
The two App Stores - danw
http://www.marco.org/208454730
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Poiesis
It's funny--they profile Ramp Champ and Skee Ball. Apparently these are two
games modeling the same real-world game, and Ramp Champ doesn't use the Skee-
Ball name or iconic game representation anywhere so it doesn't do as well.

At least for me, they're entirely correct. I must have seen that game in some
list or another (new releases, etc.) at least 20 times, and I until now
assumed it was a skateboarding game. Really hammers home how important the
icon and name are.

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pospischil
I can't seem to find the article "Losing iReligion" on the Iconfactory blog --
but if the implication is true -- that Iconfactory is claiming their lack of
success is a fault of the appstore -- thats a pretty ridiculous
implication...for exactly the reason you point out here (and is the focus of
the article).

What we think is good marketing (what the iconfactory has done), isn't just
good per-se. What makes it good is its effectiveness...and by that metric.
Ineffective marketing <> a bad AppStore.

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stepherm
I don't believe its on the Iconfactory blog, just the blog of one of their
developers. Here's a link: <http://gedblog.com/2009/09/28/losing-ireligion/>

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andrewljohnson
It always amazing to me to hear people fail in some business and then blame
the market, and this seems to come up a lot with regards to the App Store on
Hacker News. It's refreshing to see someone critique that sort of analysis.

There is always a new blog post talking about the mathematical impossibility
of making money on the app store, dependence on Apple for exposure, unfairness
of the App Store rules, etc. Some of these articles even have some
credibility. It's fair to say that it is difficult to make money on the App
Store (or any other market). It's fair to say you can get a boost from Apple.
And it's true that the App Store is not transparent.

But before you write that next screed about the App Store being an impossible-
to-win game with no real reward for success, remember that you don't
understand everything. As this article points out, it could simply be a market
misunderstanding, which will doom a product anywhere.

Before you complain that the game is fixed, remember a lot of normal people
make money on the App Store. Instapaper makes money, I make a living of the
App Store, as do two close friends of mine, and none of us has ever been
featured by Apple. We make good products, don't have VC capital or money to
market, and the sales rise over time. You can make money on any category (not
just games). I do well in Navigation, my buddy Ish does well in Social
Networking, and another buddy Dave does really well in utilities.

If you try and make a product for the App Store and it fails to sell, you have
no one to blame but yourself. The App Store is the absolute easiest way for an
indie developer to sell software on a mobile phone... heck, to SELL software
at all.

As a caveat, if you choose to play in the Games category, I suggest you be a
good game programmer with a good idea, and not some two-bit hack with a get
rich quick scheme. The competition is steepest in games. But, you can still
win.

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allenp
Towards the end of the article the author lists other developers in the
"appstore B" but I don't see that any of them have made any games. I think
this is more of a comparison of games vs other apps in the store (although
undoubtedly there is some crossover).

Really what this article is about is that a non-game developer went head-to-
head with a company that has made and marketed several successful iphone games
and came out "losing".

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Evgeny
It's not only "two app stores", it's actually applied to everything -
literature, art, movies etc, etc. There's always a "mainstream" which has more
mass-market appeal, and then there is something more deep and complex, but it
only is of interest to a smaller percentage of, well, "customers".

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jasongullickson
A well-written article that provides not only a description of the current
struggles of iPhone developers but points to some solutions as well.
Refreshing for those of us interested in making things better instead of just
complaining, thank you!

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AndrewWarner
Marco, did you do any marketing for instapaper? How did you promote it?

I'd love to see a follow up post to this about how to Market to App Store B.
Include everything from naming and screenshots to networking with bloggers to
buying ads.

~~~
unalone
Instapaper started as a web site, which as far as I know spread by word of
mouth. I was following him on Tumblr at the time, and spread his link right
away. Remember that Marco's the second employee at Tumblr, which has an
audience of nearly 2 million. Not all of them read what Marco's got to say,
but a lot of them do. To make a really hasty judgment: I run tumblelogs with
fairly high follower counts, and I know that like/reblog conversion is fairly
low; judging by how popular his posts get, I'd imagine he's got an audience of
a few thousand on Tumblr alone, and then all the people that read his blog via
RSS, which isn't as easy to track.

Instapaper had one of the easiest sign-up processes I'd ever seen (when I
designed notadouche.com, the goal was to one-up his sign-up), it was really
simplistic, and it was free. The iPhone application came a year after
Instapaper's site, so he already had a built-in audience. Then Instapaper
became one of the top apps on the iPhone, reputation-wise, it introduced tilt
scrolling to the design scene, and so Marco's become one of the "in" bloggers
that gets quoted by John Gruber and Andy Baio and their enormous crowds. At
some point he was picked up by Fusion Ads, but that was way later, after
they'd started their strategy of placing advertisements on iPhone apps.

Marco's written multiple times about how he refuses to "network" on his blog,
and how he refuses to promote what he writes in any way.
<http://www.marco.org/166210052>

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haseman
It was only a matter of time. The same thing happened on Verizon's 'Get It
Now' store.

