“Sunset” by Ron Guest is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
After 6 years of business my father and I have decided to sunset FlashMyCase. We appreciate all of our customers over the years.
From the beginning our install costs were up to 70% lower than the average install cost. Even when Facebook introduced their ad relevance score due to the sheer volume of advertisers on the platform we were able to maintain between a 9/10 and 10/10 relevance score.
However, over the years the costs of app installs skyrocketed approximately 1,000%, so there is really no way to continue. Facebook and Instagram app install ads, our best platforms for advertising, are no longer profitable, unfortunately.
We are proud to have sales in all 50 states of the USA and 23 additional countries.
Through great customer service we were able to maintain a 5 star rating throughout the life of the app.
I handled the technical side of the business including software development and advertising. My father handled all other business tasks including but not limited to sourcing cases from China, printing cases, shipping, and providing excellent customer service.
Project Highlights:
- iOS App Built with XCode and Objective C
- Website built with ASP.NET and VB.NET
- Administration web app built with ASP.NET Web Forms (2012) and VB.NET
- WebAPI built with ASP.NET WebAPI and C# (2016)
iOS App Highlights:
- The app was built as a funnel to the payment page
- Conversions were as good as 1:15 at times (one out of fifteen downloads became a customer)
- Maintained a 5 star rating through the app’s life
- Sustained up to 100% ROI (before ad costs went wild)
- Started out with $0.30 cent app installs (Facebook & Instagram) when the average was $1 (costs kept going up though)
- Maintained a 9/10 - 10/10 app install ad relevance score
Administration web app highlights:
- Inventory system
- Reporting
- Order Tracking
- Stripe Integration for payments
I learned much about business and advertising during this venture. I built my first app and my first API. It is bittersweet to shut everything down, but what I learned in the process made it all worth it.
