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> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be?

> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. It reminds me of all the psychological studies that use inadequate controls just because adequate ones for what they want to do would cost trillions of dollars. Then they claim to have done legitimate science. But the standards of science don't lower themselves to what data we can easily get.

jpcx01 16y ago
I'd say your scenario represents a tiny segment (not 90% of paid apps). Most people who build apps for fun put it out for free. If they put a price on it, it's much less likely to be used. Where is the fun in that?
- xenophanes 16y ago
  Well, I'd guess it represents a much larger segment than you guess. Neither of us has any data, nor does the article. So the only rational conclusion is to accept our ignorance, right? Or at least one should carefully document every single wild guess being made when coming up with some numbers, and carefully identify them as very plausibly being very large sources of error (so that no readers mistakenly doubt that the numbers might be off by a factor of 10 and think it's actually based on hard data).
- DougBTX 16y ago
  Introverts, remember. The fun is making the app, seeing it with a price tag on it is just a bonus. And it's so easy to put a price tag on, there's no reason not to. It might even cover the developer fees.
pvg 16y ago
No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Nobody said they shouldn't be. The point is 'serious effort' vs anything else is not readily measurable. This is something you say, rather than something you do. 'Trying to make money' vs 'Not trying to make money' is measurable - if you're not trying to make money, you don't charge. If you charge, you are obviously trying to make money, even if it's very little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. The numbers are still useful, whatever their caveats and limitations. At the very least, they are more useful than non-numbers or numbers-that-ought-to-be-obtained-by-some-method-that-doesn't-actually-produce-measurable-numbers. But the standards of science I don't think there was any claim to reaching the 'standards of science'. It seems a little silly to bring them up, though - the author's sources and methods are well described. There's probably plenty of room to take issue there. But you can't trot out 'the standards of science' if your standard is some underivable set of data that just happens to support your viewpoint.
- mattmanser 16y ago
  There is nothing useful about those numbers, there's nothing based on hard fact, it's all conjecture, but worst he's presenting conclusions off the numbers that make no sense. In my mind this line summed up his total lack of understanding: Today if you decide to develop a free app, you pay your $35,000 development cost, then you find your free app competing against just a modest set of 60,750 rival free apps on the iPhone. Imagine if you are your consumer, scrolling past that set, to find you. Firstly 35k assumes a decent sized app, not a few day job like a lot of these apps are. Secondly a lot of these apps have NO rivals. Search 'Nottingham Cinema times'. 2 apps. But guess what. Those guys also make 'Leicester Cinema Times', 'Birmingham Cinema Times', 'London Cinema Times', etc., etc. All the same tiny piece of code. And what about all the hoo-hah about those guys who had 20,000 apps like 'Pamela Anderson Pictures' that were eventually pulled? Guess what. Search 'Claire Danes', 'Kiera Knightly', any female actress. 59 p app for each one of them. Probably thousands of them. Same piece of code. And look at some of the numbers he throws about, 2.1 billion app capable phones vs. 80 million iPhones. I'm sorry, but add up ALL of Europe and ALL of North America and you've not got 2.1 billion people. But I bet a large proportion of those iPhones are in that market. And I bet the vast majority of app purchases are in that market. And worst of all for those 2.1 billion phones. THERE'S NO MARKET. Roughly 50% of the people I know have an iPhone. And I'm probably downplaying that number. Young professionals with large disposable incomes. Just the sort of people you can make a lot of money off. He's not comparing like for like, he's not realising that the median earnings per serious software shop is actually higher much higher than the average per app because of so much dross and he claims a 'typical' app costs 35k without considering that they probably only asked the serious software shops and not people like the poster above you or those shops which are pumping out 100s of apps per week.

jpcx01 16y ago

I'd say your scenario represents a tiny segment (not 90% of paid apps). Most people who build apps for fun put it out for free. If they put a price on it, it's much less likely to be used. Where is the fun in that?

xenophanes 16y ago
Well, I'd guess it represents a much larger segment than you guess. Neither of us has any data, nor does the article. So the only rational conclusion is to accept our ignorance, right? Or at least one should carefully document every single wild guess being made when coming up with some numbers, and carefully identify them as very plausibly being very large sources of error (so that no readers mistakenly doubt that the numbers might be off by a factor of 10 and think it's actually based on hard data).
DougBTX 16y ago
Introverts, remember. The fun is making the app, seeing it with a price tag on it is just a bonus. And it's so easy to put a price tag on, there's no reason not to. It might even cover the developer fees.

pvg 16y ago

No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Nobody said they shouldn't be. The point is 'serious effort' vs anything else is not readily measurable. This is something you say, rather than something you do. 'Trying to make money' vs 'Not trying to make money' is measurable - if you're not trying to make money, you don't charge. If you charge, you are obviously trying to make money, even if it's very little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. The numbers are still useful, whatever their caveats and limitations. At the very least, they are more useful than non-numbers or numbers-that-ought-to-be-obtained-by-some-method-that-doesn't-actually-produce-measurable-numbers. But the standards of science I don't think there was any claim to reaching the 'standards of science'. It seems a little silly to bring them up, though - the author's sources and methods are well described. There's probably plenty of room to take issue there. But you can't trot out 'the standards of science' if your standard is some underivable set of data that just happens to support your viewpoint.

mattmanser 16y ago
There is nothing useful about those numbers, there's nothing based on hard fact, it's all conjecture, but worst he's presenting conclusions off the numbers that make no sense. In my mind this line summed up his total lack of understanding: Today if you decide to develop a free app, you pay your $35,000 development cost, then you find your free app competing against just a modest set of 60,750 rival free apps on the iPhone. Imagine if you are your consumer, scrolling past that set, to find you. Firstly 35k assumes a decent sized app, not a few day job like a lot of these apps are. Secondly a lot of these apps have NO rivals. Search 'Nottingham Cinema times'. 2 apps. But guess what. Those guys also make 'Leicester Cinema Times', 'Birmingham Cinema Times', 'London Cinema Times', etc., etc. All the same tiny piece of code. And what about all the hoo-hah about those guys who had 20,000 apps like 'Pamela Anderson Pictures' that were eventually pulled? Guess what. Search 'Claire Danes', 'Kiera Knightly', any female actress. 59 p app for each one of them. Probably thousands of them. Same piece of code. And look at some of the numbers he throws about, 2.1 billion app capable phones vs. 80 million iPhones. I'm sorry, but add up ALL of Europe and ALL of North America and you've not got 2.1 billion people. But I bet a large proportion of those iPhones are in that market. And I bet the vast majority of app purchases are in that market. And worst of all for those 2.1 billion phones. THERE'S NO MARKET. Roughly 50% of the people I know have an iPhone. And I'm probably downplaying that number. Young professionals with large disposable incomes. Just the sort of people you can make a lot of money off. He's not comparing like for like, he's not realising that the median earnings per serious software shop is actually higher much higher than the average per app because of so much dross and he claims a 'typical' app costs 35k without considering that they probably only asked the serious software shops and not people like the poster above you or those shops which are pumping out 100s of apps per week.