

Instapaper Founder Marco Arment On The App Business - jacobjulius
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/31/146152273/the-tuesday-podcast-the-app-economy

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jwwest
I hate these fluff pieces. There's a huge infatuation with mobile apps these
days that's not based on reality. The media either,presents them as super
simple projects that are making people rich or gimmicks that can't possibly
take too much time to build.

The fact is, no one wants to hear about how Marco's "super simple" service has
quite a bit of engineering on the backend to handle load, or that he's not, in
fact, a millionaire from Instapaper (even though it seems that he makes a very
decent living).

The truth is that apps aren't a gold mine. It still takes hard work,
dedication and luck to make it developing your own mobile apps. It just irks
me that the public perception of apps are that they're simple and always make
buckets of money in exchange for little effort.

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k-mcgrady
It's true that making a successful app is hard work. It is, however, simple
compared to how the software market used to work. You no longer need your own
website and payment system, you need very little marketing, and development
time is quicker allowing you to try many different ideas until you find one
that sticks. You can create a living with time being the only investment (and
you can invest your spare time so you can continue your day job).

Edit: Why the down vote? If you are going to down vote something at least
reply with your reason/point of view.

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amirmc
> _"...you need very little marketing... development time is quicker..."_

I disagree with this. There's still quite a bit of effort involved marketing
if you've not already got credibility/contacts/attention from something
previous. Development time may be quicker in general but if you want to craft
something unique I expect you still have to spend time on it.

Agree with the rest of your points though.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I suppose development time does depend on the app. It is possible to spend a
few hours building an app and make a lot of money from it though but this is
probably the exception not the rule.

I've always found marketing iOS apps to be very simple. You get marketing in
the App Store new releases section, and then I push hard for downloads on
social media. You only need to market hard until you get into the top 25 or so
and then the App Store does it for you. This is what I have found anyway.

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luigi
Would Marco make more money giving away his app for free and charging
$1.99/month for the service? It's always seemed odd to me that you pay for the
web service upfront with a one-time fee, though that seems to be working well
for Pinboard.

It may be the case that a one-time upfront cost is the best way to attract
paying customers.

~~~
adelevie
If lack of a monthly fee made _some_ sense in the early days of Instapaper, it
makes plenty of sense now that Apple has "Reading List" installed on millions
of Macs and iOS devices.

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Kylekramer
This interview repeats the common line of thought that Apple having credit
cards stored and a frictionless buying experience as key to the success of the
App Store, but I don't see why that is a commonly held belief. Doesn't hurt,
of course, but simple ease of payment doesn't really strike me as the main
hurdle in selling software (more than willing to be proved wrong here). It
seems more likely to me that the iPhone was a device that _begged_ for
software. Hand anyone an iPhone with just the built in apps and I assure you
they will soon be inquiring about what else can they do with it.

A great demand seems to be the real key to the App Store success. After all,
how many credit cards that were entered in 2008 are still active today?

~~~
fbuilesv
The difference between having to enter my CC every couple of years vs. every
couple of days is huge. I'm guilty of a lot of quick, mindless expenses in the
iTunes Store that I probably wouldn't have incurred in if I had to enter the
CC every time.

It's all about reducing the friction to buy stuff, when the only thing you
have to do is click a button you're most likely to consume (at least on my
personal experience).

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adelevie
Can't you both be right?

~~~
fbuilesv
I agree with Kyle in the observation that this is not the main reason for the
App Store to be successful, but I think it contributes a lot. I'm only
speaking from experience though so maybe other people can chime in and give us
their opinions.

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reedcat
It is a great success story but it is also a story of someone being in the
right place at the right time. Instapaper was in the app store the very next
day after store went alive. Seems like a typical story described in Malcolm
Gladwell's book Outliers:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29>

