Go, Dog, Go!

"Dog Days of Summer"... never did understand that phrase. So, I looked it up.

Webster defines “dog days” as...
1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere
2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity

Stagnation or inactivity? Not in this business! If you aren't working 24/7 and then some, you can't keep up. Technological breakthroughs are happening everyday, every few hours even! Bit.ly is old news. For those of you who may not know bit.ly, (http://bit.ly) it's a URL shortener.

This is our app's URL before bit.ly works it's magic:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abc-on-the-go/id387046507?mt=8

This is the same URL after bit.ly: http://bit.ly/bItKah

The last two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster - up, down and all around - a quick up, then an extremely fast decent. Think Tower of Terror. Okay, maybe not that bad, but definitely a flurry of activity and emotional highs and lows. You work diligently to get your app tweaked and ready for submission. Then it's the wait and wonder game. Once you've submitted your app for review, you get put in a que. Review times average anywhere from a week to ten days. Our latest app, ABC On the Go, hit the iTunes store exactly one week ago today. Once your app goes "live" you need to hustle to get all the other pieces together. My partner and I wrote and rewrote our press release until we were bleary eyed. With every revision it got shorter and more simplistic. People don't read that stuff, one glance at the number of stars and it's straight to the reviews... Remember, keep it simple!

I digress. To continue... after strategically setting an "embargo" to hold the press release until Monday morning at 5 a.m. CST, our ABC On the Go press release was picked up by the revered Macworld. They then posted a review on their site! We were elated! It's not easy to get noticed in this dog eat dog world here in the app business. Let me clarify, there are 250,000 apps (and counting) in the app store and 14,345 education apps alone! Those are tough odds.

Well, we made it into the top 100 paid education apps and watched our numbers climb. They went up... and then down. We watched this see saw with bated breath. We would move up five... then go down two; this went on for a solid week. We could hardly sleep! We were glued to some mobile device or another tracking our rankings. Between email, Facebook and twittering day and night (not to mention that we have day jobs) we rode that elevator up and down until we were dizzy. Next thing we knew we were we out of the top 200! Emotional nosedive.... Just out of curiosity, I checked the New and Noteworthy section under Education AND low and behold - THERE WE WERE! Nosebleed!!!

I would be remiss, if I did not mention, Lorraine Ackemann of momswithapps. We have been so lucky to connect with her, she's become an incredible resource to all educational app developers. She's created a google group that works together, shares ideas and insights and maybe most importantly, networks. Lorainne's guidance and expertise is helping all of us help one another to succeed. Watch Lorraine on ABC News just yesterday: http://bit.ly/duCAgI