Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

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forrestthewoods

I have $420 revenue from 285 sales (started $3, dropped to $1) in 6 months from my side project. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alcohology/id437180278?mt=8.

Getting attention is hard. Ridiculously hard. Insanely, impossibly hard. I couldn't get a review from a single website. I submitted the app to dozens of review sites, food/drink blogs, and tech blogs and didn't get a single response. Actually, that's not true. I got responses from app review sites that wanted me to give them money in exchange for a review.

I made a trailer that has gotten 2,700 views (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctsk1QVs8OI). Almost all hits came from a video a friend and minor internet celebrity made for me. His video has 14,000 views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFn6eW2Kb0g

I fully admit my app is a niche app, but I think it's worth more than $420. Sites like Gizmodo have run "Best Cocktail Apps" and Apple regularly lists "Martha Stewart Cocktails" in Staff Favorites for iPad. It has approximately 12 total recipes but lots of high quality, high res images.

This may sound harsh, but, from the screenshots, your app would fall in the fugly category. On the cocktail screen, you use a bunch of fonts and clashing colors. At first look, I thought the "Tall" text thingy is a slider for glass size. It isn't.

Compare with the Martha Stewart app. It is extremely polished and the photos look gorgeous.

Harshness is fair and appreciated. It's not particularly beautiful and it has some usability issues. It's lack of success isn't a total shock, but it is certainly disappointing. The minimum bar for entry right now on iOS is pretty damned high.

Sorry to be harsh, but I have to agree with ovi256, I don't think your app looks beautiful. In particular, your fonts look boring (Arial?), there needs to be some small padding for the ingredients on the Random page, the neon-lighting on the borders looks a bit ugly, too many different colors seem to used on various pages....

I am not a designer, but you should get one to give you some suggestions. In any case, I just bought your app......happy to help out a fellow HN-er :) Hopefully this will help improve my cocktail-making skills.

PS> Check out a book called Tapworthy.

Also, compare to Cocktails+. It's more stripped down in many ways, but the overall effect is more pleasing to my eye.

Also, the random feature on Alcohology is really interesting and would be incredibly useful. But why is it limited to an urbanspoon-style restaurant finder? Drink components don't seem to map well to that layout.

Perhaps allow for the input of an arbitrary number of components into a "bar", which then generates a list of potential drinks.

Or at least simplify the roulette selection to: primary component, style (cocktail, mixer, shooter, etc) and difficulty.

e.g. I have Whiskey, I want a cocktail and I don't want to spend a lot of time straining and cutting fruit.

"Perhaps allow for the input of an arbitrary number of components into a "bar", which then generates a list of potential drinks."

That is exactly what it does. The second line of the description states "Alcohology is specially designed so you can see what cocktails your home bar can actually create" and the 3rd and 4th bullet points are "Customizable ingredients for your bar. Toggle to see all recipes or only recipes your bar can make"

Your comment has made it obvious that I have utterly failed in getting that point across. I'll re-work the description and screenshots to change the sales pitch.

it's a niche app but it is also a very crowded niche. I've seen dozens and dozens of cocktail recipe apps. I pay pretty close attention to this market b/c i'm in it but have gone at it from an entirely different angle (if interested, see http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bostonflip/id451503483 which i believe passes the 'fugly' test?). we're only servicing boston metro area at the moment.

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