Buster McLeod is taking an “open data” policy towards his latest project, Locavore the iPhone app, by revealing the first month’s stats. Locavore is a great app that helps you eat locally by showing you what produce is in season near you and what farmer’s markets you can buy it at. It’s a well-designed app that I look forward to using this Spring and Summer. (Disclaimer: I am proud to call Buster a friend of mine)
Since launching on 3/17 he’s had 5,681 sales for almost $12,000 in revenue (as of 4/21) — that’s about $5,000 for Apple. Locavore recieved a lot of press, but as you can see above it was getting featured on the homepage of the iTunes store that really made the app. On Locavore’s most profitable day it had almost 1,000 downloads and reached #65 on the top raking chart.
Buster intends to add Facebook Connect in a future version. He shares some thoughts on usage data in the rest of his post.
So what can be learned from this other than get featured by the App Store team? It’s hard to guess what exact process they use, but it seems very likely that they look for an app that is unique, useful, well-designed and well-priced. Locavore was the first of its kind for the app store. It’s priced at $2.99, breaking it out of the bargain basement $.99 apps, but keeping it within impulse purchase (“Yes, I’ll eat healthier with this and $2.99 isn’t that much to spend to eat healthier”). In short if you want to be featured build something Apple can highlight proudly and I’m sure it doesn’t hurt make some money from.