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I am curious if there are any numbers comparing revenue from direct sales vs MAS sales. I sell a Mac App exclusively via the MAS and have occasionally consider
by stevenwei 14y ago
I am curious if there are any numbers comparing revenue from direct sales vs MAS sales.
I sell a Mac App exclusively via the MAS and have occasionally considered adding a direct sales option to our website, but the extra overhead of adding a secondary licensing scheme to the app, a web store front, processing payments, and dealing with sales support doesn't seem like it would be worth it.
- wsc981 14y agoRevenue numbers would be very interesting indeed. I can imagine (small) developers receive more purchases from the Mac App Store compared to their own website, since apps are very easy to find in the MAS.
- ryannielsen 14y agoI'm not willing to give out concrete numbers but, from my experience, that's absolutely the case. Our Mac App Store reveunes far eclipse our own store's revenues. I certainly wouldn't say maintaining and supporting our own store hasn't been worth it – we're able to offer deals and discounts to bulk and educational purchasers that we couldn't on the MAS, thus making us more appealing to those markets – but I'd give up selling on our own store before I ever considered giving up selling on the MAS.
- stevenwei 14y agoInteresting. Are you willing to share a ballpark ratio of Mac App Store vs web storefront purchases? I suspect the numbers for a typical app would look something like 5:1 or even higher.
- ryannielsen 14y agoFor us, it's more in the 4:1 range, but I suspect you still might be right that many apps see a MAS:private sales ratio of 5+:1. Because we're able to offer bulk and/or educational purchase discounts through our own store, we see a fair number of licenses move through that vector. Other apps might not appeal to bulk and educational markets as much.