One of the more interesting things that happened last week was being interviewed by a reporter from the largest news service in China. Here’s a picture from the interview, and yes, I look like a zombie in the picture. The reported asked some really good questions, and I think the interview went really well. But it’s doubtful I’ll ever see the interview since it will only air in China and the interview is unlikely to be available online. Still, it was fun to do.

A highlight from last week was seeing friends, old and new, Thursday night for drinks after the meet up. Made me realize how much I miss living in New York.

• Beginning iPhone 3 Development, Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche
• More iPhone 3 Development, Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche
• iPhone App Development, the missing manual, Craig Hockenberry
• Core Data, Marcus Zarra
• iPhone SDK Development, Bill Dudney and Chris Adamson
• iPad Programming, Daniel Steinberg and Eric Freeman
• The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook, Erica Sadun
• Programming in Objective-C, Stephen Kochan
• Tapworthy, Designing Great iPhone Apps, Josh Clark

I decided others might find the sample source code useful so I posted the project to github for all to enjoy. The piece devs might find interesting is the KTStopwatch class. This is a simplified version of the class I use in Labor Mate. It supports wall clock and elapsed time.

The source code is licensed using The MIT License, so do with it what you like. Enjoy.

Speaking from personal experience, attending events like 360idev is a great way to not only meet and network with developers but for developers to find work, whether they are looking for a permanent position or contract work. This is one of the many reasons I return to 360idev event after event, and why I will be at the next one in Austin TX on November 7th through the 10th.

I increased the price of Labor Mate by $1 on May 15, going from $0.99 to $1.99. By increasing the price on May 15, I was able to compare the first half of the month with the second half. And as I mentioned in the previous post revenue had indeed gone up. But I was curious to see if this would continue and what might be the long term effects, so I left Labor Mate at $1.99. After all, I made more money in May as a result of the price increase.

June is over and the sales numbers are in. I’m now able to compare a full month of sales (for June) at the higher $1.99 price to a full month of sales (for April) at the lower $0.99 price. And I can compare these numbers to May’s numbers. The results might be surprising to some, but are inline with what I secretly thought would happen.

In June, Labor Mate earned a whooping $31.94 more money than in April, and it earned $30.90 less compared to May. In April, Labor Mate averaged $35 per day. The average was $37 per day in May, and only $36 per day in June.

Revenue from Labor Mate has been on a slow but steady increase since it was first released back in 2008. Though I cannot prove it, based on past trends, my gut tells me Labor Mate would have likely hit June’s revenue number in May without the price increase. And my gut, again based on the trend, says June would have probably hit May’s number without the price increase. In other words, while the price increase did improve Labor Mate’s revenue, the amount of additional revenue resulting from the price increase is actually no different from the slow and steady increase in revenue I was already seeing at the lower, 99 cent price point. As a matter of fact, I saw a bigger jump in revenue between March and April, with April bringing in a whooping $175.71 more than March.

I’m now convinced the price increase did little to improve revenue, and actually the price increase likely did more harm than good. Prior to the price increase Labor Mate was ranked in the Top 100 in the Health and Fitness category for a number of different countries including the U.S. Today Labor Mate is no were near ranking in the Top 100 in most stores.

Another negative effect caused by the price increase is that fewer people are now using Labor Mate. As I noted in the previous post, the number of daily downloads dropped. This means fewer people are buying Labor Mate, which in turns means fewer people are using it. I believe Labor Mate’s slow but steady raise was due in part to word of mouth advertising. Now that there are fewer new moms and dads buying and using Labor Mate, there are fewer people recommending Labor Mate to other new moms and dads. And I admit, ignoring price for a moment, I’m a little disappointed that fewer people are using the app. A part of me prefers selling at a lower price point so more mom and pops to be will use it. (Hmm, maybe I should release a free, iAd supported version.)

So what’s next? I’ve thought about dropping the price back down to 99 cents, but this could lead to a backlash from the folks who purchased Labor Mate over the last 6 weeks. Plus, $1.99 is still cheaper than a large cup of Starbucks coffee. The better idea, and the one I have been planning all along, is to continue improving Labor Mate and make it stand out above the other 99 cent copy cats. This includes leaving the price at $1.99 for now. After all, as one recent new user said to me in email, “it is a very practical and intuitive app and certainly justified at $1.99.”

Long story short, the payment I made in December 2004 was applied to the December 2005 invoice. This basically resulted in me getting the first year of service for free, though I didn’t know it. And I never received the December 2005 invoice because it had been paid with the money charged in December 2004. Also, when the billing system was moved from Placeware to Microsoft, a mistake was made to my account which caused the December 2006 invoice not to be sent to me. Because I never received invoices for December 2005 and December 2006, it’s logical to see how I thought the account was canceled after the first year of service, which started in December 2004.

Thanks to the blog post in April, Microsoft did in fact contact me regarding the issue. If not for the attention received by the posting, I would have remained bitter towards Microsoft. Instead, an extremely helpful Julie McNamara-Dahl from Microsoft went above and beyond to get to the bottom of the issue. Julie’s efforts have single handedly restored my trust in Microsoft’s customer service. And best of all, with the help of others at Microsoft, she was able to get to the bottom of the matter and answer my question, “What happened?”

I hate that the matter blew up like this, and I hate that it was something haunting me for years. But in the end, the whole affair proved to me that Microsoft does listen and does strive to provide excellent customer service.

Finally, I want to say a big thank you to Julie and those who helped her. THANK YOU! This matter is definitely closed.