
The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich - checker659
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-28/the-mac-app-store-won-t-make-you-rich
======
kapeli
This is complete bullshit. My app (Dash) has been in the Top Grossing on the
USA Mac App Store at pretty much any rank.

There's a huge difference between climbing to the top and then instantly
failing and actually staying at the top.

A full day in Top Grossing on the Mac App Store gives you something like this:

Ranks #10 to #20: at least $2-4k per day. Ranks #30 to #80: around $800-1k per
day. Ranks #80 to #150: around $500-$800 per day.

All sums are after Apple's cut. They fluctuate a bit depending on the day of
the week.

I make more than the mentioned $454 per day at ranks of around #200.

My revenue report from last year can be found here:
[https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014](https://blog.kapeli.com/my-
year-in-review-2014).

~~~
s73v3r
Don't you think that you're probably a special case, rather than a typical
example?

~~~
outworlder
Oh yes, he is a special case alright.

See, some time ago (feels like ages now), I contacted him to see what would it
take to add Chicken Scheme to the list of docsets. His response was quick and
helpful.

My company got "bought" and I suddenly had zero free time to follow up. But
that boosted my respect for Dash considerably. A assume other people will have
similar experiences. I've recommended it to every single developer with Macs
that I've met.

Now that I got reminded of it, let's see what I can do about that docset...

------
ThomPete
I have been lucky and is doing fairly well with Ghostnote on the mac app
store. My product is also lucky to be the only one of it's kind as far as I am
aware, which means no competitor and plenty of room to grow it.

However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly
because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their
Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good innovation resulting in a
lot of apps fighting for the same space.

I was top 10 in paid apps for a while and top 5 in productivity apps. On iOS
it would normally be pretty good but that meant nothing for my mac sales as
such.

I realized that the mac app store is purely a distribution channel. It's my
product but it's their store and so I am now thinking about them as a Wall
Mart with no specific importance as such.

I found Google ranking to be much more important plus the ability to sell your
product a lot of other places.

And so this week we are going to start selling directly from the website with
a 14 day trial. We are using paddle.com for that an amazingly good service.

I am planning to do a writeup about all this as soon as I have some more
numbers.

Also as a side note. I would like to see Apple undergo the same scrutiny that
we treat our politicians with. When you say you create so and so many jobs you
really need to be talking actual jobs that people can live off for that to
have any meaning.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
> top 5 in productivity apps.

Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing,
especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs
you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those
people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for
their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows
version and a relationship with a VAR or two and enterprise friendly
pricing/terms?

I don't see how Apple can help you. You're selling running shoes to people in
wheelchairs. Find where the runners are.

~~~
simonh
>Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook
machines

People have been saying things like that about apple since forever, yet even
NextStep was able to maintain a viable community of full time software
developers and companies that exclusively published for the platform. Some of
them are still around. Just look at OmniGroup. Do you think they're likely to
be doing better nowaday, or worse?

The fact is the Mac has always done well as a third party software platform
because Mac owners have always been more willing to pay for high quality
software than PC owners. It's just that the OSX App Store has never really
taken off as a distribution channel for that software.

~~~
ThomPete
Exactly. Which is why google ranking is more important than Mac apps store
ranking.

------
mickanio
Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos...
you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who
cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically
very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich.

I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of
work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd like to see at
least SOME mention of that aspect of it.

~~~
melling
How about the problem discussed in the article?

"One Mac app developer made it up to No. 8 with just 59 downloads"

If you make it to number 8 with so few downloads, there probably isn't much of
a market.

~~~
geerlingguy
I've been hovering around the top 30 in the Graphics category with anywhere
between 1-5 sales/day of the $0.99 app Quick Resizer[1]. It's not that hard in
certain categories.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quick-
resizer/id498486288?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quick-
resizer/id498486288?mt=12)

------
danso
Anyone else reluctant to buy through the Mac App store because of the
perceived lack of uptake? For example, I've been a longtime owner of a
Transmit license...it's worked for years now. If I don't keep up with OS X
releases, I can still download past binaries and use the key (within a
limit...for example, Transmit 3 owners were required to upgrade to 4.x). But
what if the developer decides that it's not worth maintaining the binary on
Transmit? Do you get a license key for the App store purchase? From my
perception, once you buy into the App store, you're bound to its limited
upgrade routine. This has bitten me plenty of times on iOS, where the
developer doesn't feel like keeping up with iOS upgrades, leaving you with
broken apps with no ability to get them working again. I'm not talking about
fly-by-night developers, but AAA developers like Capcom.

~~~
dilap
nah, I figure it's not going anywhere, and a lot of the software I bought
using homegrown licensing schemes I ended up not using, since it's just too
much of a pain in the ass to try to hunt up the licenses and restore
everything on a new computer.

edit: i do wish apple would relax the sandbox strictness a bit and other
editor review criteria so it was a more attractive alternative to self-
publishing.

~~~
micro-ram
I think Apple just needs to review their policy and add another entitlement
"Entire Current User Folder ~/" to allow apps that traditionally cannot be
sandboxed. I am sure they want us to re-imagine a way for FTP apps to work,
but I don't want to change my workflow. I want to be able to browse any folder
on my Mac on the left pane. So I won't buy the Mac App Store version. I fully
agree with Panic and why they bailed out.

~~~
dilap
sounds v. reasonable to me. if you don't have devs like panic onboard, you've
got a problem, imo.

------
jakobegger
The article makes some fundamental mistakes:

1) It talks about an app that reached #8 in "Top Paid". The more interesting
list would be "Top Grossing"

2) It talks about a trivial app that was created with very little effort.
While gimmick apps might work on iOS, people prefer to buy actually useful
software on the Mac.

The title is still somewhat true: It's unlikely you will become very rich by
selling Mac Apps. But you can make a decent living; I currently make around
6000€/month (gross revenue) from two Mac Apps.

~~~
vijayr
One of your apps is to view Access DB on Macs. I'd have never guessed in a
million years that people are still using Access, and that it is possible to
build a business on top of it. Goes to show that all these rankings etc don't
matter as much as we are led to believe.

~~~
leesalminen
We do data migrations for our SaaS offering. Most of our competitors use
Access as the database.

When I go to migrate data it's very convenient to pull up an Access viewer on
OSX to get a feel for the data structure so I can inform the customer on what
will be migrated. Saves the minute it takes to boot up a Windows VM (and pay
monthly for Access 365).

------
saturdaysaint
As a user, I'm glad it's there as an easy updating mechanism for Apple apps
and a store for handy utility apps, but there's not much of a place for a
centralized app store on the desktop. Steam poaches the most lucrative
category and makers of prominent professional apps don't need any help with
digital distribution... what's left? I'd imagine that this hollowing out makes
it advantageous for software that _might_ benefit from an app store (say, a
$50 nichey app) to avoid it, conditioning/encouraging users to use Google and
letting them keep all of the profit.

I could hypothesize about ways for Apple to turn the ship around... but I
doubt they care. Apple's happy to have something conceptually coherent with
iOS - an Apple Store employee can show a college freshman to "just update apps
like on your iPhone". They decided long ago not to chase gaming. It's a pretty
updating app.

~~~
vitd
I couldn't agree less. The MacOS app store has made it so much easier for me
as a user. Apple might not be perfect, but to compare them to Steam? Just last
week I had a problem with a Steam app and getting it resolved was farcical.
Not to mention that literally every other time I launch Steam, it fails to see
the network (even though all my other network apps are working just fine), and
I have to quit and restart it. And when it does restart, just as I'm about to
click "Play" on a game, a huge honking ad pops up in front of it. And never
once has the ad been of any interest to me. Such a horrible user experience.

At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and
just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works.

Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible.
There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists
of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got
more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them
altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!

~~~
saturdaysaint
I wish games would move from Steam to the App Store, but it's not gonna
happen. Valve has way more skin in that game and Apple have repeatedly shown
that they're not going to compete over a medium dominated by expensive
exclusive hits - as we watch Sony and Microsoft fight eachother into
irrelevancy, this looks like a wiser and wiser strategy. They'll take their
iOS game monopoly, but that's it.

The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including
Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own
website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's
easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier
than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might
constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more
than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut),
it's probably worth investing a few hours in.

------
coldtea
This confuses getting to the top (which depending on the algorithm could just
need a small initial spark aroudn your app) with staying at the top.

Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several
millions per year.

As for the App Store, just like ANY OTHER marketplace, it won't make you rich
in itself, just for appearing there and "putting the work"...

~~~
chx
> Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to
> several millions per year.

The article claims the Mac App Store sales is measured in thousands for the
top apps. Care to point to your sources which claim three magnitudes more?

~~~
PirateDave
I can back up his claim. I work for a large entertainment company that has a
top 50 app, (in top grossing) and it consistently brings in hundreds of
thousands of dollars a week. When it was at its highest, around 15, it was
bringing in about 400-500k per week.

~~~
URSpider94
It's a Mac app, not an iOS app?

------
usaphp
"dash" app developer says he made $188k+ last year just from App Store alone:
[https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014](https://blog.kapeli.com/my-
year-in-review-2014)

~~~
b0sk
But it seems he also includes iOS App Store figures. The original article is
about Mac App Stores.

~~~
kapeli
The Mac App Store is my main revenue source. I released my iOS app in November
2014. The revenue from it wasn't worth mentioning separately in last year's
report.

This year, the revenue from iOS is around 10% of the Mac app.

------
a2tech
I think it's taking a long time for the Mac App Store to catch on-but I think
it'll get there. When I find an app I want to buy I've gotten in the habit of
checking the MAS to see if I can buy it there-I'd rather buy through the MAS
and let Apple handle my credit card details and tracking of purchased
software.

Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your
computer is a big change.

~~~
bdcravens
It's not just a matter of time and resistance to change. Two things that would
need to change because they break the expectations of how software has always
worked:

1) Upgrade pricing. At best you'll get convoluted instructions on how you can
obtain an upgraded version:
[http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html](http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html)
[https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/](https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/)

In many cases, you can't go back and forth (bought on website, bought v. 2 on
MAS), so you're expecting people to understand that it's a "different" version
- imagine if you had to explain that because you bought the Best Buy XBox One,
you can't play games purchased at Wal-Mart.

2) Sandboxing. If users are going to pay anything near full price for
something they expect full functionality.

Due to these headaches, publishers are abandoning the App Store:

[http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-
store/](http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/)

Personally I wish the MAS was a better solution for the reasons you described
(I have purchased a good amount of software there)

------
bluedino
On the other hand, the Mac App store isn't as cluttered, and Mac users are
much more willing to pay $19.99 or $29.99 for a Mac App. Who would pay $29.99
for an iPhone App?

~~~
ceejayoz
OmniFocus 2 is $39.99 on iPhone and very popular. Their suite is $149.99.

~~~
bdcravens
Does anyone purchase it for iPhone that hasn't made the investment elsewhere?

~~~
ceejayoz
That's a bit of a goalpost move, isn't it?

~~~
bdcravens
In what sense? The question is would anyone pay $20 for an iPhone app and I'd
say no, unless there's external value. (Though I did pay $49 or whatever back
in the day for the TomTom app when it was the first GPS app available on the
iPhone)

~~~
ceejayoz
The question was "Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?" I gave an example
of a popular one, as do you with TomTom. Disqualifying it because it's most
useful coupled with a desktop version is the goalpost move.

------
jawngee
I had a video editing app in the Mac App store since the MAS launched. It made
high five figures for the first two years and then trailed off, mostly due to
me neglecting it for more lucrative (and time consuming) consulting work.
Also, it was heavily based on the deprecated QuickTime API, so it had a
definite shelf life and upgrading it for each new iteration of OS X was
fraught with all sorts of woes. Not to mention being trapped in 32-bits due to
QuickTime being a 32-bit only framework (not QTKit).

But, in its hey day, it did really well. It even beat iMovie for a few weeks.
Though now I am sitting here almost five years later and I have no idea who my
customers are, beyond the handful that went out of their way to contact me.

I had some down time this past spring, so I rewrote the entire thing from the
ground up using AVFoundation. I haven't launched this new version yet because
I'm waiting to finish the iOS version to launch both within the same time
frame. However, I won't be putting the OS X version on the Mac App Store for a
few reasons:

\- I want to know who my customers are

\- I want to be able to contact my customers

\- Sandboxing restrictions are workable, but not a good customer experience
imho.

\- Lack of paid upgrades isn't viable for an app not everyone needs

\- MAS seems way neglected

So now I'm going to be going with Paddle
([http://paddle.com](http://paddle.com)) since it sort of replicates that
experience really well and the guys there are super responsive. Maybe I'll
change my mind down the road, but not likely.

~~~
fabiovirgi
Thanks a lot Jon; we can't wait to help you launch the app!

------
brudgers
_deliver their developers $10 billion in annual revenue... Apple, which
declined to comment for this story, said in January that annual revenue from
its mobile apps rose 50 percent last year and helped create 627,000 U.S.
jobs._

That distills down to about $15,000 per US job if the $10 billion doesn't go
anywhere else in the world and before business expenses such as the $99.00
developer fee.

------
outworlder
Go figure. The store limit app developers so much that a lot of otherwise
useful software is being sold outside it.

A high profile example of that is:
[https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-
mac...](https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac-app-
store/)

~~~
bdcravens
Ditto for Coda 2.5

------
aaronbrethorst
The bit I found most interesting about this whole Redacted app story, but
haven't seen mentioned anywhere, is that the app also happened to be at #1 on
Product Hunt for a good portion of that same day.

~~~
xienze
The thing I've found most interesting is this guy has found success by whining
about how little he's selling. This has to be the third or fourth separate
news source where I've seen this story run.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I think that's an unfair characterization of the situation. Sam hasn't
mentioned it since it happened. News outlets keep picking up the story because
it's about Apple (hot topic), app stores (hot topic), and what most people
would assume would be a source of obscene wealth (trending at the top of the
chart).

But, it's a man bites dog story! The outcome defies typical logic, and so news
websites keep running the story.

~~~
larrys
"News outlets keep picking up the story"

If a story is in syndication and "evergreen" in nature it could run on it's
own for quite some time. [1]

Doing a google search for this particular article it's clear what has happened
(although the results are mainly it appears around May 2015)

[1] I was featured in a story in the late 90's and could tell every time it
hit a new town newspaper because orders would predictably come in from the new
area. It all started with a story from the local paper and that was then
distributed (Knight Ridder iirc) for any paper anywhere in the US to pick up.
In this particular case it did translate into real dollars as well as many
years of repeat business.

------
navait
Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on,
that's a pretty good ROI for your time.

~~~
bdcravens
I seriously doubt you could design, develop, prep, submit app, and market for
30 hours and have anything that anyone would download for free, let alone pay
$5 for. The sheer volume of users doesn't obviate the fact that there's a
minimum level of quality for discoverability to kick in.

~~~
suby
30 hours is the amount of time the author of Redacted claims to have spent
developing the app.

~~~
bdcravens
That's just development. There's time spent on support, marketing, prepping
app store submission, responding to interview questions, etc.

------
s_dev
This explains why they merged iOS dev accounts and Mac accounts at WWDC. I
wonder if this will help - I've been an iOS dev for a while and have always
been curious to run some open source OS X apps like mpv on my Mac but was
restricted.

~~~
realityking
You could always run your own apps (and any random download) on OS X without
paying for a developer account. The only thing paying gets you, is access to
prerelease software and the Mac App Store.

------
droidist2
Neither will the stock market, Bloomberg.

------
paulhauggis
It's pretty clear that charging 99 cents for an app will not make you rich,
unless you are acquired by a larger company to absorb your user base.

Business owners should think of an app as an extra benefit to a paid service
or product rather than the product itself.

