30 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: st



Lee Foster’s Photo Travel App

Racks Up 957 Sales/Month



Can a photographer who develops
and sells apps actually make a dollar or two?

The short answer is yes, based on my own experience. But the path is not simple or smooth.

One of my photo travel apps just sold 957 units in a 30-day period, 5-21-10 to 6-21-10.
I earned $574.20 in royalties from this.

That best-selling app is San Francisco Travel and Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99) in the Apple iTunes App Store.

My royalty is 30% of list price, or 60 cents per $1.99 app sale. Do the math and 60 cents for 957 sales brings a royalty profit of $574.20.

My app ranked between #40 and #50 among all paid travel apps for a two-week period. I was competing with more than 11,000 paid travel apps now on sale in the App Store. I discuss this in more detail at http://bit.ly/cD3vc6

Why have I become successful? Partly, I am practicing patiently what Rohn Engh keeps stressing week after week in this newsletter. You have to build your “brand.” You have to develop a product and give consistent service to your customers. Each of us has our favorite subject area in photography. Mine happens to be travel. I give service in this area to my viewers day after day, year after year, at my website: http://www.fostertravel.com

Partly, I have also been fortunate. Someone at Apple liked my San Francisco app. Apple declared my app a Staff Favorite and put it for awhile on the front page of the Apple iTunes App Store. We live in a new world of marketing where such viral recommendations can create market opportunities.

The new world of app publishing creates new truly limitless opportunities for all of us to share and market our photography. For example, my San Francisco app has been purchased in 42 foreign countries. In contrast, my parallel travel photo book on San Francisco will never sell a copy outside North America.

Rohn has asked me to develop an app column for you, which is now appearing the first Thursday of each month. You can see earlier columns, starting in May, at http://photostocknotes.com/psn/index.php?catid=67&blogid=1 If you have questions, and I know you have a dozen, leave a comment and I will answer it there or in future monthly columns.

--

Lee Foster is an awarding-winning travel photographer and
writer, winner of eight Lowell Thomas Awards. Lee publishes 200 worldwide travel photo/writing coverages to consumers and to content buyers on his Foster Travel Publishing website at http://www.fostertravel.com
There you can see his photos, writing, books, and apps. His photo-selling site is at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com


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