Boosting Visibility for Craft Pricing Pro

I figure I should give an update on my marketing journey. I have been working on making my Craft Pricing Pro app more visible. I’ve made some progress, but it has yet to lead to a noticeable increase in sales. So, I made a difficult decision – I’m going to stop selling the original version. The two have been competing against each other and that makes it harder market. Hopefully, that will help. It’s been a bit more difficult putting effort into letting people know that my app is out there. I’m decent at creating apps and giving them features that solve real world problems. I’m not good at letting people know that they exist.

At this point, while some progress has been made, I still have a long way to go.

If you are interested in checking out the app, here is the app:

‎Craft Pricing Pro
‎Craft Pricing Pro
Developer: Ducky Planet LLC
Price: $5.99+
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot

Crafting an Income

Over the last year I’ve been working on my Craft Pricing Pro app. The app is useful and the interface is clean and easy to understand. I’ve also added many features including some basic inventory and sales tracking. I don’t know how many people will use those features, but they are there and they do work.

But, writing the app – although it can be difficult – is the easy part. The truly difficult part is the actual marketing of the app. It’s nice to have an app finished and available for sale, but it doesn’t really pay the bills until people start to purchase it. That’s the block I’m currently running into. The app works well and the little bit of feedback I’ve been given has been positive. But, the problem is that it hasn’t really been found by the many people that would find it useful.

Yeah, I know it’s ironic that I wrote an app so people can make more money with their own projects, but I’m struggling to make money with my own. The accounting math isn’t hard for me. It’s the actual selling. How to get people to first of all take a look at the app, and then how can I convince them that it will help them make money? It will, I know it will. When I was selling more crafting items, the earlier version of this app did in fact help me make more money. It’s why I wrote it and it’s why I feel strongly about marketing it.

So, with this I guess my newest effort is to avoid adding features or starting new projects. But, instead work on creating interest and sales in the projects I currently have out there. Yeah, that’s scary and difficult, but here we go.

‎Craft Pricing Pro
‎Craft Pricing Pro
Developer: Ducky Planet LLC
Price: $5.99+
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
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  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot
  • ‎Craft Pricing Pro Screenshot

My Newest Little Project

Sometimes it is worth stepping back from work related projects and focus on something that you find more fun. Over the last month or so, I started to work on a couple of these fun little projects.

The project I’m going to show here is a sand simulator. There is a short animated gif shown below.

This project came from watching a Youtube video where someone explained creating their own version of a sand simulation. I used many of their ideas, but implemented them in my own ways. What you see above is the current version of what I have been playing with. The app includes 8 different types of particles that interact with each other in different ways. Sand will pile up like sand does. Water attempts to level itself. Snow and ice pile up in their own ways and fire will turn water, ice or snow into steam that will rise off the screen.

There were many interesting techniques used to make this all happen with the main movement based on Cellular Automata theories. Each particles moves by looking at it’s surrounding neighbors and then decided how to move. For the most part, they only care about the 8 locations directly surrounding them. As simple as that sounds, it allows for some interesting and occasionally surprising interactions.

Doing this project let me work through some interesting programming issues, while at the same time giving me something fun to play with. A majority of the code fits in around 400 lines and it does everything you can see above.

So, if you find yourself stuck – step back and find a small project that appeals to you and work on that. It will not only better your programming skills, but it will also allow your brain to reset before you return to your actual work.