or not
I’d already been bit by the App Store before
Making money was not a primary goal
Sold 4 units at launch.
I did not retire.

9. Downloads
I still haven’t retired

10. Not surprising
App Store is tough
- techcrunch
20,000
Apps released each month:

11. “Here’s What We Did!”
Seems like PSAs for their app - but hey, good for them.
We bought a 30 second commercial during the Super
Bowl - it really helped our download numbers!!!

12. Lessons Learned
USED:
What went wrong - technology used
SHOULD HAVE USED:
Plain UIView for navbar
Frame calculations
Key-Value iCloud
Model-View-Ahh Screw it
AppDelegate as a God class
Manual library imports
Xcode snapshots
Stackoverflow
No common sense
So so so much more
A navbar - derp!
Autolayout
Document Based Storage
Model-View-Controller
*AppDelegate for nothing
Cocoa Pods
Git
The docs
Common sense
So so so much more

13. Discovery - your freinenemy
Get noticed or die a slow death

14. So - what do you do?
Lucky, press, or get featured by Apple:
•Generate buzz
•Use new APIs
•Be relevant based off of time of the year or event
•“….Make a great app”
Get lucky/Get Press/Get Apple to love your app

15. Marketing - What I Tried
Press Release via PR Mac
The Basics

16. Kinda Helpful?
You immediately get spammed with emails:
They mostly just get reposted on other sites

17. Local Community
Local news is great:
417 Mag
KY3 Interview
Springfield Newsleader
RayWeinderlich.com
They are your best friends and initially, your biggest fans

18. Reviews are important
Never prompted
Hard to find
Nobody cared
But how do you get them?

19. Reviews are important
•After a “good” thing
•Give me the option to ignore
•If no, ask for feedback
You have to ask, but under the right conditions

20. Reviews are important
I use this same philosophy on Medium:
All about how and where

21. Mindset of app development
You should build a business, not an app.
You are not just a developer, you are an:
Not just an app
- entrepreneur
- marketer
- salesman
- QA analyst
- product owner
- social media maven
- …etc

22. Know when V1 is done
Agile Development at home! It works.
Weigh each feature against mission statement
Example: Color Schemes - Cool, not essential
Or enjoy development hell

23. Check out your competition
•App Annie is good for this
•Download the competition
•Point out what you did that they didn't
See what they suck at and what they rock at

24. Jargon Loses People
•Spend Stack came from a name generator
•Nobody knows what a stack is
•A list is familiar and easier to understand
Nobody gets the whole “stack” part.
“Oh look! It’s a stack! Like the lists! I mean stacks!”
- No one ever

25. App Meta Data
Financial was the wrong category
It very much matters
Important: Not So Much:
•Category
•Keywords
•Screen shots
•Descriptions
•Update notes

26. That Said…
Games are by far the most popular
Less Market Saturation > Better Chance To Chart

27. Manage your time
Buffer for social media
Placeit & Promotee for product shots
Github (the somebody already solved this scenario)
Cut corners and be efficient as much as possible

28. Manage your time
I wrote all of my old website from scratch
Are you wasting time somewhere?

29. Manage your time
•12 hours in a week to work on DIB
•Blog post once a month
•1 post takes 4 hours to write
•1 post takes 2 hours to code
•= 4 hours left for everything else :- (
Maintaining my website myself wasn’t an option

30. Manage your time
Moved to SquareSpace
Moving to a CMS saved me a lot of time
Using a CMS:
•I put out more content
•Edits are super quick
•Changing things is trivial
Using Medium:
•I write technical posts over swift weekly
•Easy to share
•Network with other developers

31. Manage your time
•Tough to find time during the week
•Weekends are great, but you need to relax too
•Find the sweet spot, which meets these reqs:
Find your “sweet spot” - for me it’s Saturday mornings
You know it’s available
You’re inspired and motivated
You know you can focus

32. Manage your time
Stick with one project - but think ahead

33. Speaking of projects
•What do *you* want to make
•Do people/the market want that
•Does it solve one problem well
•What can you bring that other haven’t or can’t
Find what you are passionate about, that might make sense to others
Don’t think about money, but create something that can make it

34. Learn how people use your app
•Almost always used for grocery shopping
•Nobody uses categories
•People choose ugly color schemes
It might not be what you expect

35. Connect with the community
Email everyone back who sends feedback
Incorporate their ideas if it makes sense
Connect on Twitter, too
It scores big points

36. Look Professional
• Put your best foot forward
• In time, hard work will pay off
• In the App Store - Success could take years
• Epic Games - 1 in 10 games succeed
Fake it till you make it

37. What do you want to be?
Jordan Morgan - iOS expert
I realized representing me and DIB were fundamentally different and they were clashing
Dreaming In Binary - Software
•Split blogs out to medium
•Tutorials and teaching
•Social media is focused on things I make
•Doesn’t confuse people with technical things
•Blogs only pertain to apps

38. Future of Spend Stack
Completely overhaul UI
- Negative Space
- Stupid Easy
Focus on:
- Grocery shopping
- Universal app
What’s Next

39. Next for D.I.B.
See more at bit.ly/halotimerios
Halo Timer

40. Plugs
@jordanmorgan10
@dibsoftware
bit.ly/iosdevguide
dreaminginbinary.co/jordan
Come find me

41. Adaptive Design in iOS
Getting Started
(end of June)