
Some Brutally Honest iPhone App Sales Numbers: $32k Spent vs $535 Revenue - twampss
http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/
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tvon
The note at the end about the lack of advertising, the lack of a free "lite"
version and the $4.99 price point are, IMO, the red flags (aside from the
whole "not everyone is going to get rich off of the app store" thing).
Honestly, the advertising could probably be skimped on if there was a free
version and a lower price point. I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent,
but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional.

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Zev
What makes that extra $3 more important then the initial $2? Its still less
then how much you spend on a coffee or a lunch during a single
morning/afternoon.

//edit: Real question here. Especially since I'm (and I'm assuming others are)
looking at doing iPhone dev at some point in the future.

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whughes
There isn't much of a reason. It's a purely psychological barrier, but it
exists, and you have to account for it. Prices are getting lower and lower for
mobile apps, and that's just what the market accepts now.

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antidaily
And if your app is $5 and it's not selling, it's time to rethink things.

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gojomo
So, it's not a first-month slam-dunk instant-payback project.

What if a trickle of further reviews, word-of-mouth, and incremental low-cost
marketing (minor updates, free 'lite' version, half-off promos, light SEO)
results in ~$500/month revenue for many months or years with very little cost
in time?

What if some of the code or lessons learned mean the next similar app only
takes $10K investment to make, and makes more than $500/month from the get-go?

The only problem here -- if any -- is sky-high expectations for the first step
up to the plate.

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JabavuAdams
Yup. What I'm seeing again and again is that developers under-estimate what
consumers are willing to pay for (i.e. devs do too much, too soon).

My first app did about 340 sales in the first month, for a development cost of
$0 + 6 hours of time. I haven't had a day of 0 sales yet, and I'm not nearly
played out in terms of updates and improvements.

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tlrobinson
The (easiest) path to riches on the App Store seems to be lots of quick little
apps that may or may not be hits, rather than spending 6 months and $32k on
one app and assuming it will be a success.

Unfortunately this leads to a lot of crappy applications.

Ironically (?) this guy will probably have a huge spike in sales of the app
due the attention he's receiving (and people feeling sorry for him)

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barrkel
Yeah, a whole 4x ( [http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-
slashdot-...](http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-
effect/) ), up to 17 from 4!

I would have bought it myself if it was <2USD, considered it for <3USD. At
5USD, I would need to be in some kind of pain of boredom to consider buying
it.

~~~
tlrobinson
True. I suspect if he temporarily lowered the price to $2-3 while he was
getting all this attention he could have gotten a _lot_ more sales. I have
very similar price thresholds to yours.

He missed out, and perhaps that says something about why his product isn't
doing too well.

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wmf
Flagged for blogspam (the original link is
[http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-
numbers-p...](http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-
aka-brutal-honesty/) and I don't see much value added by the Mobile Orchard
post), yet it has 11 points. Something is not working here.

~~~
petercooper
I'm an editor at Mobile Orchard. I didn't post this here or encourage anyone
else to post it. It is not spam (come on, the #53 ranked user submitted it!).
Get your facts straight before _slandering_ others in future.

Mobile Orchard's value is that it provides iPhone developers with summaries of
the latest news relevant to them _as well_ as editorial content. This post is
a summary. It still has value to _our_ audience (2000+ iPhone developers).

And, clearly our headline _was_ of value.. except it's now being used without
credit to link directly to the poorly titled original. Ethics? What were they
again?

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Lerc
I once made an argument for a standardised disclosure of platform performance.
My argument was targeted at game portals such as RealArcade, Big fish and the
like. The same thing would apply for iPhone app sales.

The publisher (in this case apple) should state the median (and possibly
percentile points for 75% and 25%) return for developers on the platform.

People didn't think much of the idea when I proposed it for portals, but I
still think it's a fair thing to ask. It lets you know how much you can expect
to make if you do better than average. If the numbers are good then publishers
should be proud to state those numbers. Refusing to disclose such information
in the face of requests should be seen as a warning sign to all developers.

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swombat
Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of
price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get
some very interesting data.

$5 isn't much for an app, but you have to remember that this is a _game_ \- a
very special kind of app that's not actually useful. It's perfectly possible
that your sales will increase enough by decreasing the price so that you'll
find yourself profitable. Of course, there's no guarantee of that.

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JabavuAdams
> Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of
> price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get
> some very interesting data.

Yes.

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yesimahuman
You can't justify $4.99 unless you are touchgrind or you have a really awesome
game. No one is going to know your game is the shit unless they can try it,
and $4.99 is past the compulsive threshold.

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petercooper
By the way, thanks to whichever moderator thought it was cool to steal our
headline but change the link. Finally, a headline of mine that wasn't changed
because it sucked, just the URL ;)

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Oxryly
So he's on the the low end of the long tail. Where the vast majority of iPhone
apps dwell....

