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
  • ‎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

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.

The Frustrations of Failure

I’ve been disenchanted for a bit with my apps. I was really excited for the last couple of apps that I released, but the sales have dismal for them. I believe the apps themselves were useful and worked well, but my marketing leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of pushing myself to do better at marketing the apps, I kinda fell into a rut and stopped doing much of anything useful.

I shouldn’t say that I haven’t done anything useful. I have spent time upgrading my skills and also working on a couple of new apps.I have at least one pretty much ready to go, but I have lost my confidence so I haven’t done the last few steps needed to release it. So, one set of failures has compounded to make a an entirely new set of failures.

Sadly, at this point I don’t have a great solution for myself. So, this might not be the most helpful blog post to anyone, but it does help with my accountability to myself. I know I am capable of creating a decent apps that are either useful or enjoyable. I just have to remind myself that no one can see the apps if I don’t release them. After that, I need to find a way to let people know that the apps exist in the world.

So, I’m going to use this post as a way to push myself to step back up and do what I know I can do. By the way, if you read this and want to play a silly, but enjoyable game – Fruit Derby is still available in the Apple App Store.