

The Incredible App Store Hype - aminuit
http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the-incredible-app-store-hype/

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pz
Good article and its nice to see people acknowledging the hype around the app
store. I have been doing iphone development almost exclusively since november.
This includes writing 3 of my own apps and contracting on two others.

I was encouraged by the success of my first app to write others. I spent a
month or two working on my next app and it barely made a dent. I think I've
finally made the money back i paid the graphic designer.

Another app I made in two days pulled in a couple thousand bucks over the
course of a couple weeks. Go figure.

I think the take home point is that its really hit or miss and that success
doesn't correlate with quality. I would be reluctant to recommend working on
iphone apps full time to anyone unless you're prolific enough to overcome the
poor odds of success.

I think a lot of this has to do with the way the app store is set up. The
author hit the nail on the head pointing out the importance of being on the
top 100 lists. Really, if you aren't on there you are invisible to buyers.

OTOH, selling iphone apps is a lot easier than selling desktop software. And
its pretty fun. I definitely recommend it as a hobby and if/when i decide to
get a 'real job' I'll probably keep making apps.

~~~
dejb
> The author hit the nail on the head pointing out the importance of being on
> the top 100 lists. Really, if you aren't on there you are invisible to
> buyers.

This makes me wonder if there are a lot of developers who would try to pay for
XX of their network of friends to buy the software just to try to get it on
the charts.

~~~
pz
i heard a talk by one of the guys from AdMob and based on their data he
claimed you could buy your way to the top paid list with $10k in ads. this is
based on their hypothesis about how the ranking works (greg yardley from pinch
media hypothesized a 7 day rolling average)

its an interesting gamble. next time i have $10k to spare i might see if i can
test it

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stromdotcom
Thanks for crashing my server, guys :)

Now that I've made an account here I do want to clarify that clearly there is
an exponential curve upward from the chart positions I am at currently
(although, probably not so dramatic in the social networking category).
Clearly once you reach the top 10 you are looking at a couple hundred
downloads a day, and the overall top 10 is said to start at 10,000 downloads a
day.

So yes, you CAN make a good deal of money off of an app. My point is, 99.9% of
app developers aren't.

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vlad
People have been trashing iPhone's dev program since Apple first announced it;
however, those who are making money in the store were ones who ignored hype
around Android and made apps for a phone that existed, and reaped rewards when
iPhone OS 2.0 launched. And so on.

Claiming the app store is not a guaranteed gold mine long after its become
obvious to everyone that it's quite saturated is not very useful.

Yes, avoiding hype is important (dropping Android and making iPhone apps.) But
it's more important to replace it with another form of "doing", not just
dismiss the art of software development. If not developing on the iPhone, then
what? An article with an answer would be more enlightening.

 _As software entrepreneurs, we fail to do this time and time again. We
measure the market by its huge successes... After years of playing the web
game, I still can’t believe people think like this._

You created 20 apps on the iPhone. That means you kept pumping them out, all
to make $20/day from your best selling game? And you say others should realize
it's a crap shoot? Sounds like you made it a crap shoot. It also sounds like
you're the one who "thinks like that", and not most others (I imagine very few
developers have 20 active apps total, let alone on a single platform.) What
you are criticizing others for mainly applies to you and rarely to any other
developer.

~~~
dustice
I think the point of the article is that it isn't "obvious to everyone that
it's quite saturated" (at least not for me). We are bombarded with iPhone
success stories, and he's just pointing out it's not all rainbows and roses on
the iPhone side of the field.

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markerdmann
It's amazing how well this strategy of hyping the extreme cases has worked for
Apple in terms of getting a ton of people to develop for the iPhone. A number
of my coworkers have been busily writing iPhone apps in their spare time, and
they keep at it no matter how many times I point out that the market is
oversaturated.

~~~
pj
This is how many markets are created. It's why so many school age kids play
sports, they want to be famous and rich like the extreme case of the pro-
athlete.

It is why 37Signals writes about that guy with the cars for $1000.

It's why lotteries sell so many tickets. It's why there are so many actors and
actresses in Hollywood -- most of whom wait tables and valet park cars to make
ends meet. They can't do it acting...

it's why people who write blog posts about SEO can get so many viewers.

It's the lie of easy. Apple knows full well that most developers don't make
money building apps. Everyone knows full well that the average school student
would be better off ditching sports to study for their SAT's and ACT's.
Everyone knows buying lottery tickets is a waste of money.

But yet, rural towns all over the united states spend more on football
stadiums than they spend on text books...

Point is, it's a problem much bigger than the app store... what is the root of
the problem and how do we solve it?

~~~
stromdotcom
Education. In each of those cases, the "buyer" doesn't understand the rules of
the game, and misjudges his odds of payoff, and what that payoff might be.

In my opinion, when it comes to the app store, the root of the problem is that
people are grossly overestimating the number of dollars that are up for grabs,
and because people are ashamed to admit their app isn't selling well, and
because Apple only publishes vague numbers, no one has a really good way of
determining how much money IS out there. That's why I've been talking about my
numbers as much as possible, and I hope others will as well.

~~~
pj
So they are selling hope to the ignorant... It seems kind of wrong to do that.
Well, it doesn't feel good to think about anyway, maybe it isn't wrong.

I suppose it is like those infomercials at night selling real estate mogul
programs...

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illumen
Is it true that Apple has made more money from developer signups (600,000
developers I heard) than from sales from the app store?

There's money in shovels and picks...

~~~
atarashi
The 600,000 figure is probably just the number of times the SDK was downloaded
(if the figure is at all legitimate; someone could have just made it up).

Boucher says it a lot better: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607884>

~~~
vlad
600K is probably the number of developer accounts, including free and paid.
Your metric is not useful because each beta release comes with a new SDK.

~~~
atarashi
Yeah, I agree with you. My metric was erroneous, and I noticed too late to
edit the comment. Thanks for calling me on it.

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dangrover
I develop and sell my own Mac and iPhone apps and have built up a business
over the past few years, and I've recently gone full-time on it.

I'll mention this to someone at a party and they take instant interest in the
iPhone part. While the investment of time I've put into iPhone apps has been a
very profitable one, it's not quite what you'd expect.

Indie development virgins that I know seem to think that the app store is the
ONLY feasible way to launch something you've developed on your own. And lots
of people I've met who are web developers just want an iPhone app that
launches their website or something because they think it'll magically make
their website popular.

The reality is if you publish something on _ANY_ platform and get it in front
of people and put a price on it, you'll make money. It's just that it's
intimidating for people who have never published anything on their own.

The App Store is certainly has some nice upsides. But the cool thing (and
overwhelming thing for newbies) about publishing on normal platforms is that
there are a LOT of variables you can control in how people actually find and
buy your software. This lets you reach people who might not find you if there
were only one big software directory.

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TomOfTTB
The original article. I'll delete this comment once the author's web server
catches up...

[The site seems to be back up]

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pieter
I do want to add a few points to his data:

1) The average "Social Networking" price of the top 50 in the UK store is (in
US tiers) $2.72, not $0.99. Similarly, the median is $1.99. Only 22 / 50 apps
are priced $0.99.

2) The #1 "Social Networking" app has position #34 in the overall top 50 list.
Clearly, social networking has a lot less market share than Entertainment or
Games.

3) You shouldn't look at just the US store. Rankings can differ a lot between
countries. Your app might be #34 in the US, but might not even be in the top
100 in other countries

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wysiwtf
"If the apps on the category charts are doing those sorts of numbers, what do
you think the rest of them are doing?"

What if Board Games and Social Networking aren't popular categories? Just
because an app makes it on the chart of an un-popular sub-category of games
(board games) doesn't mean the apps charting in more popular categories are
doing equally as bad.

~~~
pz
the more popular categories are even more competitive and thus harder to rank
on. i had an app that just fell off the top 100 entertainment category and i
was still getting 60+ downloads a day. it'll be interested to see how many
sales i get now that its not listed.

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spaghetti
The fact that this article was written at all is just more proof that the
iPhone app store is totally successful. Just ask yourself: Where are all the
"The Incredible Android App Store Hype" articles?

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credo
stromdotcode makes a very good point and the numbers make a good case for
him.Others have also made the same point with equally convincing data.

Of course, it is a lot more interesting for people to read about the so-called
"gold rush" and so the media hype around the app store isn't going to go down.
The number of developers (as well as the so-called "idea" guys) who think that
their little project will make it big isn't going to go down.

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TweedHeads
The incredible FUD post.

~~~
jrockway
You're right, it _is_ easy to get rich writing iPhone apps. That guy is trying
to keep his $20/day gravy train all to himself. What a bastard!

~~~
potatolicious
I wouldn't mind having a $20/day gravy train... That basically takes care of
food.

It's also $7300 a year. I can think of an awful lot of good uses for that kind
of money, can't you?

If putting it hard work for a weekend or two gives me a perpetual (or at least
in the medium-term) $20/day gravy train, I'm down for it.

~~~
dejb
It wouldn't be too bad if it was likely to last for a year or more but without
upgrades the sales are likely to fall. By the sounds of it once you are out of
the top 100 they fall quite a lot. Remember also that the guy has nearly 20
apps in the store and this is likely to be his best seller so he's probably
put in more than a weekend or 2.

