Send that guy back to GraphPlotting 101: y-axis?
Assuming it’s linear, that’s enough to show relative magnitude. You need exact numbers? You could make the same point with the X-Axis - does it go back farther on the left?
I think 2LL* didn’t want the actual numbers out, and thus made it relative. Regardless, you do get a feeling for the impact the sale has had!
- What is the preferred abbrievation? TLL or 2LL or does anyone care???
True, but you need to factor in the size of the market and the total cumulative sales volume to-date. And while Simeon has not posted the absolute figures, I bet the total cummulative sales volume over the holiday promotion will still be a vanishingly small percentage of the 25+ million iPads (as of June 2011) that ate already in-market, not to mention the holiday sales. Market saturation is a long way off, and shouldn’t be a factor even after more than 20 of these promotions if our experience at MobiTV is anything to judge by…(unless Simeon and his colleagues have sold more than ten million units or so, and I can’t imagine that would be a bad thing in any case.)
Plus, once a lot of people have your app, you can sell them other stuff. There are a lot of reasons that sacrificing ARPU for volume in the early stage of a product life cycle is a good idea.
I’ve updated the graph to show units sold since release, rather than since some arbitrary date.
I defer to real world experience. I am guessing “Potential Lua Devs” is a very small percentage of ipad users… but a very small percentage of 25 million is still a lot of people. It will be very interesting to see where this is in a week, and what happens to the numbers when (if?) they go back to a $8 price point.
Scratch that last stat. iPad sales have now topped 40 million units. That’s almost ten million new units in market every quarter. You should be having regular seasonal promotions with that kind of growth in the accessible market!
You are probably right. I tend to think in a “what are the people I know doing” mode, rather than the “there are millions of people with iPads, and of those people, a certain percent will purchase” mode. I know a lot of people with iPads, and non would be interested in programming on - or for - one of them. But if my experience is typical, 1 in 100 people (me vs. people I know with iPads), translated to 25 million users, is still a TON of users.
That data reinforces that there are probably both elasticity and discoverability factors that are important. Getting good app store ranking is key. Regular update releases, regular promotions too.
It brings up another strategy where you might get a REAL revenue bump if you discount the app to bring the volume and app store ranking up, and then BEFORE the volume and rank drop, then Boost the price back up…so then you get the discoverability benefit while getting the ARPU back up at the same time. If that kills the sales volume right away, then you’ll know that the discount was more important than the discoverability. But if the sales volume persists even with the hire price, then you know you can have shorter, and more frequent promotional efforts to good effect.
Hmmm. I wonder how many of those are repeat customers upgrading. Most of the people I know with an ipad 2 had an ipad 1 and upgraded - so they are presumably not new customers from the “Codea sales in the app store” standpoint. On the other hand - my ipad is actively used by 3 different people, all of whom will eventually be owners of their own, so “meh”.
Higher price. Not hire price.
Or just give it away for free and forget all the marketing. 
Good question. My house now has one iPad2 and two original iPads that my wife and two kids fight over, all operating out of two iTunes accounts. Everyone is looking forward to when rev 3 comes out and everyone will have their own. My older daughter (9) is already starting to code using the app, an her 6 year old sister is curious.
I think the market for people interested in developing their (and their kids’) 21st century skills is large. And honestly this is one of the best environments I’ve seen on one of the least expensive platforms I’ve seen.
As I think about it, it might be worth hitting some of the NSTA trade shows to promote the app to schools and their administration, science, and math teachers. Simeon , where are you folks headquartered? Where do you all live?
You will also learn a bit by looking at how long the discount promotion volume bump lasts. Your initial launch bump lasted about 4 days. (I’m assuming, but was that at full price?). If your discount promotion lasts longer, or if the sales volume settles at a higher level, you’ll learn how important the lower price point is.
Just found this stat: 70% of iPad 2 purchasers are new customers. Amazing.
http://i.tuaw.com/2011/03/14/70-percent-of-ipad-2-buyers-are-new-customers/
Promote away!
WOW! That’s a huge sales bump! I thought it would have a bump but I never thought it would be that high. I expected it would be only 3 to 5 folds of regular sale since Codea isn’t an app that will be used by common people. Or at the optimistic expectation, I thought 10 folds is the maximum. But, this is obviously more than 10 times of regular sale. Congratulations 2LL! 
If 2LL would like to experiment more with price point, I suggest to keep it at $1 until the end of Christmas sale. Then set the price higher but still lower to the original $8 price point, say $3 or $5, for another week. Then bring it back to the $8. Let’s see how it goes. This is interesting. 
BTW, I wonder the real number of how many Codea got sold. Say the horizontal line represents 100, we could say Codea got sold approximately about 1300. That’s not bad. Not bad at all.
Thanks for the great advice @alvelda, we live in Adelaide, South Australia so it would be quite a trek. We are three programmers/artists (and @Simeon has an interest in UX design). None of us have done marketing or economics studies, though I guess I am the closest, but mostly just from Kahn Academy.
What you said about discoverability vs discount is great advice! We should definitely look at doing that.
I’m guessing some of this bump also comes from more people buying on the App store (due to gift cards and whatnot), which means discoverability is probably the driving factor at this point.