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How to make $13M on the App Store

71 points by keleftheriou 5y ago

AIorNot 5y ago
Sigh -It’s crazy that Apple spends so much time going after individual app devs for minor regulations but tolerates such egregious scams as this one..
- livinglist 5y ago
  exactly…
dandotway 5y ago
As long as Apple gets its 30% cut, why is Apple incentivized to hire a bunch more staff with healthcare, vacation, and pension benefits who are paid to crack down on this? "Dear AAPL Shareholders, rejoice! We reduced our 30% cut of $10B per quarter from garbage in the App Store by spending over $1B per quarter to hire over 10,000 staff to eliminate these ill-gotten gains."
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Apple publicly prides itself with providing a well curated store experience as a part of the reason users shouldn't be allowed to install apps from third party sources (or something). Maybe their short term incentives are getting ahead of them there.
evercast 5y ago
Interestingly, this is not some random app, but something that has been featured in Wired: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/turn-handful-phones-speaker-system-app/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/turn-handful-phones-speaker-sy... This is their webpage: https://ampme.com/ https://ampme.com/. It says ©2019 Amp Me Inc. which could mean it was not updated since then. This is also when the app started charging money. Could it be that the authors sold the app and the developer account to scammers? Also, not sure how to treat the accusation about easy to subscribe and hard to cancel. It seems the subscription can be canceled in iOS like all other subscriptions? The app is also in Google store.
- keleftheriou 5y ago
  Yeah, they also raised $8M back in 2016: https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/adding-a-youtube-integration-ampme-raises-8-million-for-its-app-syncing-phones-into-a-single-speaker-system/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/adding-a-youtube-integrati... It seems that advertising didn’t work out, so they turned to in-app purchases in 2018 – roughly when the fake reviews also started. On the subscription, it’s harder to cancel than it is to sign up for, like all App Store IAP subscriptions. It really should be possible to easily cancel from within the app itself rather than going to the Settings app – something a lot of people don’t know how to do, unfortunately. “It used to be a legit app”: https://twitter.com/lap_felix/status/1480631686413041666?s=20 https://twitter.com/lap_felix/status/1480631686413041666?s=2... On the founder’s previous company: “Wajam: From start‑up to massively‑spread adware” https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/06/05/wajam-startup-massively-spread-adware/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/06/05/wajam-startup-mass...
NKosmatos 5y ago
Apple is not the only one doing this. Big companies lack good moderation/curation/filtration and I don’t understand why they don’t hire more people to do this and improve the quality of their services. I understand that everything boils down to costs (profit) and that the use of AI/ML so as to detect frauds might be tempting, but this is not working. Perhaps it’s working for them, but certainly not for us.

71 points by keleftheriou 5y ago

Sigh -It’s crazy that Apple spends so much time going after individual app devs for minor regulations but tolerates such egregious scams as this one..

livinglist 5y ago
exactly…

dandotway 5y ago

As long as Apple gets its 30% cut, why is Apple incentivized to hire a bunch more staff with healthcare, vacation, and pension benefits who are paid to crack down on this? "Dear AAPL Shareholders, rejoice! We reduced our 30% cut of $10B per quarter from garbage in the App Store by spending over $1B per quarter to hire over 10,000 staff to eliminate these ill-gotten gains."

solarkraft 5y ago
Apple publicly prides itself with providing a well curated store experience as a part of the reason users shouldn't be allowed to install apps from third party sources (or something). Maybe their short term incentives are getting ahead of them there.

evercast 5y ago

Interestingly, this is not some random app, but something that has been featured in Wired: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/turn-handful-phones-speaker-system-app/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/turn-handful-phones-speaker-sy... This is their webpage: https://ampme.com/ https://ampme.com/. It says ©2019 Amp Me Inc. which could mean it was not updated since then. This is also when the app started charging money. Could it be that the authors sold the app and the developer account to scammers? Also, not sure how to treat the accusation about easy to subscribe and hard to cancel. It seems the subscription can be canceled in iOS like all other subscriptions? The app is also in Google store.

keleftheriou 5y ago
Yeah, they also raised $8M back in 2016: https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/adding-a-youtube-integration-ampme-raises-8-million-for-its-app-syncing-phones-into-a-single-speaker-system/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/adding-a-youtube-integrati... It seems that advertising didn’t work out, so they turned to in-app purchases in 2018 – roughly when the fake reviews also started. On the subscription, it’s harder to cancel than it is to sign up for, like all App Store IAP subscriptions. It really should be possible to easily cancel from within the app itself rather than going to the Settings app – something a lot of people don’t know how to do, unfortunately. “It used to be a legit app”: https://twitter.com/lap_felix/status/1480631686413041666?s=20 https://twitter.com/lap_felix/status/1480631686413041666?s=2... On the founder’s previous company: “Wajam: From start‑up to massively‑spread adware” https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/06/05/wajam-startup-massively-spread-adware/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/06/05/wajam-startup-mass...

NKosmatos 5y ago

Apple is not the only one doing this. Big companies lack good moderation/curation/filtration and I don’t understand why they don’t hire more people to do this and improve the quality of their services. I understand that everything boils down to costs (profit) and that the use of AI/ML so as to detect frauds might be tempting, but this is not working. Perhaps it’s working for them, but certainly not for us.