The new legit Tapity business has taken off like crazy and, among other things, has kept the Tapity team very busy. Sharing is essential, though; it’s part of our DNA and a big part of how we’ve gotten this far. So we’re somewhat relaunching the blog. I refreshed the design a bit and will continue to apply a little fresh paint here and there, as well as more about our process and business. But most importantly, we’re going to start carving out time to post regularly again so buckle up.

Tapity

So to start out I’m going to give a little update on Tapity. Okay so nobody would say that starting a new business is easy but, honestly, it’s been easier than I expected. Our expenses have been small and we’re doing a lot of good business. Right now we’re working on four projects and we’ve been getting lots of inquiries without doing any marketing at all yet (not to say we never will – in fact, you might consider even this post a form of marketing).

We’re really lean and very focused – the team is me, Josh, and Todd (our dad) and we are focused exclusively on design. My dad excels in strategy, Josh loves the interaction design, and I’m all about going the extra mile in the polish stage. I love it! Of course our skills overlap a lot but we each have found a little niche in the process and I’m really happy with the stuff we’ve been coming up with (as are the clients). Our passion is primarily on design so we’ve also been developing great relationships with some programmers to help on development. (p.s. If you’re a developer interested in collaborating on projects, please give us a hey.)

As a side note, partnering with Todd (who happens to be my dad), was a tremendous decision. Todd is a business guy and an attorney, so he takes care of all the stuff I hate about starting a business: getting incorporated, spreadsheets, payroll, legalese stuff. That means Josh and I get to focus on the fun stuff. Todd has also been tremendously insightful in the strategy phase of the design process and he has also been our point man with clients.

But speaking of the team, expect to hear a lot more from them on the blog.

RR: Reputation and Relationships

I’ve been thinking about why it’s been relatively easy to get Tapity off the ground. I think it can be summed up in two words: reputation and relationships. We built up reputation by building a solid app and being really open about it here on the blog, on Twitter, and in numerous other publications. Of course reputation is based on consistent quality work and insights, not just openness as an end in itself. And then an Apple Design Award certainly doesn’t hurt your reputation. In fact, it’s pretty amazing how much instant credibility a reward like that gives Tapity as a business (not to mention all the press we got from it). But you don’t have to win an ADA to build up a great reputation. Just look at folks like Mike Rundle who built his reputation off of just stunning work, blogging, tweeting, and tutorials – if he opened his doors, he certainly wouldn’t have any problems with getting clients.

Then there are relationships. Why relationships? We get a lot of leads but the best leads came through people I actually know – mainly developers or companies I’ve worked with in the past. The iOS community is great and when you add value, folks reciprocate. We help each other out. Blogging, tweeting, going to conferences and, most importantly, adding value to people you meet through those venues – you’ll make relationships that will be invaluable. As your reputation grows, good relationships are easier to come by because people already know about you and want to talk to you. But before anybody knows about you (where I was about three years ago), an important lesson: DON’T SPAM. Help people out.

Grades

With all this client work, it’s been difficult to focus on Grades. Nonetheless, it’s been doing pretty fantastic. We’ve started to get some great back to school press (TUAW, App Advice) and Apple has given us a total of over two months on the App Store home page.

We have about 153k downloads and over 30k active users last month. That means that 20% of the students who downloaded Grades are using it *during the summer*. That’s just insane to me. I’m looking forward to seeing how that changes as school starts up again.

Monetization

So last time we talked about this it was pretty bleak and it still is. I would say, unless you really don’t need the money, don’t experiment with free for an app like this. We’re making money with ads and in app purchases but it’s a few hundred per month tops.

It’s time to experiment. We’ve found a really interesting new monetization model that we’re going to try, probably in the next month or so. I’ll report on that later. I am pretty confident that we can bring in at least a few thousand per month with a little bit of experimentation.

So was making Grades 2 free a mistake? If I were depending on it to make a living, certainly. But I wasn’t; it was an experiment and, though it’s not making a whole lot of money at the moment, Grades 2 is probably the most important factor in turning a hobby into what looks to be a six or seven figure business over the course of a year. So for the long term, it was an amazing success. I doubt we could have gotten all the attention from Apple, the press, and users if we launched Grades 2 as just an update to the paid version. And having such a huge user base is quite powerful in itself. Bottom line: no regrets. I doubt I would try the free model in our next app (depending on the results of our experiments) but making Grades 2 free allowed it to blow up and giving up a little money was worth the clout we earned from that.

But feel free to get nosy, ask questions. If you’ve got some experience or insight on the free model, please share it in the comments!

(On a more personal note, I’m taking just one class this semester so I can focus the bulk of my time on the business.)