When I released Subnet Calc Pro, I worked out how many hours work I did on it and therefore how much money I would like to get back from it. Then I decided a price based upon how many sales I thought that I would get. I managed to achieve my money goal after just under 3 months of selling which I thought was extremely quick as I had imagined it would take more like a year to do that!

That is one thing that shocked me, but the other thing which shocked me is that my sales have been steady throughout the whole time I have been selling Subnet Calc Pro, with no sign of stopping yet. There was a spike around the time I released an update to Subnet Calc (the free version) which now has an up-sell page on it to encourage users to upgrade to the paid version. If there is a trend at all with my sales then it’s an increasing trend as well, which I am obviously very pleased with!

Here is the graph of my sales from 1st February 2009 until today, 16th May 2009.

Subnet Calc Pro Sales

The bottom line is that this has proved to me, and I hope others who read this, that the iPhone platform is a great platform to work with because you can go from never written a line of Objective-C to a full paid application, earning £££/$$$ a month. OK my app won’t support me fully, but it certainly is some very handy pocket money which will enable me to continue in my iPhone efforts and hopefully produce even more apps.

Target Reached!

April 25th, 2009

Today I reached my target for what I had in mind when I created Subnet Calc Pro! I won’t disclose how much this is, but I can say that it’s more than I initially expected, but not enough for a monthly wage! It took me just under 3 months of sales to reach the target which in my opinion is pretty good.

My experience at getting from a non-iPhone developer to successful application selling on iTunes has been an interesting ride which I have enjoyed very much. It’s exciting to be part of what seems to be a great technological revolution.

My current efforts have been focussed on my new app, BeerMap which I am hoping shall be released soon!

Subnet Calc Pro has now been out for just over a month and I can safely say that it’s had a lot more uptake than I thought it would! It’s not been massive in sales, but the best thing is that it has been steady. It’s not going to mean I can quit my day job, but it has meant I feel rewarded for my hard work of learning a whole new programming language, fighting through Apple’s tax forms and releasing an application.

I hadn’t had any reviews of Subnet Calc Pro, but I was using AppViz today and I noticed a review! I thought, oh it’ll just be a short one, but no, it was a full blown review! Awesome! And better still, it’s a glowing 5-star review which I thank you (whoever you are) very much for :-D .

The funniest bit of the review was where he says:

The only con I can see is “Organizer” is misspelled as “Organiser,” but no big deal. The concept is still there.

And if the only con is that I’m English and therefore, speak English, then woo!

Here is the review in full:

I must admit, I was initially skeptical when I saw this advertised. I immediately thought “oh, another subnet calculator, how novel.” Upon downloading and trying it out, I was amazed at it’s capabilities.

Pros:
1) Organizer – solid understanding of the radix (or binary if you prefer) tree when creating the subnet entry. Also the ability for it to calculate and display the host portion of the ip address so you can add a hostname and a description to each is a very nice touch. The use of the iPhone’s memory is also very efficient.

2) Finder – finally, an application that can aggregate! This excited me the most and it does work and give you an accurate prefix. Now, granted, any network admin is able to create a prefix summary in 2 seconds, but this is actually nice and convenient. In addition, you also get other useful info such as network id, broadcast, usable range, etc.

3) Calculator – handy feature to quickly help you break down any ip address with your cidr selection into the same useful information such as network id, subnet mask, usable range, maximum number of hosts, etc. Even better is you can see the addresses broken down into both binary and hexidecimal addresses which are both handy in their own rights.

4) Email data export – handy when you want to send a summary of what you had added in the organizer section.

The only con I can see is “Organizer” is misspelled as “Organiser,” but no big deal. The concept is still there.

Future suggestions (if the developer is taking any):
-calculate binary and/or hexidecimal to decimal format.
-Add screenshot to show off the Finder selection when advertising within iTunes.
-shorten the application’s name on the iPhone home screen. Currently, it shows as “Subne…cPro.”

Overall, a very nice job!

So, I immediately jumped on the review and I’ve changed the screenshots around to show the finder, which I had previously omitted from the screenshots (you only get chance to put a total of 5 up and I didn’t have room, but now the finder has taken priority over another one). I know I should make the application name shorter, but I didn’t know how I could shorten it really – any ideas? SCPro maybe?

A few weeks ago, Softpedia reviewed Subnet Calc and classed it in their freeware picks section. So when I released Subnet Calc Pro I thought I’d let them know. They have kindly responded by reviewing Subnet Calc Pro.

Hopefully this will be the start of something more with respect to iPhone apps. I’ve got plans for others, which I will be starting work on one of them soon. It’s quite an interesting app which uses the GPS function of an iPhone which should be fun to try and play with!

First sale!

February 2nd, 2009

I’ve checked my reports on the iTunes Connect page and I noticed that one person in the US has bought Subnet Calc Pro already! Many thanks for the purchase if you are reading this.

I really hope that people like it…

I feel that I worked extremely hard on it and it was at a stage where it was ready to be released. However, I do plan to release updates in the future as and when I implement new functionality. I do have some plans, but any feature requests are much appreciated – simply pop over to the application page and submit a comment saying what you’d like to see.

Subnet Calc Pro: v1.0 Released

February 2nd, 2009

Subnet Calc Pro was released onto the App Store last night and I have set the initial price at £2.39 / $3.99. This is the first version and I expect to see how it goes and then I will look at releasing new features over coming versions. Version 1.0 includes very useful features over Subnet Calc such as being able to define hosts inside a subnet which can help to keep track of IP allocations.

I will be releasing a little guide onto this website soon which will show some screenshots to explain some of the features of Subnet Calc Pro

I’ve had another hard working few days and have got quite a way with the design of SubnetCalcPro. I’m beginning to realise the wonders of the iPhone SDK, but also I am regretting not planning the project better. I think that it’s still a reasonably small project and so I can safely make a few mistakes with planning because they won’t affect things too much. However, I have learnt so much for future projects with respect to working out in advance exactly what controllers will be implemented and the importance of a proper specification for each one.

Anyway, in spite of all that, it’s coming along well and here are a few more screenshots:

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Subnet Calc Pro: Sneak Preview

January 13th, 2009

I have been hard at work the past couple of nights on my new version of Subnet Calc. I’ve managed to get the basics of it working and I have learnt a lot along the way. But because I feel I’ve achieved quite a lot I thought I’d share what I’ve done so far by showing off some screenshots of Subnet Calc Pro running on my iPod Touch. So here they are:

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