Travel Writers 2 Travel App-ers

Posted on | January 7, 2010 | No Comments

By Jules Older

So there we were.

Jules: for­mer mag­a­zine editor-in-chief, for­mer web­site direc­tor, Global Inter­ac­tive Con­tent, for­mer per­son with income.

Effin: widely pub­lished pho­tog­ra­pher, sud­denly not widely published.

Hi. I’m Jules.

Not long ago I start get­ting email ask­ing if I’d like to cover San Fran­cisco for a travel web­site. It will be, oh, two or three month’s work. Two or three month’s work for $400.

I ask, politely, “Did you inad­ver­tently leave out some zeros?”

I don’t hear back. Ouch.

But am I discouraged?

Yes.

Then, one day, I get an email ask­ing if I’d like to cre­ate an iPhone app. Think­ing it’s one more of those $400 gigs, I almost don’t respond.

But when I do respond, it turns out the offer is a fair one, and the sub­ject of said app is one of my spe­cial inter­ests. Thus is born, “San Fran­cisco Restau­rants,” the app.

Cre­at­ing it is three months hard work… okay, soft work. I’m eat­ing at favorite restau­rants and writ­ing about it… so it’s long work. Seventy-five restau­rants later — text by me, images by Effin — it goes to Apple for app-roval. I set­tle in for the infa­mously long, long wait.

One (1) week later, on Thanks­giv­ing eve, Apple approves it. We are thank­ful. We are mega-tres thank­ful. “San Fran­cisco Restau­rants” is up and for sale — 99 cents, please.

Start­ing at Thanks­giv­ing, it rises from 104 to 20 (as I write this) in the iTunes list­ings for ‟San Fran­cisco.” It’s Num­ber One for ‟San Fran­cisco Restau­rants” on the iTunes site. (Choose your name well, Grasshop­per. For­tune favors the descrip­tive title. At least for iPhone apps.)

It helps that we start pub­li­ciz­ing it from Day One. We even make a two-minute YouTube video called,“San Fran­cisco Restau­rants, The Movie.” As I write, 283 folks have seen it. (Dunno if YouTube counts views by the video’s cre­ator. If so, bet­ter make that 273.)

Are we rich? Uh, no. The video’s free. The app’s 99 cents gets split between us, the pro­gram­mers who hired us, and Apple. Oh, and as I write, we’ve sold about 900 of ’em.

So, are we poten­tially rich? Too early to tell, but this may well be just another get-rich-slow scheme. Hardly my first.

If it is a finan­cial loser, are we sorry we’ve spent the time and effort on it?

Hell, no. We’ve learned a lot, entered a new game, had a lot of fun. That’s what travel writing’s all about.

———

In case you didn’t click on the links above, here’s how to find the app, the movie, and The Olders.

You can find the app from the App Store in iTunes, on your iPhone, or on your iPod Touch.

You can find the movie on YouTube.

You can find out more about The Old­ers here.

Jules and Effin Older are not related to Susan Older, founder of this site, which is amaz­ing when you think about it. It’s a rare name.

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