Interesting. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We did talk a little bit to a lawyer about the name and he didn't bring anything like this up, I guess time will tell whether or not it will be a concern.
Hm. Well, we did also consider the name Monsters Ink, but stayed away because we didn't want any trouble. Seems hard to tie your shoes these days without someone filing a lawsuit.
I don't have an iOS device, so I can't comment on the app itself.
The flavour the site's design adds is excellent. Major props for that.
I think it'd be cool if the background was `position: fixed;`.
I also really like the social aspect on the site ("Super awesome monsters created by our community."). I think a "monster of the day" would be an excellent way to get people motivated and involved (as sort of a competition).
Judging from the video, there doesn't seem to be an undo button in the app. Seems like one should be there.
Sadly, the site loaded slowly for me (~15 seconds; I'm on a low-bandwidth connection), and in that time, things were shifting position and some text was unreadable.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'll definitely look into the slow loading of the site. We've been trying to get everything together so quickly we probably didn't optimize it as much as we could have. I'll go back through and try to fix that for sure.
Undo isn't in the app right now but it's on the list for a future update.
I'm literally about to go to bed so I can't reply quickly, but if you want some tips on speeding up your front-end, my contact details are on my profile.
Why is the Facebook like button on the lightbox of video rather than the front page? After I closed the lightbox, I tried to find the `like' button but failed.
I almost never share things like this on Facebook, but I shared Monster Coloring Book. I don't even own an iOS device, but the execution/design seems spot on. I see this becoming highly successful - congrats!
Really fun! I quite enjoyed going back to my childhood and colouring in :D Only one small problem - the app regularly crashed after attempting to "buy" patterns.
Thanks for all the kind words everyone. We're really excited about this app and appreciate the help spreading it around as well as the feedback/suggestions.
If sales won't go so well, or if you would like to try a different marketing approach, you might consider this:
Instead of asking for money upfront, you should give the app for free with a few sample monsters. Then you can provide the full package with in-app purchase. The logic behind it is that it will be easier to convince the parents to pay for it, after their kids love it. Another reason - with a $2.99 price point, it will be hard for you to hit the top list, which has the most influence on your sales. But you could charge that in an in-app purchase without affecting your listing in the free apps.
If you decide to do it, make sure to ask the user to upgrade in strategic locations (For example, after they launch it several times, after they finish all the paintings, etc.)
We have a free version. Our hope is to signal a premium product with the $2.99 price for the paid version and so drive trial of the free version in order to monetize with IAP. We'll see if it works..
I think this is a smart thing to try, especially because the purchasers are likely to be parents who are used to blowing $2.99 on physical coloring books that last for one dinner. Unlike, say, college students buying games, parents who want this probably won't relate much differently to 2.99 than .99, I would guess.
I am not convinced that kids will nag their parents enough to make them pay to upgrade - I suspect most parents will just be happy to let their kid play with the free version.
We worry about this as well, actually. In fact it's been interesting to get the comments pushing back on IAP, because our concern to date has been that we gave away too much content for free. What's interesting about that Flurry article I linked to is that it's a fraction of the market that's driving the majority of the IAP revenue...so even if most parents don't go for the in-app purchase option, the ones that do should (we hope!) help us keep our lights on.
Have you considered going straight for the paid option
( ie. no free content ) and seeing how much demand you have? I think the app looks a lot better than most of the stuff already out there, and the price point would reassure parents that they are getting a high-quality product for their kids.
We've tried a premium-only approach with previous apps and we've gotten feedback that our users like the option to try before they buy - which is what led us to IAP.
Also, when we've tried a premium-only approach our apps have been made available for jailbroken devices within a couple of weeks, with little chance to directly monetize these pirated free copies of our apps. See, for example: http://theikidsblog.com/blog/2010/11/30/arr-there-be-pirates...
This time around our approach was to build a premium product, price it accordingly and let people try it out via the free version. It's hard to know what the best way to handle it is - but that's definitely part of the fun of the wild west of mobile apps these days..and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, the freemium model seems to have a lot of traction..
I doubt that you're a parent. No fault of yours. But here is what happens. Your kid will play the free version and then she will master the free part. You'll see that she enjoys it and you won't hesitate paying for the paid version or the in-app purchase upgrades.
She went through the free version in a zippy and kept playing it over and over again. I took her iPad, disable Restriction and bought the paid version.
Regarding "nag their parents" -- be careful, be very careful, you are treading on sore thumbs here. If my preschooler starts nagging me about IAP prompted by whatever ad mechanism that is in the game, the app gets promptly deleted and it gets 1 star rating and a review with a warning to other parents.
As I said in another comment, while I do not like to say "no" to my kid, I really hate him being used as a pressure point for milking parents for IAP money. If your app is respectful towards the parents, I will gladly pay you and probably more than you think.
The site design at least is very beautiful, congratulations! I especially like all of the extra content you've added, the store, the "freebies", etc. My only idea to make it even better would be eventually writing some kind of subtle animation into the monster, or alternating the monster for different sections of the site.
To pay HN back for all the feedback and buzz, consider writing up a blog post about the process, and how sales and marketing go. I, at least, would love to read about it and learn from your experience.
This should end up as a good case study - we just got featured on the front page of the App Store. Thanks again to HN for the support. Will let you know how things go from here..
I just paid $22.87 for an iPad2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $675 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, GrabCent. çom
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[ 8.8 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadI would be worried to use that name though.
I wouldn't change the name of your product based on these lawsuits, though.
The flavour the site's design adds is excellent. Major props for that.
I think it'd be cool if the background was `position: fixed;`.
I also really like the social aspect on the site ("Super awesome monsters created by our community."). I think a "monster of the day" would be an excellent way to get people motivated and involved (as sort of a competition).
Judging from the video, there doesn't seem to be an undo button in the app. Seems like one should be there.
Sadly, the site loaded slowly for me (~15 seconds; I'm on a low-bandwidth connection), and in that time, things were shifting position and some text was unreadable.
Undo isn't in the app right now but it's on the list for a future update.
eta: it was patterns, not stickers.
The only suggestion I could offer is to make the text in the help sections a little larger. On this non-retina display, it is hard to read.
Is this an iOS app, i.e. written in Objective-C? Or is this a web app, written in HTML5, JS & CSS?
It would be great to have a baby mode, where tapping the screen did a random coloring, and maybe played a sound.
My daughter isn't two yet, but she really likes to swipe at photos and make them go from side to side.
Instead of asking for money upfront, you should give the app for free with a few sample monsters. Then you can provide the full package with in-app purchase. The logic behind it is that it will be easier to convince the parents to pay for it, after their kids love it. Another reason - with a $2.99 price point, it will be hard for you to hit the top list, which has the most influence on your sales. But you could charge that in an in-app purchase without affecting your listing in the free apps.
If you decide to do it, make sure to ask the user to upgrade in strategic locations (For example, after they launch it several times, after they finish all the paintings, etc.)
Good luck!
Also, when we've tried a premium-only approach our apps have been made available for jailbroken devices within a couple of weeks, with little chance to directly monetize these pirated free copies of our apps. See, for example: http://theikidsblog.com/blog/2010/11/30/arr-there-be-pirates...
This time around our approach was to build a premium product, price it accordingly and let people try it out via the free version. It's hard to know what the best way to handle it is - but that's definitely part of the fun of the wild west of mobile apps these days..and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, the freemium model seems to have a lot of traction..
Here is a video of my daughter playing the Racing Penguin - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaF6dPiJ-NM
She went through the free version in a zippy and kept playing it over and over again. I took her iPad, disable Restriction and bought the paid version.
As I said in another comment, while I do not like to say "no" to my kid, I really hate him being used as a pressure point for milking parents for IAP money. If your app is respectful towards the parents, I will gladly pay you and probably more than you think.
To pay HN back for all the feedback and buzz, consider writing up a blog post about the process, and how sales and marketing go. I, at least, would love to read about it and learn from your experience.