

Releasing Outside The App Store - joao
http://mattgemmell.com/2012/08/24/releasing-outside-the-app-store/

======
SwellJoe
Do you want to be a sharecropper? Or do you want to own your own business?

I've had vaguely uncomfortable feelings about the app store concept on phones
from the very beginning (and I've commented on those misgivings here on
several occasions over the years, to mixed response), and I think all of the
concerns I aired back then are coming to be proven to be real problems. When
you sell an app via these stores, you don't have a customer...you have a sale.
A customer is more valuable to a software developer than a sale by a _vast_
amount. A few thousand customers can sustain a business indefinitely.

Customers can help you make your product better, and you can help your
customer get more value out of the application (which means they'll be happy
to pay you more). Customers can be rewarded for recommending your application
to friends or coworkers. Customers can help support your product in your
forums or support tracker. Customers can end up becoming your best employees
(our first employee is someone who used our Open Source stuff for years, and
was one of our first buyers when we created a commercial product; he's a true
believer in what we do). A sale without that direct customer relationship is
just a sale.

I have hopes that this is a temporary anomaly in an evolution toward a more
open web with more direct connection between developers and users, but I don't
have a very high level confidence in that outcome. But, I can encourage folks
to not become sharecroppers, I guess.

About 15 years ago, there was a really common sentiment among tech industry
titans that curating the web would be where money was made (which led to
things like push content, and "portals", which mostly failed, or evolved), and
this seems to be that same idea coming back in a new form. But, the curators
are simply extracting value from developers and users without substantially
improving the ecosystem...in fact, they're kinda bleeding the ecosystem dry,
and enforcing a "software-as-commodity" model...it's Walmart applied to
software. Which is a pretty dangerous situation, I think, for independent
software developers, and probably only serves the largest corporations.

~~~
ken
That's a good point, but I think you're actually conflating two independent
factors.

All else being equal, I wouldn't like working so that I can be shut down by
another company at their whim. Nobody would.

But at the same time, I can get "customers" from App Store sales. Whether you
develop your sales into customers is entirely independent of whether your work
is hosted (and veto-able) by someone else.

For example, I bought an app on the App Store, and found a nasty bug in it,
and so I sent an email to them. I got a personalized response, and started a
dialog with the programmer. I've reported many issues and requested some
features, was given a pre-release beta to test, and after a few weeks, the
next release had my bug fixed. A "sharecropper" under Apple, perhaps, but
earned my trust, and I'll buy from them again if I have the chance.

On the other hand, I have in the past bought software in a cardboard box from
a store. The publisher wasn't under anybody's thumb, and I'm sure they were
happy about this fact. But it was nearly impossible to give any feedback to
them, and when I did, I never saw any of it included in any future release.
Owned their own business, but made a one-time sale and definitely not a repeat
customer.

~~~
SwellJoe
So, I agree there is some conflation going on, but it's based on the way Apple
is doing business in the app store. I didn't cause the issues to become
conflated, Apple did.

Given your example:

'A "sharecropper" under Apple, perhaps, but earned my trust, and I'll buy from
them again if I have the chance.'

That's the problem. You won't have another chance, unless the developer makes
a new product. The store doesn't allow for purchase of upgrades or renewals of
service. It is a one-time purchase and the purchase price has been driven down
to insanely low levels; which is fine for one-off games, but unsustainable for
large applications that need ongoing maintenance, bugfixes, enhancements, etc.
to provide a great customer experience.

The ideal experience for both customer and developer for complex software is
often one of constantly increasing value, in exchange for fair payment. It
doesn't have to be a traditional "upgrade every year" model...it can be a
subscription style service, where you pay a fixed, fair, amount, and get
updates every couple of months.

And, I'm definitely not campaigning for a return to boxed software in stores,
as it has all the problems of the app store, plus many more. That was a
tradition imposed by technical limitations. There was no good way to deliver
software without boxing it up and shipping it out. That hasn't been the case
for well over a decade. Nobody should be delivering software in boxes, today,
as far as I'm concerned.

------
pmjordan
While we're on the subject of helpful deployment software, MarsEdit's Daniel
Jalkut has an article about crash reporting for Mac apps on his blog:

<http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/860/crash-reporter-roundup>

I haven't yet tried any of his suggestions, and since the article is from
2009, I don't know how much has changed.

In any case, from experience on other platforms, I heartily recommend making
crash reporting straightforward (1-click, or even opt-in to 0-click) for
users. Once you have a few hundred people using your software, "rare" crashes
happen all the time and tracking them down can be much easier than with just
your internal testing.

Note that OSX's built-in crash reports go to Apple, not the App developer, so
they're not much use to those of us outside the Cupertino ivory tower.

~~~
js2
An option for automatically uploading crash dumps is
<http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/> \- it's what Chromium and Firefox
use.

------
markchristian
I wrote up my experiences on releasing outside of the App Store:
[http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-
ap...](http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-app-
store.html)

I use Stripe for payment processing with a custom in-app UI for buying the
app. Stripe has been great — they charge 50c+2.9%, so I lose about 44c per
copy of DragonDrop sold (versus losing about $1.50 to Apple in the App Store).

I suggest releasing in the App Store if possible, but selling independently,
too. The whole thing took about a day to set up and has been totally automatic
since then.

~~~
pkamb
Hey Mark, any chance you could break down your sales percentages for us? How
many are coming via the Mac App Store vs. your website?

~~~
markchristian
As of August 21st, I've sold 5.9% of my copies through my independent store.
This includes a few weeks at the beginning where the app wasn't available on
the App Store at all.

The App Store utterly dominates.

However, I still think it's good to have your own release path as well,
because it gives you a bit more courage to argue with Apple when you need to.
:)

------
diminish
"...You can’t offer paid upgrades. The App Store model is “buy once, get free
upgrades forever”, which is of course tantamount to encouraging disposable
software (and support practices)..."

And this is recently one of the culprits why mobile app developers are
struggling financially; so it seems to be a big factor.

------
CJefferson
I found this a very helpful article. In particular the thing which scares me
the most is always the thought of Having to deal with people's money, and so
it is really nice to see someone talk about how they did it, and and how easy
it was.

~~~
pmjordan
I've had FastSpring recommended by others as well and I am planning to use
that service. Having dealt with accepting payment via PayPal I can only say:
never again - they still owe me money, but I eventually gave up after I spent
days trying to chase it down.

~~~
markchristian
For what it's worth, I really recommend Stripe. It took me about two hours to
write my home-built store using it, and I plan on using it on a new project
soon.

~~~
pmjordan
I'm already signed up to be notified when it becomes available to use in
Europe. Until it does, FastSpring certainly seems good enough (and defers the
effort of setting up a non-static website to handle purchases, which is worth
a fair bit to me as well).

------
ken
It's true you can't offer things called "paid upgrades" or "demo versions",
but with In-App Purchases, you can mostly get around this. For example, make
your app free, and make some key feature an IAP -- that's basically a demo
version. Or when you make a big new version, make the key new feature of the
upgrade an IAP, so new users have to pay base+feature, while existing users
only have to pay for that feature.

I happen to like these: I love being able to try something out before I buy,
so "free + IAP" looks great to me. But there are a lot of people who must
think that "free" means "everything free, for all time", and when they
discover a core feature costs 99c, they go and leave a 1-star review. So you
have to tread carefully.

Another option is to make a free demo version, and just dump it on your own
webpage. It's not as discoverable as the App Store, but if people learn about
your app and go looking, it's not too hard to find. A demo probably has
minimal needs for the things the App Store provides (like licensing,
purchasing, and updating), anyway.

------
pessimism
Here is a personal experience on what it can be like as a customer of a
product available _both_ in the MAS and outside it.

A while ago, I tried the Fantastical trial, and when I used the purchase link,
I was immediately prompted to a credit card payment screen. I paid and bought
the software, and all was fine and well.

But later on, I learn that the software was also available in the MAS -
something Fantastical didn't really bother explaining to me. When I contacted
them for any kind of refund (to be used to purchase the app in MAS), I was
told that they couldn't accommodate that since a lot of other users have
requested the same thing - which already seems like a weird way of thinking.

They price the software in both places the same - meaning they earn more
money, if people don't by it in the MAS, and I felt the entire experience to
be very deceptive.

All in all, a really bad experience that I can't recommend any developer to
imitate, as it does nothing to inspire customer loyalty. Especially when the
developer has a financial incentive to not addressing the issue. At least from
my limited perception as a non-Mac developer.

Again, this is the _impression_ you get as a customer. I'm not saying this is
the intent, but perception is reality in the real of customer experience.

Consider this another con to double-dipping, if you intend to do something
similar.

~~~
ryannielsen
When buying other items, do you expect to pay less when you pay in cash? After
all, the retailer is making more money by avoiding credit card handling fees.

~~~
anonymoushn
Many merchants offer a discount for paying in cash or charge a fee for using a
credit card for small purchases. The only reason such practices are not
ubiquitous is that they violate the merchant agreement.

~~~
ryannielsen
Many do, yes. For those that don't – the majority – I'm curious if pessimism
finds their actions as distasteful as he found Flexibits', the authors of
Fantastical.

Personally, I find nothing wrong with their actions. pessimism was never
purposefully mislead about how Fantastical was being sold, and it's perfectly
reasonable for Flexibits to charge the same price in both venues even though
they have larger margins in one.

------
AndrewKemendo
I was under the impression that you couldn't install onto a non jailbroken
iPhone/iPad without going through apple ( either App Store/AdHoc/Enterprise).
This gives me hope that I am significantly wrong on that which would make my
life much easier.

Can someone confirm that?

~~~
pkamb
This article is about the Mac App Store. On iOS you _must_ use the App Store
to distribute apps (without jailbreak).

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Thanks, that makes better sense.

------
yalogin
How do I install apps from out side the app store? Doesn't it require the
phone to be in developer mode or something like that? So why is it even worth
investigating if its possible or worth the effort? What am I missing?

~~~
fbuilesv
It's a Mac app., not an iOS one.

------
jamesjguthrie
To release on iOS (which is not the major market any more btw) outside of the
App Store consider Cydia. There's millions of jailbroken devices now and the
Cydia store app is included in the process.

~~~
daeken
I just moved into a new house and the lawn needed to be mowed and all that, so
one of my roommates made a deal with the neighbor and his kids came over to do
the lawn. I went out to see if they needed anything, and I got talking with
one of them. He asked me what I did and I told him I'm a programmer, and he
asked me if I knew anything about jailbreaking iPods. I was completely and
utterly flabergasted; I'd worked on jailbreaks back with the original iPhone
and simply couldn't believe that a kid of maybe 9 or 10 in the middle of CT
with non-techie parents actually knew about such things. Really speaks to how
big jailbreaks and the like are these days.

~~~
evilduck
Gaming. I had hacked my Sony PSP back when those were a new thing, and finding
information on the process was tantamount to wading through half written
forums posts from 10 year olds. Few people knew what they were talking about,
it was often wrong or warned you about the wrong things, lots of people
bricked their PSPs, but the prospect of free games lured in all the kids with
no real income to try it. People who want jailbreaks for free games without
knowing what it really entails.

Since iOS has become a huge gaming platform, it's no surprise that same
PSP/NDS piracy consumer demographic has made the leap as well.

------
princetontiger
so.. is the app store more profitable or is selling software yourself better?

------
nikoc
Great article! I have a question for you guys. Just today, in the past few
hours, we are now featured on the App Store. Since we have made the decision
to put an emphasis on that release - how would you go about sustaining the
momentum from that channel? <http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/quilt-launch/>

~~~
conradev
I don't believe this has anything to do with the article, which is discussing
the Mac App Store.

~~~
nikoc
My apologies - conradev. My reason for posting was that people on this article
are interested in app distribution. I have no experience in the Mac App Store,
and was hoping to both learn something from the Mac discussion and piggyback
off of anyone else's AppStore experience. Je m'excuse.

