7 ms·

Are we in violent agreement? The cost of sales is part of the cost of distribution. Part of why the App store lowers prices is reducing the cost of spitting bit

• hga 17y ago
  Cordial agreement, more like it. Joel was talking almost entirely about the sales effort, not so much about marketing (although you need a much more expensive marketing effort if you're playing the big sales force/big ticket sales game at the upper end, if only to establish your company and/or brand). And I really wonder about lowering the cost of marketing. I don't know at all how this Apple App ecosystem works, but it seems to me that rising above the crowd and noise of 100,000? 1 million (if not now, soon enough) apps means you need serious marketing of some sort, or a stroke of luck where your app goes viral without much connected effort on your side. The generally greater interconnectedness of today probably has a lot more to do with lowering the cost of marketing than anything having to do with the App store ... although that'll e.g. depend on its search function and how and if people use it. I note that Amazon gets by with what is by far the worst search engine of any site I've used in years.