7 ms·

Some Brutally Honest iPhone App Sales Numbers: $32k Spent vs $535 Revenue

128 points by twampss 18y ago

tvon 18y ago
The note at the end about the lack of advertising, the lack of a free "lite" version and the $4.99 price point are, IMO, the red flags (aside from the whole "not everyone is going to get rich off of the app store" thing). Honestly, the advertising could probably be skimped on if there was a free version and a lower price point. I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent, but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional.
- nikblack 18y ago
  that is exactly why it isn't converting well. he should have noticed that after the kotaku review - but instead he submitted it to slashdot and burnt through 100k potential users. all those people who have already visited won't take a second look after he lowers the price. its too late for that - he should have realized the price was wrong and that he needed a lite version after the poor kotaku conversion rate.
- TomOfTTB 18y ago
  I agree that the issues you raise probably contributed to this apps failure. But I think the underlying point is still an important one. For some reason many in the development community seem to see the iPhone as some great untapped market where you can make easy money. When the reality is the iPhone/iPod Touch platform is probably the most competitive market out there right now. There are already 25,000 iPhone apps after just 8 months and all reports seem to indicate that the growth rate is quickening. So you better have some significant resources behind you if you want to get noticed.
  - wallflower 18y ago
    Some different perspectives/more optimistic experiences: (1) "I never made close to the amount of money iFart did, but my app LifeTimer paid 2 mortgage payments (therefore paying for the dev license AND the iPhone.) My suggestion is to download the SDK first, play with it, and if you get a good start on an app then pay the $100." (2) "I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff." http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page=3 http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page... The reality of the iPhone app store is sobering. If you build something average or maybe a little above average, they will not come in droves. I believe if you build something truly kick-ass and inform the right influencers - word of mouth via Twitter will get you on TechCrunch and its ilk in 24 hours or less. I also believe, however, that there will always be a small market for iPhone apps that are relatively novel and/or useful on a daily basis (useful: Tweetie is the best paid Twitter client in my opinion - integrated Summize search). For example of something that is novel, iPhone Pano (guides you through taking six photos and stitches them into a fairly impressive panoramic photo - you used to need Photoshop/Gimp to manually stitch them together). I use it quite a lot. It cost $2.99 and I think I've gotten way more out of it (friends wondering what the heck I was doing with the iPhone and being wow'd by the resulting picture that I emailed once I sync'd with my MacBook). Should I quit with learning iPhone SDK since the market is so competitive? I've rationalized to continue the learning curve (more off than on though) because I want to write some apps that I would personally use. I will probably get the $99/yr license just to deploy my own apps once I make it up the learning curve. It's not about an embarrassment of iPhone app riches - it's about an interesting new hobby - one that your non-geek friends (who likely have an iPhone) might appreciate eventually.
    - mmilenko 18y ago
      All the statements of course 100% audited and true. Have I got some pills to sell you that will make you huge man!
    - pxlpshr 18y ago
      (2) "I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff." ### I can't believe he has the audacity to brag about making 41 crap applications that take less than a day to build. Maybe I'm making a presumptuous statement, but I seriously doubt his apps are as useful as he claims. This is exactly the problem with the store, particularly when you combine it with the broken economics driving it. I'm an iPhone developer and consumer, and my days of searching for great apps are gone because of developers like him. Affluent/older customers are pushed out while the children with hours of time on their hands are searching for .99 novelty apps, so you couple that with 24-hour volume driven charts = perpetual waste land. Now I just wait for the media to report on a cool new app or via twitter, but then this type of group-think strips away the charm of the AppStore in regard to finding awesome indie developer creations. We've got 5 applications (1 is pending approval), and 4 of which took much longer than a month to build before releasing version 1.0. Since version 1.0, we've spent a lot more time than that continuing to improve the products and listening to our customers. We've had modest success but nobody has quit their day job. The problem with guys quoted above, they build these shit apps with limited functionality and no long-term vision, but they insist on gaming the system and releasing 'faux' updates so their shit apps dominate page 1 of each category. In turn, developers who are seriously committed to making a good product are over-shadowed by parasitic profit scrapers and the 30% cut given to Apple for distribution/marketing benefits are minimized. In addition, the 30% cut also makes it difficult to have extra funds to advertise outside of the store for bootstrappers. @wallflower — never quit! Do it because you love it, not because you want easy money like most of the schmucks turning the AppStore into crap. If you have a vision, build it, improve it, support it, and thank your customer. Half these guys don't have a clue about building a consumer product or listening to their customers. If Apple is actually listening to the complaints (speculation that they like the volume-driven charts to churn sales), then the long-tail looks pretty good.
- Zev 18y ago
  What makes that extra $3 more important then the initial $2? Its still less then how much you spend on a coffee or a lunch during a single morning/afternoon. //edit: Real question here. Especially since I'm (and I'm assuming others are) looking at doing iPhone dev at some point in the future.
  - Brushfire 18y ago
    I do not spend $5 on coffee, and it should be a bother if you do. Now, if you get a mega soy chai latte blah bullshit, then whatever. But black coffee? Really?
    - Zev 18y ago
      Thanks for nitpicking at the example I gave instead of answering my question. Very helpful :) Though, I feel like i need to defend my coffee drinking habits; Since when is there something special about a large iced latte at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts + tax when its hot out during the summer?
      - Jakob 18y ago
        I spend 90 cents on coffee here in Italy. So this game has to bring me the joy of five coffees at once. Hardly doable. $5 is too much. I don’t understand why the author doesn’t try other pricing strategies.
        mmilenko 18y ago
        For the umpteenth color matching bejeweled wannabe, $5 indeed is ridiculous. btw, here in Sudan I can shoot people for free. And they expect me to pay $60 for FPS games?
      - barrkel 18y ago
        hot out = pain; iced latte = relief. Where is the pain and where is the relief in TFA? And is it worth 5USD?
      - 18y ago
- patio11 18y ago
  I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent, but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional. You are hardly alone in this point of view among iPhone users I have heard from. I mean this as no disrespect to you personally: software writers who intend to make something with a little more functionality than "farts, belches, and wiggles" should probably choose a customer base which pays a wee bit more money for applications. (A little bird mentioned "grown women" to me.) I have a lot of difficulty doing the math on how advertising is supposed to make money at the $1.00 price point. It took a bit of work for me at $25, even though my clicks cost a few pennies. Are the conversion rates for iPhone apps just stratospherically high (10%+ of clicks on an ad) or are people just hoping the advertising kicks off the snowball to get you on the most popular list?
  - DenisM 18y ago
    Eh... what's with grown women?
    - amvp 18y ago
      I think he just meant them as the opposite of the little-boy demographic to whom a fart app would appeal.
      - jibiki 18y ago
        Also, grown women are the stereotypical audience for "casual games" (match 3s and such.) Whether this corresponds to reality, I have no idea.
      - patio11 18y ago
        No, I just meant that grown women are a demographic which does not actively resist paying money for software. I sell to them, and sometimes feel like I'm the only one in the world doing so. You know how many complaints about price I've heard in the last 3 years? One, and she was really complaining about the bug that was preventing her from getting her $30's worth. BigFish and the other casual companies have conclusively demonstrated, by the way, that women will pay $20 for a good match 3 game.
- cubicle67 18y ago
  From my (very limited) experience, price has little impact on sales. I have conducted a few experiments with my app, and found sales the same regardless of pricing (tested $1 and $2). What makes a huge difference, is how far from the front page you are, meaning the absolute best thing you can do for sales is release regular updates.
  - eddylu 18y ago
    From my app store experience, pricing an app $1 or $2 doesn't make that big of a difference, but pricing an app in the $3+ range causes a huge sales drop off.
  - ssharp 18y ago
    While I agree completely with the updates comment, I don't think you're in a position to comment on pricing given that your only experience is with testing $1 vs. $2. Pricing is a game of reward and risk. If the perceived reward is in line with the risk of getting the reward, you've found a starting line for your price. The thing with the app store is that there seems to be a very steep price/reward curve. At the low-end, the $1/$2 level, iPhone users seem to be okay just throwing their money around. When you start moving from there, the app is going to need something to push it over the edge. While I don't follow the available apps very closely, I'd venture to say the competition in the $5 level is a little steeper. You're probably dealing with large software companies (who's name reduces perceived risk), established brands (again reducing risk), and a decent promotional mix of advertising and PR. A "lite" version should be on the radar of EVERY game developer. I don't see a good way around it unless you can consistently get good online reviews and coverage. You need a way to reduce that risk to the consumer and giving them a demo product is a way to do it. I'd package the lite version with some sort of messaging system too so that if you decide to do another game, you can pump ads into your old lite versions for the new games. With the lite version, you need to convert people to the full version, and drive as many marketing messages to the users as possible without becoming ridiculous.
wmf 18y ago
Flagged for blogspam (the original link is http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-p... and I don't see much value added by the Mobile Orchard post), yet it has 11 points. Something is not working here.
- jrockway 18y ago
  Yeah, the app isn't even written in Erlang! (Seriously though, I don't think this is spam.)
- petercooper 18y ago
  I'm an editor at Mobile Orchard. I didn't post this here or encourage anyone else to post it. It is not spam (come on, the #53 ranked user submitted it!). Get your facts straight before slandering others in future. Mobile Orchard's value is that it provides iPhone developers with summaries of the latest news relevant to them as well as editorial content. This post is a summary. It still has value to our audience (2000+ iPhone developers). And, clearly our headline was of value.. except it's now being used without credit to link directly to the poorly titled original. Ethics? What were they again?
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
gojomo 18y ago
So, it's not a first-month slam-dunk instant-payback project. What if a trickle of further reviews, word-of-mouth, and incremental low-cost marketing (minor updates, free 'lite' version, half-off promos, light SEO) results in ~$500/month revenue for many months or years with very little cost in time? What if some of the code or lessons learned mean the next similar app only takes $10K investment to make, and makes more than $500/month from the get-go? The only problem here -- if any -- is sky-high expectations for the first step up to the plate.
- JabavuAdams 18y ago
  Yup. What I'm seeing again and again is that developers under-estimate what consumers are willing to pay for (i.e. devs do too much, too soon). My first app did about 340 sales in the first month, for a development cost of $0 + 6 hours of time. I haven't had a day of 0 sales yet, and I'm not nearly played out in terms of updates and improvements.
swombat 18y ago
Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get some very interesting data. $5 isn't much for an app, but you have to remember that this is a game - a very special kind of app that's not actually useful. It's perfectly possible that your sales will increase enough by decreasing the price so that you'll find yourself profitable. Of course, there's no guarantee of that.
- JabavuAdams 18y ago
  > Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get some very interesting data. Yes.
tlrobinson 18y ago
The (easiest) path to riches on the App Store seems to be lots of quick little apps that may or may not be hits, rather than spending 6 months and $32k on one app and assuming it will be a success. Unfortunately this leads to a lot of crappy applications. Ironically (?) this guy will probably have a huge spike in sales of the app due the attention he's receiving (and people feeling sorry for him)
- barrkel 18y ago
  Yeah, a whole 4x ( http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-effect/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-... ), up to 17 from 4! I would have bought it myself if it was <2USD, considered it for <3USD. At 5USD, I would need to be in some kind of pain of boredom to consider buying it.
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    True. I suspect if he temporarily lowered the price to $2-3 while he was getting all this attention he could have gotten a lot more sales. I have very similar price thresholds to yours. He missed out, and perhaps that says something about why his product isn't doing too well.
- netcan 18y ago
  Sounds non startup-friendly. ;)
yesimahuman 18y ago
You can't justify $4.99 unless you are touchgrind or you have a really awesome game. No one is going to know your game is the shit unless they can try it, and $4.99 is past the compulsive threshold.
Oxryly 18y ago
So he's on the the low end of the long tail. Where the vast majority of iPhone apps dwell....
petercooper 18y ago
By the way, thanks to whichever moderator thought it was cool to steal our headline but change the link. Finally, a headline of mine that wasn't changed because it sucked, just the URL ;)
Lerc 18y ago
I once made an argument for a standardised disclosure of platform performance. My argument was targeted at game portals such as RealArcade, Big fish and the like. The same thing would apply for iPhone app sales. The publisher (in this case apple) should state the median (and possibly percentile points for 75% and 25%) return for developers on the platform. People didn't think much of the idea when I proposed it for portals, but I still think it's a fair thing to ask. It lets you know how much you can expect to make if you do better than average. If the numbers are good then publishers should be proud to state those numbers. Refusing to disclose such information in the face of requests should be seen as a warning sign to all developers.

128 points by twampss 18y ago

tvon 18y ago

The note at the end about the lack of advertising, the lack of a free "lite" version and the $4.99 price point are, IMO, the red flags (aside from the whole "not everyone is going to get rich off of the app store" thing). Honestly, the advertising could probably be skimped on if there was a free version and a lower price point. I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent, but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional.

nikblack 18y ago
that is exactly why it isn't converting well. he should have noticed that after the kotaku review - but instead he submitted it to slashdot and burnt through 100k potential users. all those people who have already visited won't take a second look after he lowers the price. its too late for that - he should have realized the price was wrong and that he needed a lite version after the poor kotaku conversion rate.
TomOfTTB 18y ago
I agree that the issues you raise probably contributed to this apps failure. But I think the underlying point is still an important one. For some reason many in the development community seem to see the iPhone as some great untapped market where you can make easy money. When the reality is the iPhone/iPod Touch platform is probably the most competitive market out there right now. There are already 25,000 iPhone apps after just 8 months and all reports seem to indicate that the growth rate is quickening. So you better have some significant resources behind you if you want to get noticed.
- wallflower 18y ago
  Some different perspectives/more optimistic experiences: (1) "I never made close to the amount of money iFart did, but my app LifeTimer paid 2 mortgage payments (therefore paying for the dev license AND the iPhone.) My suggestion is to download the SDK first, play with it, and if you get a good start on an app then pay the $100." (2) "I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff." http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page=3 http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page... The reality of the iPhone app store is sobering. If you build something average or maybe a little above average, they will not come in droves. I believe if you build something truly kick-ass and inform the right influencers - word of mouth via Twitter will get you on TechCrunch and its ilk in 24 hours or less. I also believe, however, that there will always be a small market for iPhone apps that are relatively novel and/or useful on a daily basis (useful: Tweetie is the best paid Twitter client in my opinion - integrated Summize search). For example of something that is novel, iPhone Pano (guides you through taking six photos and stitches them into a fairly impressive panoramic photo - you used to need Photoshop/Gimp to manually stitch them together). I use it quite a lot. It cost $2.99 and I think I've gotten way more out of it (friends wondering what the heck I was doing with the iPhone and being wow'd by the resulting picture that I emailed once I sync'd with my MacBook). Should I quit with learning iPhone SDK since the market is so competitive? I've rationalized to continue the learning curve (more off than on though) because I want to write some apps that I would personally use. I will probably get the $99/yr license just to deploy my own apps once I make it up the learning curve. It's not about an embarrassment of iPhone app riches - it's about an interesting new hobby - one that your non-geek friends (who likely have an iPhone) might appreciate eventually.
  - mmilenko 18y ago
    All the statements of course 100% audited and true. Have I got some pills to sell you that will make you huge man!
  - pxlpshr 18y ago
    (2) "I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff." ### I can't believe he has the audacity to brag about making 41 crap applications that take less than a day to build. Maybe I'm making a presumptuous statement, but I seriously doubt his apps are as useful as he claims. This is exactly the problem with the store, particularly when you combine it with the broken economics driving it. I'm an iPhone developer and consumer, and my days of searching for great apps are gone because of developers like him. Affluent/older customers are pushed out while the children with hours of time on their hands are searching for .99 novelty apps, so you couple that with 24-hour volume driven charts = perpetual waste land. Now I just wait for the media to report on a cool new app or via twitter, but then this type of group-think strips away the charm of the AppStore in regard to finding awesome indie developer creations. We've got 5 applications (1 is pending approval), and 4 of which took much longer than a month to build before releasing version 1.0. Since version 1.0, we've spent a lot more time than that continuing to improve the products and listening to our customers. We've had modest success but nobody has quit their day job. The problem with guys quoted above, they build these shit apps with limited functionality and no long-term vision, but they insist on gaming the system and releasing 'faux' updates so their shit apps dominate page 1 of each category. In turn, developers who are seriously committed to making a good product are over-shadowed by parasitic profit scrapers and the 30% cut given to Apple for distribution/marketing benefits are minimized. In addition, the 30% cut also makes it difficult to have extra funds to advertise outside of the store for bootstrappers. @wallflower — never quit! Do it because you love it, not because you want easy money like most of the schmucks turning the AppStore into crap. If you have a vision, build it, improve it, support it, and thank your customer. Half these guys don't have a clue about building a consumer product or listening to their customers. If Apple is actually listening to the complaints (speculation that they like the volume-driven charts to churn sales), then the long-tail looks pretty good.
Zev 18y ago
What makes that extra $3 more important then the initial $2? Its still less then how much you spend on a coffee or a lunch during a single morning/afternoon. //edit: Real question here. Especially since I'm (and I'm assuming others are) looking at doing iPhone dev at some point in the future.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  I do not spend $5 on coffee, and it should be a bother if you do. Now, if you get a mega soy chai latte blah bullshit, then whatever. But black coffee? Really?
  - Zev 18y ago
    Thanks for nitpicking at the example I gave instead of answering my question. Very helpful :) Though, I feel like i need to defend my coffee drinking habits; Since when is there something special about a large iced latte at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts + tax when its hot out during the summer?
    - Jakob 18y ago
      I spend 90 cents on coffee here in Italy. So this game has to bring me the joy of five coffees at once. Hardly doable. $5 is too much. I don’t understand why the author doesn’t try other pricing strategies.
      - mmilenko 18y ago
        For the umpteenth color matching bejeweled wannabe, $5 indeed is ridiculous. btw, here in Sudan I can shoot people for free. And they expect me to pay $60 for FPS games?
    - barrkel 18y ago
      hot out = pain; iced latte = relief. Where is the pain and where is the relief in TFA? And is it worth 5USD?
    - 18y ago
patio11 18y ago
I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent, but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional. You are hardly alone in this point of view among iPhone users I have heard from. I mean this as no disrespect to you personally: software writers who intend to make something with a little more functionality than "farts, belches, and wiggles" should probably choose a customer base which pays a wee bit more money for applications. (A little bird mentioned "grown women" to me.) I have a lot of difficulty doing the math on how advertising is supposed to make money at the $1.00 price point. It took a bit of work for me at $25, even though my clicks cost a few pennies. Are the conversion rates for iPhone apps just stratospherically high (10%+ of clicks on an ad) or are people just hoping the advertising kicks off the snowball to get you on the most popular list?
- DenisM 18y ago
  Eh... what's with grown women?
  - amvp 18y ago
    I think he just meant them as the opposite of the little-boy demographic to whom a fart app would appeal.
    - jibiki 18y ago
      Also, grown women are the stereotypical audience for "casual games" (match 3s and such.) Whether this corresponds to reality, I have no idea.
    - patio11 18y ago
      No, I just meant that grown women are a demographic which does not actively resist paying money for software. I sell to them, and sometimes feel like I'm the only one in the world doing so. You know how many complaints about price I've heard in the last 3 years? One, and she was really complaining about the bug that was preventing her from getting her $30's worth. BigFish and the other casual companies have conclusively demonstrated, by the way, that women will pay $20 for a good match 3 game.
cubicle67 18y ago
From my (very limited) experience, price has little impact on sales. I have conducted a few experiments with my app, and found sales the same regardless of pricing (tested $1 and $2). What makes a huge difference, is how far from the front page you are, meaning the absolute best thing you can do for sales is release regular updates.
- eddylu 18y ago
  From my app store experience, pricing an app $1 or $2 doesn't make that big of a difference, but pricing an app in the $3+ range causes a huge sales drop off.
- ssharp 18y ago
  While I agree completely with the updates comment, I don't think you're in a position to comment on pricing given that your only experience is with testing $1 vs. $2. Pricing is a game of reward and risk. If the perceived reward is in line with the risk of getting the reward, you've found a starting line for your price. The thing with the app store is that there seems to be a very steep price/reward curve. At the low-end, the $1/$2 level, iPhone users seem to be okay just throwing their money around. When you start moving from there, the app is going to need something to push it over the edge. While I don't follow the available apps very closely, I'd venture to say the competition in the $5 level is a little steeper. You're probably dealing with large software companies (who's name reduces perceived risk), established brands (again reducing risk), and a decent promotional mix of advertising and PR. A "lite" version should be on the radar of EVERY game developer. I don't see a good way around it unless you can consistently get good online reviews and coverage. You need a way to reduce that risk to the consumer and giving them a demo product is a way to do it. I'd package the lite version with some sort of messaging system too so that if you decide to do another game, you can pump ads into your old lite versions for the new games. With the lite version, you need to convert people to the full version, and drive as many marketing messages to the users as possible without becoming ridiculous.

wmf 18y ago

Flagged for blogspam (the original link is http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-p... and I don't see much value added by the Mobile Orchard post), yet it has 11 points. Something is not working here.

jrockway 18y ago
Yeah, the app isn't even written in Erlang! (Seriously though, I don't think this is spam.)
petercooper 18y ago
I'm an editor at Mobile Orchard. I didn't post this here or encourage anyone else to post it. It is not spam (come on, the #53 ranked user submitted it!). Get your facts straight before slandering others in future. Mobile Orchard's value is that it provides iPhone developers with summaries of the latest news relevant to them as well as editorial content. This post is a summary. It still has value to our audience (2000+ iPhone developers). And, clearly our headline was of value.. except it's now being used without credit to link directly to the poorly titled original. Ethics? What were they again?

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

gojomo 18y ago

So, it's not a first-month slam-dunk instant-payback project. What if a trickle of further reviews, word-of-mouth, and incremental low-cost marketing (minor updates, free 'lite' version, half-off promos, light SEO) results in ~$500/month revenue for many months or years with very little cost in time? What if some of the code or lessons learned mean the next similar app only takes $10K investment to make, and makes more than $500/month from the get-go? The only problem here -- if any -- is sky-high expectations for the first step up to the plate.

JabavuAdams 18y ago
Yup. What I'm seeing again and again is that developers under-estimate what consumers are willing to pay for (i.e. devs do too much, too soon). My first app did about 340 sales in the first month, for a development cost of $0 + 6 hours of time. I haven't had a day of 0 sales yet, and I'm not nearly played out in terms of updates and improvements.

swombat 18y ago

Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get some very interesting data. $5 isn't much for an app, but you have to remember that this is a game - a very special kind of app that's not actually useful. It's perfectly possible that your sales will increase enough by decreasing the price so that you'll find yourself profitable. Of course, there's no guarantee of that.

JabavuAdams 18y ago
> Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get some very interesting data. Yes.

tlrobinson 18y ago

The (easiest) path to riches on the App Store seems to be lots of quick little apps that may or may not be hits, rather than spending 6 months and $32k on one app and assuming it will be a success. Unfortunately this leads to a lot of crappy applications. Ironically (?) this guy will probably have a huge spike in sales of the app due the attention he's receiving (and people feeling sorry for him)

barrkel 18y ago
Yeah, a whole 4x ( http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-effect/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-... ), up to 17 from 4! I would have bought it myself if it was <2USD, considered it for <3USD. At 5USD, I would need to be in some kind of pain of boredom to consider buying it.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  True. I suspect if he temporarily lowered the price to $2-3 while he was getting all this attention he could have gotten a lot more sales. I have very similar price thresholds to yours. He missed out, and perhaps that says something about why his product isn't doing too well.
netcan 18y ago
Sounds non startup-friendly. ;)

yesimahuman 18y ago

You can't justify $4.99 unless you are touchgrind or you have a really awesome game. No one is going to know your game is the shit unless they can try it, and $4.99 is past the compulsive threshold.

Oxryly 18y ago

So he's on the the low end of the long tail. Where the vast majority of iPhone apps dwell....

petercooper 18y ago

By the way, thanks to whichever moderator thought it was cool to steal our headline but change the link. Finally, a headline of mine that wasn't changed because it sucked, just the URL ;)

Lerc 18y ago

I once made an argument for a standardised disclosure of platform performance. My argument was targeted at game portals such as RealArcade, Big fish and the like. The same thing would apply for iPhone app sales. The publisher (in this case apple) should state the median (and possibly percentile points for 75% and 25%) return for developers on the platform. People didn't think much of the idea when I proposed it for portals, but I still think it's a fair thing to ask. It lets you know how much you can expect to make if you do better than average. If the numbers are good then publishers should be proud to state those numbers. Refusing to disclose such information in the face of requests should be seen as a warning sign to all developers.