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Hey pedalpete, thanks for that great thought-out and detailed reply, thats really awesome. I've been thinking about the idea for a while, because I've noticed

Hey pedalpete, thanks for that great thought-out and detailed reply, thats really awesome. I've been thinking about the idea for a while, because I've noticed a lot of dissatisfaction with the App Store's reviews, and I've identified a lot of advantages a website would have over the App Store. One reason is that Apple's self-imposed design requirements limit the information that is available to people wanting to learn more about apps. The App Store is only available through iTunes, so it keeps the same look and feel as the music store and doesn't have all the functionality of a website. Reviews are limited, and currently, they can be left by anyone, vastly degrading their usefulness (not to mention it doesn't incorporate better review mechanisms, like upvoting or downvoting of reviews to eliminate annoying/useless ones). You can't compare two apps directly, and there is no objective editorial content on which apps might be better than others. Finally, there are problems of categorization in the App Store. The categories are very static and broad. If a new series of apps come out, Apple will likely to be slow to respond and is very unlikely to further divide categories, even though that would be more useful. What I mean by that is best illustrated by an example from the iTunes Music Store. There is an electronic genre of music, but really "electronic" is too broad for someone looking for a specific type of electronic music. A website that further categorizes this large genre would be more useful than the iTunes Music Store to someone looking for a specific type. Just like an apps website could make more useful categories. I haven't yet begun much research into competitors. I have noticed that many people complaining about the lack of good reviews in forums are not answered with "you should check out X website." So there isn't one website thats far out ahead and constantly on people's tongues. One the one hand, those two you mentioned are quite far ahead, but the App Store has also only been open a month. However, those two sites likely started some time ago by reviewing jailbreak apps. I will disagree with you on the viability of the platform, but thats something that can't really be decided now, so its one thing I'll just have to believe in. But I am curious on what a "niche" site is. I'm having trouble determining the size of my potential market, but I'd like to think its larger than niche. My reasoning is that people don't have to buy an app for their iPhone to want to know which one is better than another. So many applications are available for free that I'm confident people will want apps, and will want to get reviews for apps. I am having trouble trying to quantify the amount of potential users. I consider everyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch a potential user. There will be an estimate 10 million iPhones by 2009, so 10 million people will theoretically want to get more info on apps. At any time they can go download a free app, and presumably, might want to choose between two free apps. A successful iPhone website can also be expanded to a "Android Apps" website, so the potential audience can be expanded later. So I'm confident I could match those sites that you mentioned. What I can't figure out is what I would need to do to to make a living off of it. I'm going on the assumption there will be two principals. So, for example's sake, what would be required for each person to make $50,000 before expenses? I was looking to create a chart, starting at low CPM/high pageviews, up to a higher CPM with lower pageviews, just to see what it looks like. Using your example, I would need to have 5 times the visitors to earn over $100K. So around 285,000 visitors. Basically, its preliminary work to see if it passes the sniff test. Even with generous estimates on how many visitors I think I can get and high CPM's, will it be enough?

pedalpete 18y ago
a few things I'll have to disagree with you on. 1) I never questioned the viability of the platform - this is definitely something that can be made. I do question the viability of it as a business if you are relying ONLY on ad revenue. However, adding additional revenue streams will increase the value and possibly serve your market better than advertising. My initial reaction is not 'this is going to be a star', but you could have a viable business here, I'm not your target market, and can't relate to what you are doing. You probably don't read mtbr.com or pinkbike.com, I do, you might not have thought those to be viable businesses, but they are. 2) I'd suggest re-reading your paragraph which starts 'My reasoning...'. firstly, who reads reviews for something they aren't keenly interested in? and the only people I know who have iPhones have them, but use them just like any other phone, meaning they don't install apps, or read about iPhones etc.. I have a blackberry and don't install applications, I don't look at blackberry focused sites AT ALL, and I am a geek! secondly, you can't just take the total number of phones and say that is the potential market. Everybody uses toilet paper, but the market opportunity is not 9 billion people. iPhone and Android are not the first players in this market. I'd take a closer look at sites that do what you are thinking of doing for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian devices (even though you have identified differentiators, look at what has been done to help define opportunity size). These devices already have a larger user base with 118 million devices sold in '07 so 10 times larger than iPhone currently. Also, don't be fooled by Apple marketing/PR and the way the numbers read. 10 million devices sold is more like 7 million users. I had gone through 3 iPods before most people had bought their first one, fanboys buy the newest thing they can get. Also, the planned obsolescence of mobile devices is 18 months, so when they say '100 million sold in two years', that likely means 50 million users. It's not how many devices HAVE been sold that matters, it how many devices came onto the market in the year (or 1.5 years) that is the important figure in mobile (I've done some mobile consulting). So i actually just tried this with Blackberry and Symbian, and interestingly, the largest sites I found (quick search) has about 40k montly visits. Similar to the size of the top iPhone reviews site. This suggests to me that opportunity size is in the 30-80k range. Something to think about...are more people going to use read/write reviews BECAUSE your site is better? or are you going to be getting users from other sites because your site is better. It's an important difference, and will help estimate market size. For my site, I postulate that finding live music and deciding to go see a concert is a poor experience, but that if people had a better way to find out who's playing, sample the music, etc. they would go see more shows. So for my site, I say 'with a better experience more people on a whole will use an online tool to accomplish this task'. Rather than saying 'I'll be able to grab x amount of users from other sites which do similar things, but don't offer as good an experience'. You've defined the opportunity where current sites are missing the boat, so that's good. You've got a target you are aiming for. You'll find more opportunities as you dig into this I'm sure. You'll also find challenges to things like categorization and taxonomy - who knows, maybe you've already got a solution to these challenges. What I think is interesting is that I suspect that as you go down this road, you may find greater opportunities than you are originally planning. Categorization can be VERY challenging, it is something I am struggling with on my site (your electronic music example is perfect!). So if you have identified a method for managing categorization, maybe the app review site is just an opportunity to flush out managing categorization, and maybe that will be your long term business. I can't answer your last question about 'will it be enough'? Only you and your partner can decide that. If you have the ability, I would suggest building something and getting it out there while hanging on to your day job. Building is often the easy part, the challenges can come in actually getting people to use your site. If you build something great, maybe you can make a living, maybe you can get investors involved. If you don't build anything, you likely won't get either. Costs of developing something like this should be very low (hopefully you will code it up yourself). This would probably be a good opportunity to try something like google app engine.

pedalpete 18y ago

a few things I'll have to disagree with you on. 1) I never questioned the viability of the platform - this is definitely something that can be made. I do question the viability of it as a business if you are relying ONLY on ad revenue. However, adding additional revenue streams will increase the value and possibly serve your market better than advertising. My initial reaction is not 'this is going to be a star', but you could have a viable business here, I'm not your target market, and can't relate to what you are doing. You probably don't read mtbr.com or pinkbike.com, I do, you might not have thought those to be viable businesses, but they are. 2) I'd suggest re-reading your paragraph which starts 'My reasoning...'. firstly, who reads reviews for something they aren't keenly interested in? and the only people I know who have iPhones have them, but use them just like any other phone, meaning they don't install apps, or read about iPhones etc.. I have a blackberry and don't install applications, I don't look at blackberry focused sites AT ALL, and I am a geek! secondly, you can't just take the total number of phones and say that is the potential market. Everybody uses toilet paper, but the market opportunity is not 9 billion people. iPhone and Android are not the first players in this market. I'd take a closer look at sites that do what you are thinking of doing for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian devices (even though you have identified differentiators, look at what has been done to help define opportunity size). These devices already have a larger user base with 118 million devices sold in '07 so 10 times larger than iPhone currently. Also, don't be fooled by Apple marketing/PR and the way the numbers read. 10 million devices sold is more like 7 million users. I had gone through 3 iPods before most people had bought their first one, fanboys buy the newest thing they can get. Also, the planned obsolescence of mobile devices is 18 months, so when they say '100 million sold in two years', that likely means 50 million users. It's not how many devices HAVE been sold that matters, it how many devices came onto the market in the year (or 1.5 years) that is the important figure in mobile (I've done some mobile consulting). So i actually just tried this with Blackberry and Symbian, and interestingly, the largest sites I found (quick search) has about 40k montly visits. Similar to the size of the top iPhone reviews site. This suggests to me that opportunity size is in the 30-80k range. Something to think about...are more people going to use read/write reviews BECAUSE your site is better? or are you going to be getting users from other sites because your site is better. It's an important difference, and will help estimate market size. For my site, I postulate that finding live music and deciding to go see a concert is a poor experience, but that if people had a better way to find out who's playing, sample the music, etc. they would go see more shows. So for my site, I say 'with a better experience more people on a whole will use an online tool to accomplish this task'. Rather than saying 'I'll be able to grab x amount of users from other sites which do similar things, but don't offer as good an experience'. You've defined the opportunity where current sites are missing the boat, so that's good. You've got a target you are aiming for. You'll find more opportunities as you dig into this I'm sure. You'll also find challenges to things like categorization and taxonomy - who knows, maybe you've already got a solution to these challenges. What I think is interesting is that I suspect that as you go down this road, you may find greater opportunities than you are originally planning. Categorization can be VERY challenging, it is something I am struggling with on my site (your electronic music example is perfect!). So if you have identified a method for managing categorization, maybe the app review site is just an opportunity to flush out managing categorization, and maybe that will be your long term business. I can't answer your last question about 'will it be enough'? Only you and your partner can decide that. If you have the ability, I would suggest building something and getting it out there while hanging on to your day job. Building is often the easy part, the challenges can come in actually getting people to use your site. If you build something great, maybe you can make a living, maybe you can get investors involved. If you don't build anything, you likely won't get either. Costs of developing something like this should be very low (hopefully you will code it up yourself). This would probably be a good opportunity to try something like google app engine.