I think another key to your success: you are writing a book about design and your front page is stunning... congrats! I would happily trust your judgement on design based on your home page. Did you design this yourself?
$15k certainly sounds impressive, but how many hours have been spent researching, writing and marketing the book? Only once we have a ratio'd figure to compare can we claim success.
Unfortunately Apple have adopted a philosophy of rejecting any app that loosely competes with iOS native apps - we for example had an app rejected for allowing users to share apps on Facebook/Twitter... the reason given was apparently it didn't provide any additional functionality over the native app (even though it did!)
What now is an API call that counts towards your quota? An API call to the Cloud Code from the client, or each call to a Parse method within the Cloud SDK?
I find Richard Feynmanns accounts of hacking (non-computer) systems at Los Amos to be fascinating - I was hoping once the cheating was revealed we were going to be treated to a story of how someone cleverly found a loophole in the system that was then closed, improving the system for everyone. Rather we got a smear article...
I've found the economic effect 'Price Elasticity of Demand' to be fascinating and to hold true on the App Store. My interpretation is, for paid apps, there is an absolute value associated with your app that is independent of the price of the app.
E.g. if an app costs $1.99 and sells 100 per day, reducing this app to $0.99 will result in a doubling of sales. But the revenue gained is roughly the same
From a developer perspective, the problem then is with the App Store pricing model, which doesn't account for varying markets. The price you pay in the US is the price you pay in emerging markets like Nigeria.
I don't understand what the difference is between Referly and linkshare.com, which already has thousands of premium affiliates and a solid api. Could someone enlighten me?
Interestingly, the journalist who wrote this article also wrote a terrible review of the Nexus 7 when it first came out slating the device with multiple inaccurate statements. He was roasted in the comments & had to append the article with a justification for his viewpoints.