Great job. And thanks for the inspiration. I realize that I will have to fail a multiple times before something great happens.

Q: Would you mind me asking what is your revenue model and how much success you have seen with all the streams ?

By the way, I downloaded your app a few days after the commercial aired, and my kid absolutely loves it. Thanks again.

You definitely don't have to fail before you succeed. But if it happens, just accept it, learn something, and move on.

Do you have it on the iPod or iPad? On the iPad, you'll see a banner ad that spans the bottom of the display. That generates about half of the revenue. The other half comes from In-App Purchases of song packs ($0.99 each, or $2.99 for a full unlock). And about $40 a day comes from LinkShare commissions, which happens when someone links out from my app to an iTunes song, and buys it.

Thanks for your reply. I agree with you and I meant that failures are not really that bad, and mostly help you to learn from mistakes.

Also, what's next for Tiny Piano ? How do you plan to keep it simple and yet add features to keep it relevant for new and old users - both ?

In the immediate future, I think I'll stick with adding new content (more paid song packs and more free songs).

Farther in the future, it might be fun to add a "game" section where users can play short DDR/GuitarHero style games to practice rhythm and possibly learn how to read music.

Congratulations! And thanks for writing this post. I find these types of post from developers extremely insightful and inspiring.

I particularly found your experience with improving Chinese SEO very interesting.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for reading! I remember reading a lot about other developers when I started out, so I just want to make sure I give back. Plus, it's a bit of free marketing for my apps. :-)

How did you get your first few thousand? It seems like once you're on the charts the growth can explode.

These days, I don't think there is a guarantee of anything, even if you have a few thousand downloads. Even with the initial downloads, my app languished on the store until I introduced iPad support, added more song packs, and improved the keywords.

I think the biggest thing was the simple and catchy name, and a decent looking icon. This will help you get the random users who search for "piano" on the App Store. Of course, being a free app helps. People will download pretty much anything that's free. :-)

Congratulations!

Thanks! Feel free to ask me any questions. Happy to respond.

I remember seeing your original blog post when the iPad commercial featured a piano and heard about the extra traction you received from that.

One thing I've learnt over and over with launching new apps is there are always unexpected hurdles that you'd never have thought about when you first started writing the software.

What are some you've run into, perhaps like IP for the songs in the app? Is it a difficult legal process to get a melody for a popular song into the app?

What kinds of apps have you worked on? I'd love to check them out.

The biggest unexpected thing for me was that the simpler you make your app, the more likely people will enjoy it! People always make fun of how the Angry Birds game mechanic is so simple, but that's why it appeals to so many (kids and adults alike). Tiny Piano is dirt simple to play, and that's why users like it.

As developers, we like to always add features. Sometimes, removing features (and making an app simpler) will actually improve the experience.

Regarding IP for the melodies, it is not clear who to contact to arrange a license. Different parties own the copyrights to the lyrics, sheet music, performance, etc. It turns out that my app includes none of those. It just happens to have a collection of notes that, when you tap at the correct tempo/rhythm, sounds very much like a song you may have heard before. ;-)

But really, I try to be a good citizen and link people to the iTunes version of the song so that they can buy it and give money to the artists. With LinkShare, you can even get a 5% commission for each sale you generate. This comes out to about $40 a day of extra revenue for my app.

In the end, if the app becomes super successful (> 100 million DLs), I'm sure the appropriate parties will contact me, and I'll be happy to make a deal with them then!

Having 8 million people use your app I find pretty amazing, let alone classing >100M as super successful. I build SaaS web apps so for me, having > 100 paying customers I'd consider a project to be pretty successful.

The first commerical app I built myself was called Track My Ride, http://www.trackmyride.com.au. It earns me a fair slice of pie each month but nothing to retire on. Track My Ride was focused primarily on the local market that I could direct market to. My second app Rocket Mail Merge http://www.rocketmailmerge.com was actually born out of the need for easier invoice creation for my first business. It is targetted at the international market this time, primarily the US. I finished its coding at the end of last month. It's fully functional but I can't release it out of it's 'open beta' due to the abysmal lack of international credit card processing for Australian startups. It has taken so far 6 weeks to get approval from the bank, and that approval is still pending with no ETA in sight. I plan to write a topic on that in due course but not before getting my approval haha. Once I launch it I'll be writing a Show HN on it. It would be great if people found it as useful as I do.

Your landing pages are nicely designed. Some small suggestions: on Track My Ride, I found the "Get Protected Today" font not very readable and a bit tacky. Also, I don't understand why "Chat with us" looks like a Christmas present. On my 15" MBP, it actually overlaps with Contact Us. So it seems kind of redundant.

You charge $30 for your products, so the scale of "success" will definitely be different. If you can convince 100 true fans to love your product, you'll make enough to survive, and iterate/improve.

When I shipped my first apps, charging $0.99, I had a really hard time convincing users to download. The whole first year, I made about $1000. (And I was happy!) I would have been ecstatic if I had ever reached 100K downloads @ 99 cents. In the space of Free Apps, the scale of success is different. I wouldn't be very happy getting 100K free downloads. :-)

Now I'm not saying I am not happy with 8 million DLs. It's pretty frickin' awesome, and I had never predicted it. But it's really a psychological trick to reset my bar at 10 million downloads, or 20 million, or even 100 million, to convince myself to keep working hard. :-D

Good luck with your bank approvals!

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding the presents; Ah the Christmas theme. Just one of the small things that escape you when you're very busy. Have updated that now. I'm still not quite happy with the design of the TMR page. The whole thing needs to be scrapped when time permits and redesigned, fortunately people like the software beneath so it hasn't been the highest priority lately.

I just looked up your landing page for Tiny Piano. It's nice and informative but the grey background is a bit striking for the black iphone. The contrast would be better with a lighter color. You can pickup some really nice templates from themeforest for a few $ if you're not a designer at heart.

Best of luck cracking 10M downloads! I'll add an extra download to your totals shortly.

Thanks for your feedback as well! I definitely don't have a graphic design background, so maybe I'll look on themeforest at some point. I just want to keep the site as lightweight as possible though, in case iPhone users visit it.