

IOS app success is a lottery: 60% (or more) of developers don't break even - jvc26
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even

======
jscottmiller
These numbers are useless. Things to keep in mind:

\- This research is provided by a company that sells an app marketing service.

\- No detail on methodology and how value was assessed. Are part time/garage
developers tallying their opportunity cost? Multiplying their hours spent by
an idealized consulting rate? What about free/low cost apps that leverage an
existing paid service? How does that fit in? What about long-term ad revenue?

\- Reported backing evidence is anecdotal.

------
fosk
Startup success is a lottery: 82% (or more) of entrepreneurs never succeed.
[1]

That said, I personally think that 40% is a high success rate compared to
other things in work and life, so I pretty much disagree with the op.

[1] [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/79/Six-Interesting-
Stat...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/79/Six-Interesting-Stats-About-
Startup-Success.aspx)

~~~
mattmanser
Out of interest have you actually read the paper?

 _Our analysis focuses on data covering investments from 1975 to 2000_

Not startups at all. In fact this paper is only about the success rate of VC
backed companies pre-incubators.

 _For the purposes of this analysis, we examine the founders (henceforth
referred to as “entrepreneurs”) that joined firms listed in the Venture Source
database during the period from 1986 to 2000._

VC backed companies are not the totality of entrepeneurs and any conclusions
about them is moot in terms of discussion of small bootstrapped ventures which
a lot of iOS developers will be, VC operate by a completely different strategy
than normal people do, they want the lottery hit.

------
tseabrooks
One of the numbers were:

"90% of apps don't generate enough revenue to support a standalone business."

While it might be true. I don't think it's very difficult for anyone coders on
HN to release 8 "meh" apps and make enough to sustain a modest lifestyle. The
"app" doesn't have to be the business... The business can be nurturing a
number of apps... both big and small.

------
jcoder
40% odds would be the best lottery ever.

~~~
cheald
That's 40% odds to break even, not to hit the jackpot.

~~~
dripton
Which is still way better than any lottery I've heard of.

~~~
tlrobinson
I'm not sure that's true. <http://users.stat.umn.edu/~geyer/lottery/>

_Summing up our conclusions, it's much better to play in a week with a big
jackpot than a small one (duh!) but even in a week with a near record jackpot
(second largest in history) the lottery is only almost but not quite a break
even proposition._

~~~
polshaw
Interesting, but this does not mean a 40% (or better) chance of break-even.

------
gyardley
iOS app success is pretty much guaranteed - if you're smart enough to take
your skills and start selling them at market rate to every Tom, Dick, and
Harry who wants to hit the iOS lottery.

In a gold rush, the guys who do the best are the ones selling picks.

~~~
evilduck
Selling your time and skills isn't selling pickaxes. That's just offering to
dig for gold at a cost above what you'll find when you dig.

~~~
incomethax
Exactly. In the app gold rush, the ones selling pickaxes are Apple and Google
with iOS and Android.

~~~
evilduck
Or writing books, holding seminars, training sessions, selling development
tools, etc.

RubyMotion is a great recent pickaxe example. Write for the App Store using
Ruby for only $150 now or $200 later! Buy Now!

------
juddlyon
> Much like music or book sales, there are a few huge winners, a bigger
> handful of minor successes, and a whole lot of failures."

Could read, "much like every industry in the history of mankind..."

------
nextstep
How many apps are developed by existing businesses that wish to extend their
service to the iOS platform? I'd bet this is a significant number. Dropbox,
Facebook, all of Google's apps, many newspapers and old media channels, online
travel services, and many others have an iOS app to supplement their existing
business. How many apps in the App Store are barely more than a nicer mobile
interface for an existing website?

How does this "study" account for these cases? If you release a free app, how
many additional conversions are required via the app to justify the
development costs?

------
wunki
We bought our lottery ticket last week. After releasing our app we got picked
up by some big blogs but when the buzz died down, we immediately saw a dip in
sales. We don't have a budget for marketing but we did notice that when your
app is of a sufficient quality and you tell passionately about it, reviewers
are willing to write about you.

It's a roller coaster ride, but nothing beats seeing people enjoy your
product.. America watch out, next week we will targeting you with our
marketing :)

Plug: www.invyapp.com

~~~
tstegart
If you're willing to share, did you get picked up by any blogs outside the
U.S.?

~~~
wunki
Yes, mostly outside of the US. We got picked up by majority of the Dutch blogs
(we are a dutch company) and some German blogs. We also found that when you
are on a blog, other blogs tend to read those and then they contact you.

We also tried connecting with _old_ media, but there was almost no spin off
from that.

~~~
tstegart
Was your contact with them in English or Dutch and German? I'm wondering
because we have a new iPad travel magazine and I'm going to try and start
spending a portion of my time pitching outside the U.S. Have you had any
success in Asia?

~~~
wunki
Dutch we contacted in Dutch, others in English. Not tried to contact anyone in
Asia yet, but I can recommend Brazil. Think that's also a good market.

------
joejohnson
To those who think 60% is low: how many apps of the 100,000+ in the App Store
were made by a small team of maybe 3 or fewer people? How much could their
development costs be? A few thousand? Certainly modest apps can be developed
for less than $100,000 (substantially less in most cases). I'd believe that
most (say, oh 60%) of these apps can attract a few thousand customers to pay
the $0.99 for their app.

------
bringking
My experience with the Windows Phone Marketplace seems to fit this pattern. A
little over a year ago I started teaching myself C#, so I starting creating
WP7 apps and releasing them.

As of today I have released 10 apps for the WP7 store (and two for Android),
making a total of seventeen 99 cent sales for the paid apps and about $2500 in
ad revenue for the ad supported apps. The total download numbers for all ten
apps is about 17,000 (1500 Android), with about 500k impressions for the last
7 months. At best, when the apps were most popular, I was making $35 a day in
ad revenue which has settled down to about $5.

However, I must note that the apps are not very good. As I was new to C#, each
app took less time than the last, but the first took about 3 months of my free
time. It was a cool way to learn to code while giving myself a tiny boost in
income. However, now that I know I can write crappy apps, I would like
contribute to something bigger/better and work with a team. It would be
monumentally helpful to have a designer to work with as that is the hardest
part for me.

------
phmagic
A lot of this has to do with the fact that app discovery on the iOS platform
is broken. Granted it's a lot better than Google Play (or whatever that market
is called now), but it's still skewed. Small indie developers without huge
marketing budgets or paid people in China to download their app stands little
chance of cracking the top 1000, or 100, where the financial goal of "break
even" is achieved.

~~~
matwood
I agree that if I'm looking for an app that finding it can be a pain right
now. But, are there really scores of amazing apps from small indie developers
that are languishing because they can't afford to pay people in China to get
them into the top 1000?

I feel like what you are describing are the faddish/scammy types of apps that
people attempt to make a quick buck on and not the great indie apps by a small
team. Great apps will be found and bubble to the top. Bad apps that are trying
to make a quick buck by just being popular are always going to be fighting an
uphill battle.

~~~
randomdata
I've been in the Top 1000. I've been as high as #1 in the Social Networking
category in certain countries (though just top 20 in the category in the USA).
My peak earnings were ~$1000 per year. About enough money to hire a developer
for a day ($120/hr was the going rate, especially at that time).

Despite my best efforts and what I thought seemed like decent rankings, I
ultimate had to chalk it up as a failed business. You could argue the quality
of my app was not there, but I definitely poured what I could into it with
entirely honest intentions.

Unless you have something really special, it's hard out there. The more niche
your product, the harder it becomes to get noticed amongst the cruft.

------
tluyben2
I think that's because 60%+ (it's definitely more imho) doesn't understand
marketing. I made a simple game, not very original to try out the Appstore. It
was downloaded 4 million times, raving reviews and it made $100k+ (and makes
thousands every month still) while it took me 2 weeks to make and 3 weeks to
market (in monetary terms in the Netherlands that would be; 5x5x8x100 = E20k ~
$26k; i'm a developer, so I underestimate, so $26k x π = $80k, still nice
profit) . I did do a LOT of marketing and most developers just upload it and
wait for it. Build it and they will come doesn't work in the Appstore.
Everyone in the top charts put a lot of time/effort/money into marketing; some
have more luck than others, but without marketing, you won't get anywhere.

Basically I would say if you develop something for the Appstore you need $50k
for developing something well built and $75-100k for marketing it. I got lucky
as I know the right press to market, but that's basically it. If you don't
have $150k to spend, don't expect anything then it will always turn out nice
:)

~~~
dirkdk
is <http://www.contactjam.com/> your web site? All the admin tools are kind of
fully open to the public. phpinfo() and stuff. running on Windows NT

~~~
tluyben2
Hi, no, it was last year, but not anymore. Thanks for the heads up, I'll mail
the owner.

------
pjmlp
Nothing surprising here.

\- 1149 € iMac

\- 100 € One year License

\- daily rate € x amount of days required to develop and release

Now how many customers have to buy the app at 1€ to break even?

Same thing on the Android side (just the PC is cheaper to get)

------
allenbrunson
This seems like as good a place as any to add my own experience. I wrote an
iOS card game:

<http://platinumball.net/hearts/>

It has made me about ten thousand bucks to date.

Certain things I did seem to have helped a lot. For example, I nearly killed
myself to make sure my app would be ready on iPad launch day. Being one of
only a few native iPad apps at the beginning really boosted my sales for
awhile.

Probably the worst thing I did wrong: It's not pretty enough. If there are any
designers reading that would like to collaborate on a prettier follow-up app,
my contact info is in my profile.

------
MBCook
How many small businesses don't get off the ground and end up closed shortly
after opening?

How much higher do you think that number would be if it only costs $100 to get
store space in the local strip mall instead of thousands?

------
fmkamchatka
What's the percentage of crappy apps on the AppStore?

I'm sure that there are less than 40% of really good apps. So if 40% of the
apps, including not-so-good ones break even, that's still a goldmine.

~~~
thedillio
That's an optimistic way of looking at it. I like that perspective. However
based on my experiences I feel the article is pretty accurate. I've had a
couple of base hits and several more strikeouts. Although lottery is probably
not the right term.

Keep in mind too that the top 40% of good and crappy apps looks more like the
long tail. Not all 40% achieve "gold mine" revenue

To the original point of OMGPOP being almost out of business - the fact that
they have other apps no one has heard of and one big success also supports the
article's stats closer than not.

------
peterkelly
I think the main reason for such a high failure rate is the ridiculous number
of "me too" apps. This is true of many categories, but especially games.

There's some _huge_ market gaps on iOS that are just sitting there waiting for
someone to come along and fill. For example, people are always complaining
about how the iPad isn't good for content creation. Why not create a product
that lets people do some of the stuff like this that they're still stuck to
their PC for, instead of making another puzzle game?

------
gavanwoolery
In other news, 95 percent of the apps in the app store suck.

------
ilamont
Infographic: _"52% had $0 set aside for marketing, despite 91% believing
marketing is necessary for success"_

Can people talk about their experience using paid marketing for their iOS
apps? So much depends on "top 25", "featured", and App Store search. How can
paid marketing really help bring about success?

~~~
nirvana
Yes. Complete waste of time.

Fostering relationships with bloggers might be useful. But the advertising
networks, so far, no success.

I'm not saying it can't work, it just didn't work for us.

The main reason is that ads (google or mobile) are priced for traditional
sales (e.g.: cars or whatever) products and apps are just way too inexpensive
to make it viable.

I would think that the massive amount of inventory ad networks have would
allow you to run $0.01 or cheaper clicks, which would be viable for apps---
but it seems they'd rather not have inventory than take less than $0.15 a
click.

~~~
ilamont
Thanks.

Besides cultivating relationships with bloggers, have you found any other form
of effective online marketing to boost app adoption? We've gotten some
newsletter signups and downloads off of our front page and blog page (I've
been creating a lot of topical content that relates to what our app does) but
the numbers aren't that big. Maybe two or three people clicking off to the
iTunes link on a typical day.

~~~
nirvana
If your app has a particular market of enthusiasts (e.g.: a pet grooming app,
for instance) you could seek out forums of those people and participate in
those forums (constructively) while having a link to your site in your
signature (if the forum allows it.)

I don't know if that's effective or not, its just an idea.

Making apps easier better to market is something we think about a lot and hope
that we'll eventually have a MUCH better answer to in the future.

------
andsmi2
I agree with other posters, 60% is a pretty good rate for businesses to
succeed. I develop some as a hobby developer and two of my apps - Toy Cash
Register -- and Kids Writing Pad have made over $6,000 each -- I develop
myself and sometimes outsource design (which could use a lot of improvement)
-- as for marketing, it's a waste of money. You need to find the right company
to provide the right marketing, and to be honest-- it doesn't exist. There are
companies to mass market, but you aren't going to win in the mass market -- it
took Rovio years to get a success like Angry Birds--and in the niche markets
there isn't enough experts--you need to make it your own way and not lose
money on people trying to market you. I wrote apps because I needed them-- and
it pays for my Apple device addiction.

------
nhangen
Apps, even those that make very little profit, are great until you factor in
customer service. I spend far more time than I'd like answering the same
questions over and over again, even though I post several of those answers in
the app description and on the website. Sure, I could do a better job of this,
but most of my customers don't take the time to read the FAQ and go straight
to the customer service email.

I can only imagine how many emails arrive for those with apps selling more
than a few hundred/day.

~~~
Estragon
Maybe you can improve the app's design so that those support questions don't
come up? It sounds like your customers are giving you a gift.

~~~
nhangen
Yes it's a gift, but this view is far too simplistic to be reality.

------
RandallBrown
High quality apps with high quality marketing will do just fine, just like
every other business.

You can still win the lottery though. Look at Draw Something. The company was
basically out of business, then the app hit it big, it went viral, and they
made millions.

The app store is great for managing app downloads and updates. It's even okay
for showing off popular apps. It should never be the ONLY way that anyone
tries to drive sales.

~~~
tluyben2
They had millions investments in that company and the almost broke seems to be
a 'nice story telling'; 'we were almost broke and then ...' appears often on
HN; seems people like this all-or-nothing attitude. To me, as a person who
wants to pay his employees and who does not want the trouble of being broke,
it means you are not watching, or you don't have a bottom line. What's great
about that? I don't understand that attitude of burning millions on the off
chance you'll make billions.

------
sparknlaunch12
We were thinking of hacking together a simple Android app for sale however
looking at huge marketing budgets how would you compete with the big boys?

Can you complete on features alone? Do you generate any decent revenue being
outside the top 10?

------
talmand
Seems to me the article is trying to portray the iOS app market in the same
way I've seen complaints of the Android app market; that users are cheap or
want free apps. Has anyone else claimed this because that's a first for me.

------
chaostheory
How did they come up with the numbers? I may have missed it but I don't see
their methodology. (Do they have someone on the inside at Apple?) Until I see
the methodology, this article is no better than making a random guess.

------
beedogs
when you're donating a third of your revenues to a megalomaniacal corporate
cult of personality, you kind of get what you deserve, don't you?

------
n9com
i'd say the number is closer to 90%, not 60%.

~~~
guywithabike
Based on what data?

------
richcollins
So 40% do break even. I'd guess that is better than web or other platforms.

~~~
patrickaljord
Read the article, it says close to 90% don't break even.

~~~
richcollins
_Though the survey's methodology is a bit on the light side, numerous
developers that we spoke to agree that the results—59 percent of apps don't
break even, and 80 percent of developers can't sustain a business on their
apps alone—are close to accurate._

So still better than the conventional wisdom that "90-95% of business fail".

------
SeoxyS
Do they source their claims on anything other than conjecture?

------
egypturnash
I just gotta say, I think 40% success rate is PRETTY GOOD.

------
grandalf
How does this compare with other entrepreneurial pursuits?

------
nirvana
This article is silly. The idea that you can't make any money from an App if
you aren't in the top of the charts is false.

One of my apps has only occasionally and then briefly, broken the top 200 in
the US in its CATEGORY. (So nowhere near top 200 overall) and it still
reliably pays out every single month. Further over its lifetime-- about 2
years at this point, the amount it pays every month has gone up, not down. The
experiments we've done show that several things we could do would make it pay
even more.

For instance, if we'd done a single bit of marketing that might have helped.
The closest thing to "marketing" we do is to give promo codes to anyone who
asks for one because they want to review the app. (nobody in the USA has yet
reviewed the app.)

The idea that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop an app is
also kinda silly. A team of two developed our app over the course of a month.
In the intervening 2 years, another month or two has been put into the app. At
this point, the app has gone well more than a year without an update and it is
still earning the same income- in fact, its income has gone up in the past
several months.

There are somethings that you should do to have success though:

1\. Have a good UI. The team of 2 was an engineer and a designer and we spent
a lot of time on the design.

2\. Make the app good. The star rating is a factor in the app doing well.

3\. Make the app useful. Have something unique about it... but this doesn't
have to be super unique. (our unique value is quite terrible. Paul Graham
would throw me out of his office or a YC interview if I pitched him on it...
its barely a differentiator, but its enough.)

4\. Learn from your app and then do another one. Over time you can build a
nice stable of apps and a nice income.

5\. Update your app regularly. You experience a sales dip when the app is
first updated, but after there are sufficient ratings on the new version the
update seems to boost your sales. (or at least ours have, though we stopped
updating it to focus on other things.)

6\. Make your app sticky. About %80 of the people who buy our app never use
it, and that's unfortunate. But the %20 who do, do for a long time and use it
quite a bit. I think not every app is for everyone. But if your app is going
to be useless after awhile, there's not much point (remember the vevuzula?
lots of apps came out to make that sound. wonder how they're selling now?)

Hits come and go, and the big money may go to the hits. But viewing an App as
a dividend that pays out every month, in my experience the returns are quite
well worth it.

Some more points

\-- Don't spend $100,000 on an app. Or even $10,000. IF you count our cost of
living, our app cost us $3,400. We did spend a couple hundred on an outside
designer that didn't work out, and about $500 on the app down the road after
it was already making good money each month. That $3,400 we "spent" on it-- we
get more than half of that back _each month_.

\-- If you're a big business expecting to gross $1M a year from an app, then
maybe it is a lottery. I dunno.

\-- A high price is not a problem. We sold our app for $3 the first year, then
$5 the second. No real change in income. We experiment with pricing a bit. You
get a lot more downloads at $0.99. And you can have a big boost to your app by
running a sale... but that also affects the amount of "juice" apple gives you.

\-- Since we're not in the charts, our sales come because Apple is
recommending our app to people. Think about that. The store does work, even if
you'd never see us in the store by just browsing.

\-- I think the idea of focusing on a few apps is a very good one. don't just
throw crap out there and see if it sticks. That's the biggest problem with the
store-- too much crap. But Apple is getting algorithmically better at figuring
out whats crap and what isn't. Make your app good. Doesn't have to have all
the features you could possibly want in the first version, an MVP is fine, but
make it polished.

I think that the app store is a huge opportunity for people who would like to
work for themselves but aren't in a position to raise funding to do a startup.

I think its a lot easier to get a good app discovered than an obscure website.

~~~
socratic
If I'm reading you correctly, you definitely made money on the App Store. But
it sounds like you are still tens of thousands of dollars underwater in
opportunity cost. Is it wrong to think about it that way?

You get "more than half" $3400/month, let's call that $1700/month over the
last two years, for $40,800. The two of you spent two man-months developing
the app originally, and maybe a month or two since then. Let's call that 3.5
man-months. In some sense, your only cost was about $4,100 (cost of living +
failed designer + $500). However, you could also have just worked for someone
else. Two years ago (when you developed the app), it looks like iOS
development was getting billed at about $150/hr (in Austin, SF, and elsewhere,
though one guy in Ann Arbor quoted $75/hr) [1]. 3.5 work months is about 595
work hours which is about $89,250. (Put another way, if your contracting
hourly rate would have been $70/hour, you would have just broken even now.) If
that math is correct (and I've made all sorts of assumptions), you would have
done financially better to work for someone else (especially someone at the
top of the charts), no? In a sense, did you "spend $100,000 on an app" in
opportunity cost? How long do you estimate your app will continue paying out a
"dividend"?

It sounds like you are saying: apps don't make that much money, so don't spend
lots of money developing them. But apps seem to take at least a few months to
develop, so it seems inevitable that apps will cost a lot of money if the
developer/designer time is market price. (A <$10,000 app in 3.5 months would
be an hourly rate of <$17/hr, for example.) Is that true, and if so, do you
think aspects of that will change over time?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1251155>

~~~
mwd_
You can't just sit down and start coding for your $150 or even $70/hr though.
Here are some factors I can think of that change the calculation
substantially:

\- You have to take time and put in effort to find good contracts. Not all
work is billable.

\- You will probably want to be able to show clients an app you've already
created. If you can make that app a $40k earner then you are in great shape.

\- You will most likely have to be willing to put up with less fun and less
flexible work for clients.

I think the $40k from 3.5 months of work is amazing and would be a no-brainer
for a huge number of people. The big downside is the level of risk involved
and the difficulty in duplicating that level of success.

------
zupreme
That does not make it a lottery. It makes it a business.

The business of making and selling apps is not very different than the
business of making and selling shoes, clothes, radios, or hardly anything else
you can name. Standard business practices apply.

If you make one app and throw it into the marketplace hoping to get rich, then
yes you are treating your business like a lottery and your business will
probably fail. If, however, you understand that 9 out of 10 apps lose money,
you should either make sure that you have done your homework on the niche you
are targeting so that you can ensure your app is as good or better than
everything else in that niche, or you'd better market the heck out of your app
via every medium you can afford to do so on.

Alternatively you could do what early-stage Venture Capitalists do and spread
your risk with the knowledge that most of your investments will never turn a
profit, but with the hope that one or more of them will be so successful that
they more than make up for the failures.

Again, the app economy is not a lottery. It's a business.

~~~
dpcan
Well put.

The App Store is a lottery, but only if you treat it like one.

It's a lottery if you just throw an un-polished app into the mess and hope
Apple picks it out of the bunch like a BINGO ball for their "Featured"
categories.

That's how a lot of people go about it. Submit and hope. Submit and hope.
Submit and hope.

Regular updates, improvements, gorilla marketing, polish, press, promotion,
etc, are all required to make your app a success, especially if you are a
small business that doesn't have a huge marketing budget.

I went through this with my Android games whose free versions have been
downloaded millions of times now, and I'm doing it all over again with my 2D
platform game Scorched Monster on iPhone.

Sometimes you have to get down and dirty to make it work. Day in and day out
I'm marketing in some way, by tweeting, submitting the app for reviews, making
videos, posting in forums, doing blog interviews, whatever I can think of...
I'm working for it, and I plan to make it a success.

It's just business.

~~~
egypturnash
Polite correction: Guerilla marketing. n.n

------
wilfra
Using the term lottery and pointing out that 60%+ don't break even makes a
very inaccurate assumption: that all of those apps are equal in quality of
production and marketing. They aren't.

High quality apps which are combined with a high quality marketing and PR push
have a far greater chance of success than the 912th Angry Birds ripoff that
was built in two hours.

See Instagram for an app this author probably thinks hit the app store
lottery. In some respects they did get lucky, however all of the work that
went into releasing and publicizing the app gave them the potential to have
the kind of luck most apps could never have, because millions of people would
not download those apps, use them daily, give them 5-stars and rave to their
friends about them even if their app were the top result for every search,
chart and list in the app store.

tl;dr: the better your app is and the harder you work to market it, the
'luckier' you will get.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Good comment, except the xenophobic racism.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Sorry, but did the article get edited to remove the racism? I'm embarrassed to
admit that I can't find anything even potentially racist here.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Yes it did, the "crappy app" was original attributed to a "17-year-old
Pakistani" I believe.

~~~
paulhauggis
I didn't realize "Pakistani" was a race.

------
hej
That’s impressive, actually.

Whether or not you succeed in lotteries is out of your control. There is a
certain probability your lottery ticket will win and there is nothing you can
do to change that probability. Your success in winning the lottery is
independent from you as a person.

That’s likely not the case with apps. I’m sure there are some factors that are
out of your control (some would call it luck), but others are most certainly
not. Put another way: Those 40 percent of apps that at least break even
probably are more likely to have certain properties that make them successful
and that the 60 percent lack.

The success of your apps is dependent on you as a developer. Certainly not
completely, but much more than your success in winning the lottery.

Given that the barrier to entry in the App Store is incredibly low, given that
making apps is so hip, I’m actually surprised by that 40–60 split. Those 40
percent (more realistically you want to aim a bit higher, breaking even isn’t
exactly sexy) are a big juicy target, and unlike with lottery tickets you can
actually aim for it.

(By the way, this headline is perfect for many absurd re-writes to illustrate
my point: “Success in school is a lottery: 50 percent or more of students only
get Cs or worse.)

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no-espam
That seems to be pretty good odds. What percentage of startups actually
succeed? I'm in the wrong app business.

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batista
This is wrong in two levels:

"Success is a lottery" means that all apps are of the same quality, polish,
usefulness or wow factor, etc, and only chance determines the success.

What they probably meant to say is that success is RARE (something different
than "lottery"), and occasionally unpredictable -- but is not "chance", as to
be a lottery. Even the unpredictable hits have explanations (e.g. users liked
their concept --even if was just fart noises--, they got a good review, etc),
while lottery is pure chance.

"Success on the app store is like a poker game" would be far more correct.

Also: in actual lotteries, FAR MORE than 60% of participants don't break even.
That's how lotteries make money.

~~~
thedillio
I agree. Lottery is probably the wrong term.

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iamgilesbowkett
"52% set aside $0 for marketing despite 91% believing that marketing is
necessary for success."

pardon if I'm grumpy, but doesn't this imply that 50% of the devs contacted in
the survey were not serious about being in business in the first place? if the
main lesson here is "hobbyists are mostly not making money with their
hobbies," it's not really such big news.

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stevejabs
If you consider making $1 a success, that is amazing odds. Try releasing a
software product for any other OS and I'm sure that climbs to around 90% if
not more.

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b0sk
If you have the actual numbers, it would probably obey the Pareto
distribution. Essentially few rockstar developers make big money and most of
them don't succeed.

\Didn't read the article.

