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Another developer who fails to grasp the difference between distribution (the App Store) and marketing (the bit you must do to raise awareness of your applicati

by ajg1977 17y ago

Another developer who fails to grasp the difference between distribution (the App Store) and marketing (the bit you must do to raise awareness of your application).

wvenable 17y ago
Yes, but the app store is 99% of the marketing for iPhone applications. And their are other issues, like the app store approval process, for example.
- tienshiao 17y ago
  I don't see why the developers can't do additional marketing outside of the App Store. If the App Store didn't exist they would need to do their normal indie developer advertising. Why can't they do that now? And just treat random App Store sales as gravy? So the dude becomes an indie Mac developer. He's going to have advertise and promote his new Mac app. Why can't he do the same with the iPhone app?
  - pclark 17y ago
    number of reasons make it much harder to advertise to the app store. there's so many steps. you go from your marketing iPhone site, to the app store page of you app, and then you have the chance to buy it. thats at least one, if not two more steps. why can't you have a nice big "buy now" button on your website? it's a black box. you can't see what works, you have no way of knowing if 75% of your tweets convert into a sale, and only 10% via fusionads.net - its not possible to tell. iTunes or iPhone only. Good luck buying an app if you're at work, or on any computer where you don't have your iPhone set up on. Instantly preventing a) apps over 10MB from being installed, b) the casual news browsing "oh that looks like a cool app" you do whilst at work. no refunds or trials. it prevents users from downloading ~$5 applications just because - you're not allowed to make apps that "explode" after 30 days. If you give away free trial apps thats fine, but a ton more work for the developer. and lets ignore the fact you might get your application held up for weeks after you've been told it'll launch 1st August - after you've got all your press ready and such, they might just decide to not release it then. no reason why. note: we're launching an iPhone app, and i agree with you - its all about the marketing, and thats why I've switched from dev to marketing for the next ~2 months before launch to get our iPhone app rocking.
    - mechanical_fish 17y ago
      These are all valid complaints. And yet, somewhere, a Procter and Gamble marketing executive from the 1950s is laughing at you. Before 1997 (more or less) companies built mighty marketing empires on print ads, radio ads, and TV ads. No direct way to track sales, except for coupons, which had a down-market vibe. No selling soap to people while at work -- people had to physically go to a store to buy. (People at work couldn't even see the ads for your soap, unless they were allowed to read the paper on the job.) Yeah, there were refunds and trials for many products, but they required driving back to the store to return something. It was like the dark ages! And, yet, go to a grocery store, or even a toy store, and count the successful products that were launched back then. My interpretation of the current iPhone developer malaise is that the gold rush is over. Many of the people making theatrical exits from the platform are its fair-weather friends -- they were bound to leave, in droves, once they discovered that it's no longer a matter of putting up your farting app on the Store and watching the money roll in. The reason 99% of iPhone app marketing is via the Store is that this strategy used to work, in the early days, so nobody bothered to learn any other strategy. Now, faced with the grim reality that marketing software is slow, patient work, a lot of people are getting right back out of the business again, or desperately lobbying Apple to somehow turn the magic spigot back on (as if their competitors will vanish once Apple fixes some of its problems). Or they're cutting their prices to the bone, starving themselves in the process, like a desperate gambler throwing everything into the pot. I was just reading about the real California gold rush. In 1848 you could literally walk to the right place in the Sierras, turn over one rock, and find a gold nugget the size of your fist. By 1849 thousands of miners had arrived and had turned over every rock, there was no more easy money to be made, and a lot of aspiring miners were staggering around the landscape, hungry and poor. Of course, the majority of the gold was actually mined in later years, by mining companies using gigantic hoses that could turn entire mountains into dust and pass the dust through separators. But that required capital, and a relatively long-term plan. The pick-and-shovel miners often preferred to just look around for the next gold rush; a lot of them ran greedily to Alaska when gold was found there. Not such a great plan: The post-rush climate was a lot colder and harsher in Alaska.
      - pxlpshr 17y ago
there 17y ago
when your application is only available through that one distribution channel, your marketing ability and effectiveness are pretty limited.
- ajg1977 17y ago
  Rubbish. How on earth does a distribution channel limit ones marketing ability? These are completely orthogonal aspects of producing a successful product. Do you think movie studios hope that you'll stumble across their film by looking at the show times of your local theater? Do Authors pray that you'll stumble across their book in the M-R fiction section of a bookstore?
  - kalid 17y ago
    Unfortunately, smaller independent films and authors probably do hope you stumble upon their works -- it's notoriously difficult to sell books unless you are picked up by a major publisher. I think his point is that things like the App store should be more of a meritocracy (like the web), but it's becoming increasingly difficult for smaller players to get noticed to due the economics (strong downward pricing pressure) and Apple's policies (random rejection can destroy months of work). One thing they don't mention is how difficult it is to figure out where your sales are coming from; there's no Google analytics or referrer logs for app sales -- you have to do things like become your own affiliate through LinkShare and assign different codes to your own links if you have multiple distribution channels.
    - olefoo 17y ago
      A list of all the things one can do to raise the profile and track the marketing of a single developer app would be a useful resource. Hell, if you put together a decent sized ebook, it would probably be a reasonable successful product. If you could reach the right audience.
  - vannevar 17y ago
    You're right that the App Store distribution channel does not limit a developer's marketing ability. It does, however, limit the pricing. The App Store is structured to directly reward high sales with exposure, creating a feedback loop that drives prices down. As an indie developer, I can support a modest marketing budget that creates modest sales if I can charge $29 for my app, but I can't do it at 99 cents. Not all distribution channels are created equal, and this particular one is so biased toward high volume/low price that an indie can't get any traction.
axiom 17y ago
The problem is that when you're forced to sell your product for $0.99 (actually $0.69) none of the traditional marketing methods are cost effective. So the only way to make money is either getting mainstream press coverage, or having Apple feature your app. Both of those are random events unless you have a brand name or a big marketing budget. The bottom line is that publishing an app is essentially playing the lottery.
- pyre 17y ago
  You don't necessarily have to have a huge marketing budget to get you app out there. It's possible things like freebies and word of mouth to get you product off the ground.. that is assuming that it's any good. And if you have a particular niche market/customer base that you are aiming at you should already know what forums/places that they frequent. Just figure out a way to get the message/word of mouth to them. Offer a limited amount of 'free' copies as a 'beta' test round or something. Make sure you have an open dialog if it is a close-knit community. Or consider purchasing some sort of targeted advertising on those particular sites... It's not too hard to come up with a laundry list of things to attempt. I'm sure that people smarter than I at marketing have book galore to peruse... People complaining because the AppStore isn't doing a good enough job of marketing _for_ them don't gain any sympathy from me.

by ajg1977 17y ago

Another developer who fails to grasp the difference between distribution (the App Store) and marketing (the bit you must do to raise awareness of your application).

wvenable 17y ago

Yes, but the app store is 99% of the marketing for iPhone applications. And their are other issues, like the app store approval process, for example.

tienshiao 17y ago
I don't see why the developers can't do additional marketing outside of the App Store. If the App Store didn't exist they would need to do their normal indie developer advertising. Why can't they do that now? And just treat random App Store sales as gravy? So the dude becomes an indie Mac developer. He's going to have advertise and promote his new Mac app. Why can't he do the same with the iPhone app?
- pclark 17y ago
  number of reasons make it much harder to advertise to the app store. there's so many steps. you go from your marketing iPhone site, to the app store page of you app, and then you have the chance to buy it. thats at least one, if not two more steps. why can't you have a nice big "buy now" button on your website? it's a black box. you can't see what works, you have no way of knowing if 75% of your tweets convert into a sale, and only 10% via fusionads.net - its not possible to tell. iTunes or iPhone only. Good luck buying an app if you're at work, or on any computer where you don't have your iPhone set up on. Instantly preventing a) apps over 10MB from being installed, b) the casual news browsing "oh that looks like a cool app" you do whilst at work. no refunds or trials. it prevents users from downloading ~$5 applications just because - you're not allowed to make apps that "explode" after 30 days. If you give away free trial apps thats fine, but a ton more work for the developer. and lets ignore the fact you might get your application held up for weeks after you've been told it'll launch 1st August - after you've got all your press ready and such, they might just decide to not release it then. no reason why. note: we're launching an iPhone app, and i agree with you - its all about the marketing, and thats why I've switched from dev to marketing for the next ~2 months before launch to get our iPhone app rocking.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    These are all valid complaints. And yet, somewhere, a Procter and Gamble marketing executive from the 1950s is laughing at you. Before 1997 (more or less) companies built mighty marketing empires on print ads, radio ads, and TV ads. No direct way to track sales, except for coupons, which had a down-market vibe. No selling soap to people while at work -- people had to physically go to a store to buy. (People at work couldn't even see the ads for your soap, unless they were allowed to read the paper on the job.) Yeah, there were refunds and trials for many products, but they required driving back to the store to return something. It was like the dark ages! And, yet, go to a grocery store, or even a toy store, and count the successful products that were launched back then. My interpretation of the current iPhone developer malaise is that the gold rush is over. Many of the people making theatrical exits from the platform are its fair-weather friends -- they were bound to leave, in droves, once they discovered that it's no longer a matter of putting up your farting app on the Store and watching the money roll in. The reason 99% of iPhone app marketing is via the Store is that this strategy used to work, in the early days, so nobody bothered to learn any other strategy. Now, faced with the grim reality that marketing software is slow, patient work, a lot of people are getting right back out of the business again, or desperately lobbying Apple to somehow turn the magic spigot back on (as if their competitors will vanish once Apple fixes some of its problems). Or they're cutting their prices to the bone, starving themselves in the process, like a desperate gambler throwing everything into the pot. I was just reading about the real California gold rush. In 1848 you could literally walk to the right place in the Sierras, turn over one rock, and find a gold nugget the size of your fist. By 1849 thousands of miners had arrived and had turned over every rock, there was no more easy money to be made, and a lot of aspiring miners were staggering around the landscape, hungry and poor. Of course, the majority of the gold was actually mined in later years, by mining companies using gigantic hoses that could turn entire mountains into dust and pass the dust through separators. But that required capital, and a relatively long-term plan. The pick-and-shovel miners often preferred to just look around for the next gold rush; a lot of them ran greedily to Alaska when gold was found there. Not such a great plan: The post-rush climate was a lot colder and harsher in Alaska.
    - pxlpshr 17y ago

there 17y ago

when your application is only available through that one distribution channel, your marketing ability and effectiveness are pretty limited.

ajg1977 17y ago
Rubbish. How on earth does a distribution channel limit ones marketing ability? These are completely orthogonal aspects of producing a successful product. Do you think movie studios hope that you'll stumble across their film by looking at the show times of your local theater? Do Authors pray that you'll stumble across their book in the M-R fiction section of a bookstore?
- kalid 17y ago
  Unfortunately, smaller independent films and authors probably do hope you stumble upon their works -- it's notoriously difficult to sell books unless you are picked up by a major publisher. I think his point is that things like the App store should be more of a meritocracy (like the web), but it's becoming increasingly difficult for smaller players to get noticed to due the economics (strong downward pricing pressure) and Apple's policies (random rejection can destroy months of work). One thing they don't mention is how difficult it is to figure out where your sales are coming from; there's no Google analytics or referrer logs for app sales -- you have to do things like become your own affiliate through LinkShare and assign different codes to your own links if you have multiple distribution channels.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    A list of all the things one can do to raise the profile and track the marketing of a single developer app would be a useful resource. Hell, if you put together a decent sized ebook, it would probably be a reasonable successful product. If you could reach the right audience.
- vannevar 17y ago
  You're right that the App Store distribution channel does not limit a developer's marketing ability. It does, however, limit the pricing. The App Store is structured to directly reward high sales with exposure, creating a feedback loop that drives prices down. As an indie developer, I can support a modest marketing budget that creates modest sales if I can charge $29 for my app, but I can't do it at 99 cents. Not all distribution channels are created equal, and this particular one is so biased toward high volume/low price that an indie can't get any traction.

axiom 17y ago

The problem is that when you're forced to sell your product for $0.99 (actually $0.69) none of the traditional marketing methods are cost effective. So the only way to make money is either getting mainstream press coverage, or having Apple feature your app. Both of those are random events unless you have a brand name or a big marketing budget. The bottom line is that publishing an app is essentially playing the lottery.

pyre 17y ago
You don't necessarily have to have a huge marketing budget to get you app out there. It's possible things like freebies and word of mouth to get you product off the ground.. that is assuming that it's any good. And if you have a particular niche market/customer base that you are aiming at you should already know what forums/places that they frequent. Just figure out a way to get the message/word of mouth to them. Offer a limited amount of 'free' copies as a 'beta' test round or something. Make sure you have an open dialog if it is a close-knit community. Or consider purchasing some sort of targeted advertising on those particular sites... It's not too hard to come up with a laundry list of things to attempt. I'm sure that people smarter than I at marketing have book galore to peruse... People complaining because the AppStore isn't doing a good enough job of marketing _for_ them don't gain any sympathy from me.