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Apple cuts App Store affiliate commission from 7% to 2.5%

293 points by petergatsby 9y ago

bastawhiz 9y ago
> If Apple drastically cuts this revenue stream, the company could end up alienating people writing for those sites. Isn't this, in some ways, good for the consumer? While some legitimate review sites may be impacted, this would imaginably help cut down on the number of illegitimate spammy review sites that are pushing ad-ridden and malware-ish apps.
- mesozoic 9y ago
  The spammy review sites will always be more profitable than the ones that actually put in the work to do reviews. If they drive down profit the useful sites will be the first to die sadly :(
  - Tanegashima 9y ago
    > profitable Not really, one thing is revenue, another thing is profit. Those spammy sites pay a lot of money to appear on those clickbait tables that appear at the end of articles. And without guarantee that the user (victim) buys anything.
- downandout 9y ago
  Nope. It will just cut down on the number independent apps being written about. In their place, spammy apps that are paying affiliate networks - whose creators can only afford to pay large per-install commissions though aggressive revenue techniques (malware etc) - will be reviewed and pushed. This cut will make things infinitely worse. The only apps you will see being talked about on thousands of blogs/social media/review sites/etc. will be "ad-ridden and malware-ish".
  - shostack 9y ago
    It may do so in the big picture, but number of reviews != number of quality reviews. I'd much rather read reviews from people not incentivized to write them, and I'd rather not have to wade through all of the organic results from those that are affiliates to find the ones that are not. Spammy review sites are also Google's problem, and they do a lot to keep them out of rankings. This won't hurt forums though where people candidly share their feedback on apps. I'm not clear how people using CPI installs through shady tactics like malware will suddenly rise to prominence. I can't see an honest reviewer who is reviewing for the sake of it (vs. the paltry affiliate commission) saying "yes, I should review this scummy app that forced its way onto my device." Instead, I think we'll see the rise of reviews from sites that monetize in other ways such as traditional display advertising, email sponsorships, other products, subscriptions, etc. Forums and social will also hopefully have less spam as it becomes less financially viable for the spammers in question.
johansch 9y ago
It does fit the pattern. When in lack of product innovation, milk the existing reveneue stream harder.
protomyth 9y ago
Starting on May 1st 2017, commissions for all app and in-app content will be reduced from 7% to 2.5% globally. All other content types (music, movies, books, and TV) will remain at the current 7% commission rate in all markets. So, the sites promoting Hollywood get to keep the 7%, but the sites promoting Apple's developers get tanked?
- jedberg 9y ago
  That's an interesting way to read it. To me it says more along the lines of: we know that media gets a lot of marketing through word of mouth, which affiliate links promote, but for apps, they usually spread though being useful, so we don't think we'll loose a lot of money but cutting off the "word of mouth" marketing channel for apps.
  - downandout 9y ago
    Apps don't spread from being useful. Being useful might be a baseline requirement for them to spread, but massive marketing budgets, social media spamming, and shady deals with handset makers (if you can get them) are what cause most apps to truly be hits today. Long gone are the days when an independent developer writes a little app and, and much to his or her surprise, it goes viral and they make six or seven figures quickly. There are many reasons for this - fierce competition, terrible app store discovery models, etc. The commission cut will only make the problem worse, by lowering the incentives to write about little-known but good apps. Instead, the only apps that get written about will be those where the app creator has a big budget and puts pay-per-install offers on affiliate networks. The competition and steep commissions on these netowrks is such that a typical install will cost a publisher $2-$4, making it unprofitable except possibly in the very long term, and even then only if the app has an extremely aggressive revenue model.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Hollywood has an advertising budget which cannot be matched by any app developer save the game studios and Apple itself. How many app developers have anything but "word of mouth"?
- 9y ago
caiob 9y ago
Affiliate commissions generate a lot of fake reviews. I think this is a good move by Apple; although I believe they should simply shut down the entire program.
- Operyl 9y ago
  Ok, I've sat and thought about it for a bit but have yet to figure it out. How would this cause fake reviews in the specific case of the App Store?
  - porpoisemonkey 9y ago
    Write a fake or cookie cutter review about popular app X, link to app X in your article and then collect commissions on people who buy it through the link.
    - Operyl 9y ago
      Ah I see. I was considering reviews only in the context of a purchaser on the App Store writing a review on the App Store.
  - 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
    fake reviews on the affiliate site: more unique affiliate site links to more apps, more revenue fake reviews on the app store: increase app profile and visibility, secondary feeder to your affiliate site via organic; Maybe affiliate site uses app store category top 20 lists to generate its links?
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    If I give a good review you're more likely to click my affiliate link.
    - drawkbox 9y ago
      True, but on the flipside, if revenue is cut, to make up revenue, many sites will probably only write about big apps/games and make them good reviews, or do 3x the reviews again biased to be good.
benguild 9y ago
This may mean that they’ll decrease the commission charged to developers to as little as 10-15% this summer?
- jmcdiesel 9y ago
  Source?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- CharlesW 9y ago
  Just curious: How are you connecting this Apple news with that theory?
- phoenix3200 9y ago
  It's just greed. They're likely to do the reverse.
  - bbcbasic 9y ago
    Capitalism
killin_dan 9y ago
And I suddenly don't feel the need to support iOS anymore
- CharlesW 9y ago
  Do you have a product/service built on affiliate commissions?
notadoc 9y ago
Who would want to promote something for $0.025 commission on a $1 sale? The volume needed for that to be any sort of business model seems extraordinarily high.
- TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
  Even at the original (3x higher) rate, the volume required seems pretty high to make ant real money.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lucaspiller 9y ago
    I imagine a lot of these sites are setup by people in developing countries. Spending a few hours a week for an extra $10/month is good money for some people.
- devindotcom 9y ago
  Sounds like Romain was at least making a few hundred euros per month. The volumes on some of these things can get really, really high.
  - notadoc 9y ago
    A few hundred euros a month is not a business model. OK maybe it's different with something high volume, perhaps a large volume popular website that focuses on apps... two seconds on Google reveals "Touch Arcade" is a large volume and popular website with such a focus. Well they are saying the commission schedule puts them in "incredibly scary financial territory." https://toucharcade.com/2017/04/24/apple-slashes-referral-payments/ https://toucharcade.com/2017/04/24/apple-slashes-referral-pa... Maybe there is a larger volume example? I don't know, but that website seems very popular (124,000 twitter followers, high rank on Google) and if they can't make it work, who can?
- wklauss 9y ago
  > The volume needed for that to be any sort of business model seems extraordinarily high. If it can be easily automated that is not a big deal.
coupdejarnac 9y ago
For my apps, I used the affiliate program to get back some of the Apple tax. So from my perspective, this is just the latest in a long line of developer hostile developments from Apple. Sidenote- I tried deploying an app to testers on Testflight for the first time, and the app was rejected. What a complete waste of time. It was rejected for not running on iPad properly and not working with ipv6. Not exactly too frickin helpful when I needed to get the app out to testers/stakeholders asap. Fortunately Tryouts.io don't want to waste my time.
- matheweis 9y ago
  I did the same, and since the majority of my sales were generated through my own site rather than directly on the app store, it was relatively successful too. This represents a roughly 6% cut in post-Apple revenue... on sales of our own apps. Unbelievable.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  What is the "Apple tax"?
  - baldfat 9y ago
    30% and 30% for subscription for the first year and 15% after 12 months of subscription. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-changes-app-store-revenue-split-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-changes-app-store-reven... AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits.
    - wklauss 9y ago
      > AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits. Why single digits?
      - weaksauce 9y ago
        why almost a third of your revenue?
return0 9y ago
Who used this?
- baldfat 9y ago
  Review sites good and bad. I feel like the good ones will be the first one's out.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    They can probably make more money through a YouTube channel than via affiliate fees. That way you can capitalize on people who watched your review but didn't buy it, or the app was free and you weren't going to get money anyway.
- chillacy 9y ago
  I used it for my own app (Mac App). Basically I could send traffic to the App Store instead of offering my own app outside the app store, and Apple would effectively give me part of their cut back. This is from what I understand, a legitimate use of it.
zeteo 9y ago
"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give." - Adam Smith The App Store developers are now farmers on Apple's domain, and their landlord has figured out they can pay more.
- babuskov 9y ago
  > The App Store developers are now farmers on Apple's domain What do you mean by "now"? As far as I can tell, it has always been like that.
  - greghatch 9y ago
    In a sense, yes. However, I think the farmers in this analogy were more willing/able to be nomadic in the earlier days of osx and ios apps, where now they are much more likely to make the land their permanent home. This could be because the app store is more stable or reliable as a source of income or from a realization that the Mac App store is the best/only way to present information to a sufficiently wide audience - that wasn't really something developers knew to be true in the earlier years I imagine - maybe the thoughtful ones knew but the rest were still warming up their feet.
- scarface74 9y ago
  As opposed to Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, and for all intents and purposes Google?
- Tanegashima 9y ago
  Good. What you expect? You're not a big company like Google or Apple that owns the land. Do you think that, for example, youtubers aren't farmers in the google's farm? Or that web developers and content creators aren't farmers for the ad networks?
gressquel 9y ago
The 30% fee robbery is the reason I quit app development, im actually happy I ended up in SaaS business, so thank you Apple
- jordansmithnz 9y ago
  Is it a robbery if you were aware of it before choosing to sign up?
  - gressquel 9y ago
    yeah if you know you dont have a choice, its a duopoly that is being exploited as hell.
- qzervaas 9y ago
  What do you think is a fair price, given what you get from Apple for that 30%? I'd be more than happy for it to be 0%, but you do get a few things for that cut: * Credit card processing * Handling refunds (you need to do this manually on refund, just another thing to deal with) * Some level of app discovery * Distribution of app and files My biggest problem with the 30% is that it is now the de-facto amount that other similar services charge developers for everything now (Google Play - there are others too that escape me now).
  - tyingq 9y ago
    House commission can be compared. Amazon charges 15% for most things. eBay is 9%. Etsy is 3.5%. Software house commission is definitely on the high side. Interesting that Steam, Apple, and Google are all at the same rough figure.
    - scarlac 9y ago
      Some things don't compare well. Unfortunately, fee systems are some of those things. I just looked up Etsy because 3.5% commission seems unrealistically low (credit card fees are easily higher): https://www.etsy.com/help/article/136 https://www.etsy.com/help/article/136 Turns out, they have several other fees on top. So it's not only 3.5%, it's actually $2.4 a year per item. Add to that the credit card fees of minimum 3-4.4% + $0.25 per sale. On top of this, you need to add the shipping fees, currency conversion fees and each platform have their own particular setup. This all goes to show that you can't just randomly pick fees out like that. The total cost to the user needs to be considered.
zackmorris 9y ago
Is it time for a developer's guild? Like if most iOS developers were part of the guild, and if Apple made too drastic a cut like this, the guild would disable all of the apps in the store for some number of days until a compromise could be reached between Apple and the guild. Not to single Apple out - we seem to be seeing a lot of these unilateral decisions in tech lately.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
  Like a trade union and a strike you mean?
- spbaar 9y ago
  This does not affect developers, only marketing and blog sites that promote apps and link to the app store.
  - qzervaas 9y ago
    This is not true. Many app developers use the affiliate program from their app's web site to claw back some of the 30% commission. Minimise the house take, so to speak.
- driverdan 9y ago
  If you don't like it don't develop for closed ecosystems. This is the kind of shit you get when someone else has complete control.
  - chillacy 9y ago
    Collective bargaining only works when everyone is in, otherwise economic forces move in to undercut you. That's why union workers on strike are so vicious to those who break ranks to go to work.
mcast 9y ago
As a consumer, I strongly dislike the direction Apple has taken since Tim Cook assumed CEO. When I bought the new iPhone 7, the previous plastic headphones case was changed to be made of disposable, thin paper. You could argue it was an environmental move, but Apple now seems to care more about maximizing profit and cutting costs in every possible area than providing a good customer experience. I mean, the original iPhone even included a microfiber cloth to clean the screen. And iPhone's seriously still come in 32GB for the base model? The company has an excess of over $250B in liquid cash but it decides to stiffen its products to revolve around pleasing shareholders, not consumers. Let's not even get started on the disaster of catering to professionals using their MacBook "Pro" or Mac Pro line.
- cfitz 9y ago
  I cannot agree more. As an "early adopter" of the new Macbook Pro (the one with the "touch bar"), I am also a regretful one. As Apple customers, we have always overpaid. However, the dollar-to-value ratio has only worsened since Jobs' passing.
- kevinh 9y ago
  That's how I felt when Apple started adding ads to their app store. They sell the iPhone experience as a premium one. Seeing ads as the first result of all searches on the app store makes it seem like I'm using something cheap.
  - Operyl 9y ago
    I have to disagree, the ads haven't been pushed as badly as say Google Search Ads. I quite enjoy finding a random relevant app once in a blue moon via the App Store ads, and they're clearly marked. To each their own I guess. EDIT: It just doesn't bother me: https://imgur.com/a/FHMSy https://imgur.com/a/FHMSy
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  >the previous plastic headphones case was changed to be made of disposable, thin paper As a consumer, changing from a plastic headphone-delivery container to a paper one was a positive. Such a large amount of plastic that was never used after delivering the headphones to me and, I'd assume, other customers.
wand3r 9y ago
IDK. I feel bad for the devs but I hate being punted from safari to the app store. If this cuts it down 66percent that would be awesome ux. Really sick of the huge green button that says "proceed" and the tiny "no thanks" that takes you to the actual site. Reddit is a perfect example
jordansmithnz 9y ago
A lot of comments seem to think this effects developers. It doesn't - just the many sub par app review sites that make money with affiliate links. As an iOS developer I wouldn't be sad to see these die out. Some comments have mentioned the 30% cut that Apple takes. From my point of view, I'd be making $0 without the App Store, so a 30% cut I was aware of from square one doesn't seem unreasonable. Apple have never raised the figure, and I don't think they're likely to in the near future.
- prawn 9y ago
  It effects developers who use the affiliate code on links from their site/social to the App Store as a way of knocking the 30% down a bit.
pascalxus 9y ago
Also, you can look forward to the day when apple raises it's tax from 30% to 50%. I suspect this is coming. They're certainly powerful enough to pull it off. Developers won't like it but there's nothing devs can really do about it.
blurrywh 9y ago
OT: Imagine a web without affiliate sites. Would we miss any of their content?
elsonrodriguez 9y ago
Does this means I'll get fewer random redirects to the App Store from crappy advertising networks?

293 points by petergatsby 9y ago

> If Apple drastically cuts this revenue stream, the company could end up alienating people writing for those sites. Isn't this, in some ways, good for the consumer? While some legitimate review sites may be impacted, this would imaginably help cut down on the number of illegitimate spammy review sites that are pushing ad-ridden and malware-ish apps.

mesozoic 9y ago
The spammy review sites will always be more profitable than the ones that actually put in the work to do reviews. If they drive down profit the useful sites will be the first to die sadly :(
- Tanegashima 9y ago
  > profitable Not really, one thing is revenue, another thing is profit. Those spammy sites pay a lot of money to appear on those clickbait tables that appear at the end of articles. And without guarantee that the user (victim) buys anything.
downandout 9y ago
Nope. It will just cut down on the number independent apps being written about. In their place, spammy apps that are paying affiliate networks - whose creators can only afford to pay large per-install commissions though aggressive revenue techniques (malware etc) - will be reviewed and pushed. This cut will make things infinitely worse. The only apps you will see being talked about on thousands of blogs/social media/review sites/etc. will be "ad-ridden and malware-ish".
- shostack 9y ago
  It may do so in the big picture, but number of reviews != number of quality reviews. I'd much rather read reviews from people not incentivized to write them, and I'd rather not have to wade through all of the organic results from those that are affiliates to find the ones that are not. Spammy review sites are also Google's problem, and they do a lot to keep them out of rankings. This won't hurt forums though where people candidly share their feedback on apps. I'm not clear how people using CPI installs through shady tactics like malware will suddenly rise to prominence. I can't see an honest reviewer who is reviewing for the sake of it (vs. the paltry affiliate commission) saying "yes, I should review this scummy app that forced its way onto my device." Instead, I think we'll see the rise of reviews from sites that monetize in other ways such as traditional display advertising, email sponsorships, other products, subscriptions, etc. Forums and social will also hopefully have less spam as it becomes less financially viable for the spammers in question.

johansch 9y ago

It does fit the pattern. When in lack of product innovation, milk the existing reveneue stream harder.

protomyth 9y ago

Starting on May 1st 2017, commissions for all app and in-app content will be reduced from 7% to 2.5% globally. All other content types (music, movies, books, and TV) will remain at the current 7% commission rate in all markets. So, the sites promoting Hollywood get to keep the 7%, but the sites promoting Apple's developers get tanked?

jedberg 9y ago
That's an interesting way to read it. To me it says more along the lines of: we know that media gets a lot of marketing through word of mouth, which affiliate links promote, but for apps, they usually spread though being useful, so we don't think we'll loose a lot of money but cutting off the "word of mouth" marketing channel for apps.
- downandout 9y ago
  Apps don't spread from being useful. Being useful might be a baseline requirement for them to spread, but massive marketing budgets, social media spamming, and shady deals with handset makers (if you can get them) are what cause most apps to truly be hits today. Long gone are the days when an independent developer writes a little app and, and much to his or her surprise, it goes viral and they make six or seven figures quickly. There are many reasons for this - fierce competition, terrible app store discovery models, etc. The commission cut will only make the problem worse, by lowering the incentives to write about little-known but good apps. Instead, the only apps that get written about will be those where the app creator has a big budget and puts pay-per-install offers on affiliate networks. The competition and steep commissions on these netowrks is such that a typical install will cost a publisher $2-$4, making it unprofitable except possibly in the very long term, and even then only if the app has an extremely aggressive revenue model.
- protomyth 9y ago
  Hollywood has an advertising budget which cannot be matched by any app developer save the game studios and Apple itself. How many app developers have anything but "word of mouth"?
9y ago

caiob 9y ago

Affiliate commissions generate a lot of fake reviews. I think this is a good move by Apple; although I believe they should simply shut down the entire program.

Operyl 9y ago
Ok, I've sat and thought about it for a bit but have yet to figure it out. How would this cause fake reviews in the specific case of the App Store?
- porpoisemonkey 9y ago
  Write a fake or cookie cutter review about popular app X, link to app X in your article and then collect commissions on people who buy it through the link.
  - Operyl 9y ago
    Ah I see. I was considering reviews only in the context of a purchaser on the App Store writing a review on the App Store.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  fake reviews on the affiliate site: more unique affiliate site links to more apps, more revenue fake reviews on the app store: increase app profile and visibility, secondary feeder to your affiliate site via organic; Maybe affiliate site uses app store category top 20 lists to generate its links?
- Gaelan 9y ago
  If I give a good review you're more likely to click my affiliate link.
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    True, but on the flipside, if revenue is cut, to make up revenue, many sites will probably only write about big apps/games and make them good reviews, or do 3x the reviews again biased to be good.

benguild 9y ago

This may mean that they’ll decrease the commission charged to developers to as little as 10-15% this summer?

jmcdiesel 9y ago
Source?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
CharlesW 9y ago
Just curious: How are you connecting this Apple news with that theory?
phoenix3200 9y ago
It's just greed. They're likely to do the reverse.
- bbcbasic 9y ago
  Capitalism

killin_dan 9y ago

And I suddenly don't feel the need to support iOS anymore

CharlesW 9y ago
Do you have a product/service built on affiliate commissions?

notadoc 9y ago

Who would want to promote something for $0.025 commission on a $1 sale? The volume needed for that to be any sort of business model seems extraordinarily high.

TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
Even at the original (3x higher) rate, the volume required seems pretty high to make ant real money.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  I imagine a lot of these sites are setup by people in developing countries. Spending a few hours a week for an extra $10/month is good money for some people.
devindotcom 9y ago
Sounds like Romain was at least making a few hundred euros per month. The volumes on some of these things can get really, really high.
- notadoc 9y ago
  A few hundred euros a month is not a business model. OK maybe it's different with something high volume, perhaps a large volume popular website that focuses on apps... two seconds on Google reveals "Touch Arcade" is a large volume and popular website with such a focus. Well they are saying the commission schedule puts them in "incredibly scary financial territory." https://toucharcade.com/2017/04/24/apple-slashes-referral-payments/ https://toucharcade.com/2017/04/24/apple-slashes-referral-pa... Maybe there is a larger volume example? I don't know, but that website seems very popular (124,000 twitter followers, high rank on Google) and if they can't make it work, who can?
wklauss 9y ago
> The volume needed for that to be any sort of business model seems extraordinarily high. If it can be easily automated that is not a big deal.

coupdejarnac 9y ago

For my apps, I used the affiliate program to get back some of the Apple tax. So from my perspective, this is just the latest in a long line of developer hostile developments from Apple. Sidenote- I tried deploying an app to testers on Testflight for the first time, and the app was rejected. What a complete waste of time. It was rejected for not running on iPad properly and not working with ipv6. Not exactly too frickin helpful when I needed to get the app out to testers/stakeholders asap. Fortunately Tryouts.io don't want to waste my time.

matheweis 9y ago
I did the same, and since the majority of my sales were generated through my own site rather than directly on the app store, it was relatively successful too. This represents a roughly 6% cut in post-Apple revenue... on sales of our own apps. Unbelievable.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
What is the "Apple tax"?
- baldfat 9y ago
  30% and 30% for subscription for the first year and 15% after 12 months of subscription. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-changes-app-store-revenue-split-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-changes-app-store-reven... AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits.
  - wklauss 9y ago
    > AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits. Why single digits?
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      why almost a third of your revenue?

return0 9y ago

Who used this?

baldfat 9y ago
Review sites good and bad. I feel like the good ones will be the first one's out.
- astrodust 9y ago
  They can probably make more money through a YouTube channel than via affiliate fees. That way you can capitalize on people who watched your review but didn't buy it, or the app was free and you weren't going to get money anyway.
chillacy 9y ago
I used it for my own app (Mac App). Basically I could send traffic to the App Store instead of offering my own app outside the app store, and Apple would effectively give me part of their cut back. This is from what I understand, a legitimate use of it.

zeteo 9y ago

"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give." - Adam Smith The App Store developers are now farmers on Apple's domain, and their landlord has figured out they can pay more.

babuskov 9y ago
> The App Store developers are now farmers on Apple's domain What do you mean by "now"? As far as I can tell, it has always been like that.
- greghatch 9y ago
  In a sense, yes. However, I think the farmers in this analogy were more willing/able to be nomadic in the earlier days of osx and ios apps, where now they are much more likely to make the land their permanent home. This could be because the app store is more stable or reliable as a source of income or from a realization that the Mac App store is the best/only way to present information to a sufficiently wide audience - that wasn't really something developers knew to be true in the earlier years I imagine - maybe the thoughtful ones knew but the rest were still warming up their feet.
scarface74 9y ago
As opposed to Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, and for all intents and purposes Google?
Tanegashima 9y ago
Good. What you expect? You're not a big company like Google or Apple that owns the land. Do you think that, for example, youtubers aren't farmers in the google's farm? Or that web developers and content creators aren't farmers for the ad networks?

gressquel 9y ago

The 30% fee robbery is the reason I quit app development, im actually happy I ended up in SaaS business, so thank you Apple

jordansmithnz 9y ago
Is it a robbery if you were aware of it before choosing to sign up?
- gressquel 9y ago
  yeah if you know you dont have a choice, its a duopoly that is being exploited as hell.
qzervaas 9y ago
What do you think is a fair price, given what you get from Apple for that 30%? I'd be more than happy for it to be 0%, but you do get a few things for that cut: * Credit card processing * Handling refunds (you need to do this manually on refund, just another thing to deal with) * Some level of app discovery * Distribution of app and files My biggest problem with the 30% is that it is now the de-facto amount that other similar services charge developers for everything now (Google Play - there are others too that escape me now).
- tyingq 9y ago
  House commission can be compared. Amazon charges 15% for most things. eBay is 9%. Etsy is 3.5%. Software house commission is definitely on the high side. Interesting that Steam, Apple, and Google are all at the same rough figure.
  - scarlac 9y ago
    Some things don't compare well. Unfortunately, fee systems are some of those things. I just looked up Etsy because 3.5% commission seems unrealistically low (credit card fees are easily higher): https://www.etsy.com/help/article/136 https://www.etsy.com/help/article/136 Turns out, they have several other fees on top. So it's not only 3.5%, it's actually $2.4 a year per item. Add to that the credit card fees of minimum 3-4.4% + $0.25 per sale. On top of this, you need to add the shipping fees, currency conversion fees and each platform have their own particular setup. This all goes to show that you can't just randomly pick fees out like that. The total cost to the user needs to be considered.

zackmorris 9y ago

Is it time for a developer's guild? Like if most iOS developers were part of the guild, and if Apple made too drastic a cut like this, the guild would disable all of the apps in the store for some number of days until a compromise could be reached between Apple and the guild. Not to single Apple out - we seem to be seeing a lot of these unilateral decisions in tech lately.

gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
Like a trade union and a strike you mean?
spbaar 9y ago
This does not affect developers, only marketing and blog sites that promote apps and link to the app store.
- qzervaas 9y ago
  This is not true. Many app developers use the affiliate program from their app's web site to claw back some of the 30% commission. Minimise the house take, so to speak.
driverdan 9y ago
If you don't like it don't develop for closed ecosystems. This is the kind of shit you get when someone else has complete control.
- chillacy 9y ago
  Collective bargaining only works when everyone is in, otherwise economic forces move in to undercut you. That's why union workers on strike are so vicious to those who break ranks to go to work.

mcast 9y ago

As a consumer, I strongly dislike the direction Apple has taken since Tim Cook assumed CEO. When I bought the new iPhone 7, the previous plastic headphones case was changed to be made of disposable, thin paper. You could argue it was an environmental move, but Apple now seems to care more about maximizing profit and cutting costs in every possible area than providing a good customer experience. I mean, the original iPhone even included a microfiber cloth to clean the screen. And iPhone's seriously still come in 32GB for the base model? The company has an excess of over $250B in liquid cash but it decides to stiffen its products to revolve around pleasing shareholders, not consumers. Let's not even get started on the disaster of catering to professionals using their MacBook "Pro" or Mac Pro line.

cfitz 9y ago
I cannot agree more. As an "early adopter" of the new Macbook Pro (the one with the "touch bar"), I am also a regretful one. As Apple customers, we have always overpaid. However, the dollar-to-value ratio has only worsened since Jobs' passing.
kevinh 9y ago
That's how I felt when Apple started adding ads to their app store. They sell the iPhone experience as a premium one. Seeing ads as the first result of all searches on the app store makes it seem like I'm using something cheap.
- Operyl 9y ago
  I have to disagree, the ads haven't been pushed as badly as say Google Search Ads. I quite enjoy finding a random relevant app once in a blue moon via the App Store ads, and they're clearly marked. To each their own I guess. EDIT: It just doesn't bother me: https://imgur.com/a/FHMSy https://imgur.com/a/FHMSy
DINKDINK 9y ago
>the previous plastic headphones case was changed to be made of disposable, thin paper As a consumer, changing from a plastic headphone-delivery container to a paper one was a positive. Such a large amount of plastic that was never used after delivering the headphones to me and, I'd assume, other customers.

wand3r 9y ago

IDK. I feel bad for the devs but I hate being punted from safari to the app store. If this cuts it down 66percent that would be awesome ux. Really sick of the huge green button that says "proceed" and the tiny "no thanks" that takes you to the actual site. Reddit is a perfect example

jordansmithnz 9y ago

A lot of comments seem to think this effects developers. It doesn't - just the many sub par app review sites that make money with affiliate links. As an iOS developer I wouldn't be sad to see these die out. Some comments have mentioned the 30% cut that Apple takes. From my point of view, I'd be making $0 without the App Store, so a 30% cut I was aware of from square one doesn't seem unreasonable. Apple have never raised the figure, and I don't think they're likely to in the near future.

prawn 9y ago
It effects developers who use the affiliate code on links from their site/social to the App Store as a way of knocking the 30% down a bit.

pascalxus 9y ago

Also, you can look forward to the day when apple raises it's tax from 30% to 50%. I suspect this is coming. They're certainly powerful enough to pull it off. Developers won't like it but there's nothing devs can really do about it.

blurrywh 9y ago

OT: Imagine a web without affiliate sites. Would we miss any of their content?

elsonrodriguez 9y ago

Does this means I'll get fewer random redirects to the App Store from crappy advertising networks?