iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [134]
You can have the greatest product in the world, but if nobody knows about it you are never going to make that first sale. People have to find and know about your applications before they can buy them. Not only do you want them to know that your applications exist, but you want them to know what your applications are all about. This burden rests on your shoulders and not on the consumers'. You also need to know information about how well your application is doing in the market and what buyers think about your products. Let's take a look as some ways you can achieve these goals.
App Store reports
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You have probably heard of this riddle before. Here is another one for you: Which came first, business or reports? It's hard to say for sure, but today the two tend to go hand-in-hand. From day one, the App Store has had reports, and likewise, you should take advantage of these reports from the first day your applications are listed on the App Store. Here is what you need to know to be able to do that.
Financial reports
Apple provides developers with financial reports every month (Figure 10.1). These reports will prove invaluable to you over time because they are the authoritative source for how well your applications are doing on the App Store. Unlike the sales/trend reports, financial reports are not purged and are currently available indefinitely. However, it is still wise to download backups of all reports for your records.
The financial reports are available as tab delimited text files. This means you can open them directly and read them yourself, or even better, you can open them in programs like Numbers or Excel and do more advanced analysis and research.
As an application developer, you will receive up to seven regional financial reports every month. Reports are generated monthly for any regions in which you have had sales. Table 10.1 lists the seven possible financial report regions.
Table 10.1 Financial Report Regions
Region
App Store Currency
United States
USD
Canada
CAD
Europe
EUR
United Kingdom
GBP
Japan
JPY
Australia
AUS
Rest of world (Middle East, Africa, and European and Asian Pacific countries)
USD
FIGURE 10.1
Financial reports for iTunes Connect
If you open a financial report in an editor of your choice, you will see that the report has over 20 fields. This is indeed a wealth of useful data. Table 10.2 details the information available in a financial report.
Table 10.2 Financial Report Fields
Field
Purpose
Format
Begin Date/Start Date
Date of beginning of report.
MM/DD/YYYY
End Date
Date of end of report.
MM/DD/YYYY
UPC (Universal Product Code)
You can assign a UPC to your application when you add it to the App Store. It then appears in your financial reports.
20 characters maximum
ISRC (International Standard Recording Code)
The ISRC is the international identification system for sound recordings and music video recordings. It is meant to be used by iTunes content providers, not so much by application developers.
20 characters maximum
Vendor Identifier
This is a vendor identifier that is provided by you when you add your application to the App Store. If your company has multiple departments or subcontractors, this field may be more useful to you.
20 characters maximum
Units/Quantity
This is the total number of units sold.
Integer/whole number
Partner Share
Partner refers to you, and share refers to the percentage of the sale that is yours. It is the percentage of the proceeds you will receive per unit. For application developers, this is fixed at 70 percent.
Currency field
Extended Partner Share
This is a calculated field. Its value is always quantity times partner share.
Currency field
Partner Share Currency
This is the currency that will be used to pay you.
3 characters
Sales or Return
You will always see either an S (for sale) or an R (for return) here.
1 character, either an S or an R
Apple Identifier
This is the unique identifier that Apple assigns your application