Tag:

Launch

Gaia GPS

Review of Gaia GPS on TouchMyApps.com

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

Going into the final day of launch week, Gaia GPS is bobbling between 13th-15th place in navigation, and sales are great. The units we sold Monday-Thursday are: 55, 85, 84, 97, which is pretty good as far as we are concerned. We’re finally getting towards paying for the rent and pizza in our little Truckee cabin 🙂

Today was the first day an external review was published about Gaia GPS. It’s quite a glowing write-up on the app, complete with screenshots, submitted to TouchMyApps.com by
@edythemighty. It’s really gratifying that Gaia GPS is good enough to inspire a stranger to both buy the app, and then write this review. I just met @edythemighty when I noticed he had twittered about us.

As a brief aside, I’d also like to note that Twitter is a truly great service. We have had many referrals and reviews stem from the Twitter. People really listen when their friends recommend a product – no advertising or PR is nearly as effective as word of mouth, and Twitter magnifies that.

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Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS User Quotes

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

As we go into Day 4 of our launch, Gaia GPS is now steady at 16th place in the navigation category, and selling pretty well.

The three of us who work on Gaia GPS have really been a happy bunch through this launch too. Besides the good sales, we have received nothing but glowing comments from users. You can read the reviews on the App Store, but I’d also like to share some quotes I have received via email and seen posted on user forums.

These quotes are all from people completely unaffiliated with Gaia GPS. While I cherry-picked the best quotes, we have received absolutely zero negative feedback. I’m a sucker for a “good job” from a stranger 🙂

Via Hacker News

  • “Just purchased. Already like it better than MotionX.” – joeld42

  • “the app looks great. as a hiker the topo maps excited me more than anything else. paper maps are expensive!” – aroon

  • “This is fantastic work guys, thanks for doing this. It’s especially useful since Topozone.com became expensive.” – rrival

Via Twitter (also here)

  • “Glad someone did this RT @nick_b: Gaia GPS – new iPhone mapping app using Kalman filtering to enhance GPS results – http://bit.ly/1ML1oy“ – @mprioleau

  • “iPhone is now a full-blown GPS: waypoints, tracking, topo&city maps, stats, earth info database http://www.gaiagps.com/” – @danger_ranger

  • “Alright, suitably impressed with @trailbehind’s Gaia GPS app. Will give it a proper test run in a few minutes…” – @edythemighty

Via Reddit

  • “I may need an app created for me in the near future. Will you be available?” – odeusebrasileiro

  • looks awesome, by the way! – MercurialMadnessMan

Via Email

  • “Thanks for the good work. It’s nice to see apps like made by people who have a feel for the actual use of the app, not just “hey, let’s make a gps app ’cause the iPhone has a gps chip…”” – Bill B. via email

  • “Without waiting for your response, I downloaded the Gaia GPS app due to the positive responses. I’ve already figured out how to download maps…very intuitive” – James C.

  • “I went to the link above, and from there to iTunes to look over the app. It looks so good I just had to go ahead and buy it myself.” – Bill G.

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Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS Launch Figures: Day 2

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

Well, the three of us who work on Gaia GPS are terribly excited by our launch results so far. I know it’s not typical for companies to share their sales numbers, but I don’t see the harm, and hopefully we can do our bit to lift the veil of obscurity from the iPhone market by continuing to do so.

Day 1, we sold 55 units and reached 50th place, as I detailed in my previous blog post. That was a good and promising start, but Day 2 was even better. Yesterday, Gaia GPS sold 85 units, and we moved up to 20th place in the navigation category. I suppose we could still get hammered by bad reviews, but it seems like the app is being very well-received. We’re steadily moving up in the rankings, and if we can keep this up, then we have a hit on our hands. Breaching the top 20 is important too – top 25 gets you a lot more visibility on the iPhone, and then top 20 gets you visibility on iTunes. We’re 17th right now.

We’re still trying to get some press attention, but it doesn’t look like it’s necessary to breach the top ranks. While we haven’t gotten covered by the New York Times or anything like that, we have creates some buzz on Twitter and other social networking sites. For example, a search for Gaia GPS or GaiaGPS on Twitter reveals that people are finding out about Gaia GPS, press or no press. We also generated a good discussion and even some related sales from posts on Hacker News and Reddit.

If you are interested in seeing the rankings in the Navigation Category, including Gaia GPS highlighted in bold, you can visit this page that my co-founder Anna set up. We get this page emailed to use when our rank changes, based on a script Anna also wrote.

Well, enough of this sales reporting… launch week continues.

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Gaia GPS

iPhone Launch Sales Figures – Gaia GPS

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

In my family, we always considered it rude to talk about money. But money talk seems to be in short supply regarding iPhone App sales numbers, so I thought I’d share our launch-day experience, including dollars and other relevant figures. I thought the Hacker news crowd would be particularly interested, and I don’t see the harm in sharing the data with anyone who is interested.

Right off, let me just say, we sold 55 apps on launch day, for $2.99 each ($2.10 in profit after Apple’s cut). Here’s the other details. If you have any thoughts on how we should market the app, drop me an email at andrew@gaiagps.com. We’re pretty happy with the launch so far, and we’re aiming to get into the top 10 in Navigation and hold there.

Rankings

Gaia GPS went live yesterday at midnight. It rose from obscurity (apps start at the uncharted depth below 100th place) to 50th place in the Navigation category by the following midnight, and we’re now up to 33rd. We have a script that emails us when we change rank, and here’s how it went yesterday, through today. TrailBehind is the name of our company:

  • TrailBehind: 33 11:35 am
  • TrailBehind: 34 10:39 am
  • TrailBehind: 37 10:08 am
  • TrailBehind: 36 9:58 am
  • TrailBehind: 42 7:45 am
  • TrailBehind: 47 7:29 am
  • TrailBehind: 48 5:53 am
  • TrailBehind: 50 12:21 am
  • TrailBehind: 51 12:08 am
  • TrailBehind: 56 Sep 21 9:12 pm
  • TrailBehind: 59 Sep 21 8:47 pm
  • TrailBehind: 57 Sep 21 8:12 pm
  • TrailBehind: 60 Sep 21 7:24 pm
  • TrailBehind: 69 Sep 21 6:13 pm
  • TrailBehind: 82 Sep 21 6:05 pm
  • TrailBehind: 75 Sep 21 5:29 pm
  • TrailBehind: 88 Sep 21 4:42 pm
  • TrailBehind: 80 Sep 21 4:37 pm
  • TrailBehind: 94 Sep 21 4:27 pm
  • (below 100th place for 15.5 hours)

This sort of steady climb is just one way a “successful” launch goes. If you are Accu-Terra (which also launched yesterday), then you might immediately shoot up to 3rd place. Of course, Accu-Terra won some sort of award for being one of the Best New Apps at WWDC this summer, so there was a lot of anticipation for that app 🙂

Marketing Efforts (including website visitation)

Yesterday, we had about 1150 visits to this website, and so far this morning we have had about 200.

To market the app, we have been on the phone, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and email (there are three of us) with everyone we know who has an iPhone (or who knows people with iPhones), lobbying them to buy and review the app, and tell their friends. That’s where we have spent the most time, and I think that’s where we have had the most effect. We have now used about a dozen of our 50 promo codes.

We had also previously distributed the app to beta testers, so we reached out to that group, and many of them bought it and passed on the word. Moreover, over the course of the project, we used code from and contributed code to a couple of open source projects, so telling those folks about the launch was helpful as well.

With regards to publciity, we posted to Hacker News and Reddit yesterday, and we set up this website to help promote the site. We also have sent a couple of emails to press organizations (without response yet), and we’ll be doing a lot more of that today.

Conclusion

I don’t have much of a conclusion from any of this this yet. If we can keep rising and then hold steady, it will be a very good product for us, but it’s too soon to tell. Commentary so far on forums such as Hacker News have been positive, and we haven’t gotten any bad reviews or feedback yet.

So one day in, it’s going pretty well. I’ll share a bit more when I have more data.

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Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS Now On Sale

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

I am really excited to announce the release of Gaia GPS today. For the first blog post on GaiaGPS.com, here’s the press release from MyTopo about our launch. It’s been a real pleasure using MyTopo’s maps in my hikes testing Gaia GPS, and I’m happy we can bring these great maps to the iPhone.

FULLY-DETAILED TOPO MAPS FROM MYTOPO AVAILABLE ON NEW IPHONE GPS APP RELEASED TODAY

BILLINGS, MT — IPhone users can now access MyTopo’s fully-detailed, topographic maps via the new Gaia GPS app. The app is available at www.gaiagps.com or via the IPhone App Store for $2.99.

The Gaia GPS app is the first IPhone application to stream in fully-detailed topographic maps from MyTopo. MyTopo maps include the United States’ most detailed topographic maps, the 1:24,000 USGS 7.5 minute series, as well as topographic maps for Canada, produced by Department of Natural Resource Canada (DRCan).

“The Gaia GPS app provides a solution our customers and many outdoor professionals and enthusiasts have long sought — the ability to match the detail on their handheld GPS device with the detail of their paper topographic maps,” said Kevin Toohill, CEO of MyTopo.

MyTopo praised the app for being well-designed, easy-to-use and a great value. “With the Gaia GPS app installed, IPhones will have more detailed maps than most GPS devices, making them an exceptional navigation aide and an excellent complement to our printed maps and software.”

MyTopo maintains the most up-to-date database of topographic maps available for the US and Canada by compiling data from government agencies and enhancing the maps with crisp contour lines, symbology, hill-shading and sharp colors. MyTopo uses the data to power its online custom map printing service and in its award-winning Terrain Navigator software, which is relied upon by search and rescue organizations, geologists and outdoor professionals.

MyTopo, based in Billings, MT, specializes in providing US and Canada-based mapping products and services. The company offers an online service to order custom large-format topographic, aerial and hybrid maps; an online mapping subscription service, and the Terrain Navigator suite of desktop mapping software products. MyTopo invites use of its free online map browsing service.

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