

A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year - epaga
http://blog.jaredsinclair.com/post/93118460565/a-candid-look-at-unreads-first-year

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kylec
I'm sure that Unread is a great app, but the author seems a little blind to
the fact that being featured in the App Store and being written about by
prominent bloggers only serve to introduce the product to an audience, not
convince them to buy.

I just went to the App Store and looked at the screenshots for the app.
There's a surprising lack of functionality depicted in the screenshots.
There's nothing about how feeds are presented, or how individual items in a
feed are presented. Instead we get "full screen reading", "swipe anywhere to
go back", "multiple themes", "rich sharing via OvershareKit" (whatever that
is), and a testimonial from someone I've never heard of, who turns out to be
the author himself. Oh, and the screenshots themselves are shrunk down to make
room for the text annotation at the top. Nothing here makes me feel like I
know what I'll be getting for my $4.99:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unread-an-rss-
reader/id75414...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unread-an-rss-
reader/id754143884?ls=1&mt=8)

In contrast, my iPhone RSS reader of choice, Reeder 2, has screenshots that
show exactly what you'll see on various screens in the app. It's much less of
a risk to buy upfront when you know what you'll be getting:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder-2/id697846300?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder-2/id697846300?mt=8)

Of course, it's easy to armchair criticize, but as someone who is in the
target market for an app like this (I've bought and use several well-designed
iPhone RSS apps), I thought I'd explain why Unread never managed to convince
me it was worth buying.

~~~
Arnt
I find this comment fascinating.

Unread's greatness isn't like that of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word has a
thousand features, and they're all there to see on a screenshot. Tab dialogs
with thirty tabs, windows with dozens of buttons, and so on and so forth.

Which may or may not be good, but it definitely is neither small nor modest.
Microsoft Word is great, like Ghengis Khan's army was great, and affords
impressive, even overwhelming photos.

Not so Unread. Its qualities not not easy to photograph.

Perhaps minimalistic UIs that emphasize DWIM and comfort are unsaleable in an
App Store that gives prominence to screenshots.

~~~
freyr
Regardless of the screenshots, when I search for "RSS reader," it first shows
8 free apps with many (mostly) excellent ratings.

It's not at all obvious why I should pay $4.99 for an RSS reader when popular
free alternatives exist.

------
Brushfire
I really like this post, but I think the success (or lack thereof) is really
more about the competition than the product or the app market in general.
There are tons of RSS apps that are good, with great ratings, and are free.

~~~
qzervaas
Surely the fact that he's competing against a ton of excellent free apps is an
observation about the app market? (That is, how do you compete against free
apps that have different financial motivations)

Disclaimer: I also sell paid up-front apps in a crowded market with a bunch of
free alternatives, so I feel his pain.

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noname123
Really interesting read. Reminds me of also daytrading performance where the
allure of profits draw people in until they realize that even on the small
chance they make money, short term capital gains tax, brokerage commission and
slippage kills you on the order of 35-40%.

But I still think it's worth for the guy to have pursued his dream. Not
everyone makes it to major leagues, but it means a lot to the guys themselves
who made it to AA. You are a lot better than the working stiffs who are.just
sitting in the stands sir.

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fencepost
One thing I wasn't completely sure about reading this was whether there was a
service behind the app as well (other than the RSS feeds provided by multiple
sites not by the author). I'll just note that anything he says here is
undoubtedly even worse for apps that are buy-once but which have servers
behind the scenes.

I'm sure that's another reason for the recent uptick in in-app purchases
(beyond the profitability of in-game swag). I suspect that serving that market
is also what's going to really drive (eventual) uptake of the Dropbox
Datastore API assuming that data stored there is charged against the user's
account(s) instead of that of the developer. Anything that may let you offload
the costs of running a backend server - particularly onto a service that the
end-user already uses and perhaps already pays for - is going to have a huge
impact on your bottom line long-term.

~~~
oddevan
I think that's also the thinking behind Apple having CloudKit in iOS 8: as I
understand, it's a set amount of space/processing per user.

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nicoschuele
Although I agree with some things highlighted in this article, there's one
that I strongly disagree with: the niche you choose has everything to do with
success, however polished your app is.

If you want to be a profitable indie shop, don't make yet another todo-list,
note-taking or rss-reader app. These are "student" projects or hobbyists side-
projects. However polished your app is, you are not bringing any significant
value to your potential customers. There are tons of alternatives and many
free ones. Basically, you can code and manage a project, that's one side of
the coin but you are also showing that you are not really creative in terms of
building something new, that solves an existing issue and that people want to
pay for.

Also, I agree with people mentionning the bad screenshots. If I'm going to pay
$4.99 for an app, I want to feel it is a polished app and not a quick chinese
knock-off of a popular one (which the current screenshots heavily convey).

When a niche market is already full, more thinking could have gone into the
name. By not incorporating the word "RSS" in it, it is quite hard to do a
search or even get at first sight what the app is. "Unread RSS" would have
worked just fine.

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qzervaas
How big is the RSS reader market? If you could sell your app to every single
person who subscribes to RSS feeds that also uses an iPhone, how many sales is
that?

My hunch is it's not a huge market, comparatively speaking. I sell public
transit apps, which although has many more competitors, has, I'm guessing, way
more potential customers. I've had a healthy full-time income from these apps
for a few years now.

One thing that's in my favour though is you're unlikely to use multiple feed
readers, but many people have multiple public transit apps.

------
silverlake
>... developer[s] should seriously consider only building apps based on
sustainable revenue models.

You don't need an MBA to know this. His app is competing with some pretty good
free apps like Feedly. His screenshots don't sell the app. It's not really a
big market. In-app purchase allows a "try before you buy" model. Was there any
sustained marketing? Did he appeal to a niche? Maybe he would sell RSS
subscription packs for specific areas: lawyers, programmers, biotech,
investors, etc.

