11 ms·

The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

140 points by checker659 11y ago

navait 11y ago
Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on, that's a pretty good ROI for your time.
- patmcguire 11y ago
  "Redacted, which peaked at No. 2 on the Mac App Store, sold 1,845 copies through May 19 and earned $6,600" That seems to be a low ceiling on success, no?
  - navait 11y ago
    Maybe I just have low standards for success, but $220^H^H^H160/hour sounds pretty good to me. Also if it's sucessful on mac app store, a $2 version on iOS/android might be viable.
    - allsystemsgo 11y ago
      Well, you also have to take out Apple's cut (30%), plus taxes.
  - xienze 11y ago
    That's not bad for a passive income stream, and for only having spent 30 hours on it.
    - pidg 11y ago
      And for an app that just lets you selectively blur out bits of images. GIMP can do that in seconds, for free. It's indicative of the state of the App Store that there are so many apps like this. The worst culprits - in my view - are 'distraction-free text editors'. I guess if the market is there for a $20 text editor that does nothing, then people are going to try to exploit it.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  I seriously doubt you could design, develop, prep, submit app, and market for 30 hours and have anything that anyone would download for free, let alone pay $5 for. The sheer volume of users doesn't obviate the fact that there's a minimum level of quality for discoverability to kick in.
  - suby 11y ago
    30 hours is the amount of time the author of Redacted claims to have spent developing the app.
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      That's just development. There's time spent on support, marketing, prepping app store submission, responding to interview questions, etc.
    - igrekel 11y ago
      Plus the amount of time it took to master the language, the framework, the platform etc. before even starting to develop the app.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - DrJokepu 11y ago
    I have actually done exactly that. Twice. If I can do it, anyone can.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      Mind sharing? I didn't see apps on your site.
      - DrJokepu 11y ago
        I don't want to get into specifics because I have abandoned their development and support a long time ago. The first one was a developer tool priced around $10, the second one was a more generic IT productivity tool priced around $5. They've both made around $10-15K over the years. In the end I had to abandon them because sales started to drop more and more every month and continued development didn't seem to stop that.
- marvel_boy 11y ago
  An app in 30 hours? Believe me that this is not the usual time it takes to build an app !
  - thebouv 11y ago
    That's not what all the articles and media are telling me. I can spend almost no time on an iOS app and make myself rich. Even kids can do it. According to the hype. So it must be true.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I'd be curious where you're getting any kind of hype that states "I can spend almost no time".
      - thebouv 11y ago
        I'm curious how you haven't seen any miracle articles of the kids who just learn iOS programming in a week, spend a few hours on a game, and make serious cash. For the longest time those were coming out weekly, which always made my boss say "Why can't we do that?"
  - prawn 11y ago
    Exactly. You can spend 30 hours just preparing screenshots in various languages and device sizes, preview video and so on.
- xienze 11y ago
  People are also forgetting that the time spent writing an app in your free time is "fun", or should be. I program in my free time for fun, getting paid after the fact is gravy. Getting paid $6600 for 30 hours of fun time (or so he says) is awesome.
  - outworlder 11y ago
    Yeah, if you have no expectations at all of getting paid (like, say, Wozniak), a check is a very good surprise. However, since you are jumping through the hoops to get your app approved, you are expecting (or hoping) to get paid to some degree.
coldtea 11y ago
This confuses getting to the top (which depending on the algorithm could just need a small initial spark aroudn your app) with staying at the top. Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. As for the App Store, just like ANY OTHER marketplace, it won't make you rich in itself, just for appearing there and "putting the work"...
- chx 11y ago
  > Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. The article claims the Mac App Store sales is measured in thousands for the top apps. Care to point to your sources which claim three magnitudes more?
  - PirateDave 11y ago
    I can back up his claim. I work for a large entertainment company that has a top 50 app, (in top grossing) and it consistently brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. When it was at its highest, around 15, it was bringing in about 400-500k per week.
    - URSpider94 11y ago
      It's a Mac app, not an iOS app?
  - usaphp 11y ago
    https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014
  - coldtea 11y ago
    The article is a bad piece of journalism based on a single sample -- a trivial app that just happened to stay on the top for a short while due to momentum.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  > Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. Paid Mac apps, no. The article is about the Mac App Store, not iOS. Even among iOS, however, the most successful apps are free ones with a viral incentive to do in-app purchases. Most of the top apps have an external influence. 4 of the top 10 come out of Apple. Look at top games on Mac - most of them are major publishers. Even "independent" apps had a following outside of the Mac App Store, like 1Password.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
The bit I found most interesting about this whole Redacted app story, but haven't seen mentioned anywhere, is that the app also happened to be at #1 on Product Hunt for a good portion of that same day.
- xienze 11y ago
  The thing I've found most interesting is this guy has found success by whining about how little he's selling. This has to be the third or fourth separate news source where I've seen this story run.
  - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
    I think that's an unfair characterization of the situation. Sam hasn't mentioned it since it happened. News outlets keep picking up the story because it's about Apple (hot topic), app stores (hot topic), and what most people would assume would be a source of obscene wealth (trending at the top of the chart). But, it's a man bites dog story! The outcome defies typical logic, and so news websites keep running the story.
    - larrys 11y ago
      "News outlets keep picking up the story" If a story is in syndication and "evergreen" in nature it could run on it's own for quite some time. [1] Doing a google search for this particular article it's clear what has happened (although the results are mainly it appears around May 2015) [1] I was featured in a story in the late 90's and could tell every time it hit a new town newspaper because orders would predictably come in from the new area. It all started with a story from the local paper and that was then distributed (Knight Ridder iirc) for any paper anywhere in the US to pick up. In this particular case it did translate into real dollars as well as many years of repeat business.
bluedino 11y ago
On the other hand, the Mac App store isn't as cluttered, and Mac users are much more willing to pay $19.99 or $29.99 for a Mac App. Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  OmniFocus 2 is $39.99 on iPhone and very popular. Their suite is $149.99.
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    Does anyone purchase it for iPhone that hasn't made the investment elsewhere?
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      That's a bit of a goalpost move, isn't it?
      - bdcravens 11y ago
        In what sense? The question is would anyone pay $20 for an iPhone app and I'd say no, unless there's external value. (Though I did pay $49 or whatever back in the day for the TomTom app when it was the first GPS app available on the iPhone)
        ceejayoz 11y ago
        The question was "Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?" I gave an example of a popular one, as do you with TomTom. Disqualifying it because it's most useful coupled with a desktop version is the goalpost move.
    - adiabatty 11y ago
      With Omni apps I have a habit (N=2) of the following: - download desktop trial - buy iOS app - begin to like the combination - buy desktop app
a2tech 11y ago
I think it's taking a long time for the Mac App Store to catch on-but I think it'll get there. When I find an app I want to buy I've gotten in the habit of checking the MAS to see if I can buy it there-I'd rather buy through the MAS and let Apple handle my credit card details and tracking of purchased software. Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your computer is a big change.
- emgeee 11y ago
  As long as Apple continues to take 30% I'm not so sure thats true. Mobile devs put up with it because it's that or nothing but as long as Apple allows you to side load programs on Mac I can't imagine it'll ever make economic sense.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  It's not just a matter of time and resistance to change. Two things that would need to change because they break the expectations of how software has always worked: 1) Upgrade pricing. At best you'll get convoluted instructions on how you can obtain an upgraded version: http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/ https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/ In many cases, you can't go back and forth (bought on website, bought v. 2 on MAS), so you're expecting people to understand that it's a "different" version - imagine if you had to explain that because you bought the Best Buy XBox One, you can't play games purchased at Wal-Mart. 2) Sandboxing. If users are going to pay anything near full price for something they expect full functionality. Due to these headaches, publishers are abandoning the App Store: http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ Personally I wish the MAS was a better solution for the reasons you described (I have purchased a good amount of software there)
- rbritton 11y ago
  I tend to do the opposite. If I find something on the MAS, I usually check for a direct purchase so that the developer gets that additional 30%, I'm eligible for upgrade pricing, and I don't have to wait a week for bug fix updates.
danso 11y ago
Anyone else reluctant to buy through the Mac App store because of the perceived lack of uptake? For example, I've been a longtime owner of a Transmit license...it's worked for years now. If I don't keep up with OS X releases, I can still download past binaries and use the key (within a limit...for example, Transmit 3 owners were required to upgrade to 4.x). But what if the developer decides that it's not worth maintaining the binary on Transmit? Do you get a license key for the App store purchase? From my perception, once you buy into the App store, you're bound to its limited upgrade routine. This has bitten me plenty of times on iOS, where the developer doesn't feel like keeping up with iOS upgrades, leaving you with broken apps with no ability to get them working again. I'm not talking about fly-by-night developers, but AAA developers like Capcom.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  The publisher of Transmit will likely do the right thing. See another title of theirs, Coda: http://www.panic.com/blog/introducing-coda-2-5/ http://www.panic.com/blog/introducing-coda-2-5/ Other publishers have done the same thing. (with regard to upgrade pricing, usually, but I'd assume a similar approach to avoid backlash if they left the MAS) However, your concern still stands, as not everyone will do that.
- dilap 11y ago
  nah, I figure it's not going anywhere, and a lot of the software I bought using homegrown licensing schemes I ended up not using, since it's just too much of a pain in the ass to try to hunt up the licenses and restore everything on a new computer. edit: i do wish apple would relax the sandbox strictness a bit and other editor review criteria so it was a more attractive alternative to self-publishing.
  - micro-ram 11y ago
    I think Apple just needs to review their policy and add another entitlement "Entire Current User Folder ~/" to allow apps that traditionally cannot be sandboxed. I am sure they want us to re-imagine a way for FTP apps to work, but I don't want to change my workflow. I want to be able to browse any folder on my Mac on the left pane. So I won't buy the Mac App Store version. I fully agree with Panic and why they bailed out.
outworlder 11y ago
Go figure. The store limit app developers so much that a lot of otherwise useful software is being sold outside it. A high profile example of that is: https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac-app-store/ https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac...
- bdcravens 11y ago
  Ditto for Coda 2.5
usaphp 11y ago
"dash" app developer says he made $188k+ last year just from App Store alone: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014
- b0sk 11y ago
  But it seems he also includes iOS App Store figures. The original article is about Mac App Stores.
  - kapeli 11y ago
    The Mac App Store is my main revenue source. I released my iOS app in November 2014. The revenue from it wasn't worth mentioning separately in last year's report. This year, the revenue from iOS is around 10% of the Mac app.
mickanio 11y ago
Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd like to see at least SOME mention of that aspect of it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nipponese 11y ago
  Additionally, App Annie ranking is not the same as actual Apple App Store ranking. One should consider the motivation and incentives for AA to hand you a positive rank using methods unknown.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  It's not that you should get rich from such an investment. It's that basically no one is getting rich from the Mac App Store. The desktop app store is a failure in many respects. It did not take off the same way mobile app stores have. As for Monument Valley, that's a pretty poor example. They invested 1.5m and made 5.8m. For a core team of 8 people it's not fuck you money. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc9f7/t/54b80483e4b0f32f8253d06c/1421345934518/?format=1000w https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc... They didn't even make 10x their investment. There is a strong argument to made that a 10x project is the minimum you need just to have a sustainable company. Sustainable! That's a long, long way from rich. http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...
  - emsy 11y ago
    I've read the second article and I think you should take it with a grain of salt. I don't want to elaborate much but I think it's targeted at the "quantity developers" which pump out low to mid quality games, hoping for a hit. On the other end of the spectrum you have quality developers like ustwo who don't need to finance 9 unsucessful games. Of course in reality it's much more complex than that but I don't think that "you need to make 10x your investment" is a hard rule to measure success.
s_dev 11y ago
This explains why they merged iOS dev accounts and Mac accounts at WWDC. I wonder if this will help - I've been an iOS dev for a while and have always been curious to run some open source OS X apps like mpv on my Mac but was restricted.
- realityking 11y ago
  You could always run your own apps (and any random download) on OS X without paying for a developer account. The only thing paying gets you, is access to prerelease software and the Mac App Store.
saturdaysaint 11y ago
As a user, I'm glad it's there as an easy updating mechanism for Apple apps and a store for handy utility apps, but there's not much of a place for a centralized app store on the desktop. Steam poaches the most lucrative category and makers of prominent professional apps don't need any help with digital distribution... what's left? I'd imagine that this hollowing out makes it advantageous for software that might benefit from an app store (say, a $50 nichey app) to avoid it, conditioning/encouraging users to use Google and letting them keep all of the profit. I could hypothesize about ways for Apple to turn the ship around... but I doubt they care. Apple's happy to have something conceptually coherent with iOS - an Apple Store employee can show a college freshman to "just update apps like on your iPhone". They decided long ago not to chase gaming. It's a pretty updating app.
- vitd 11y ago
  I couldn't agree less. The MacOS app store has made it so much easier for me as a user. Apple might not be perfect, but to compare them to Steam? Just last week I had a problem with a Steam app and getting it resolved was farcical. Not to mention that literally every other time I launch Steam, it fails to see the network (even though all my other network apps are working just fine), and I have to quit and restart it. And when it does restart, just as I'm about to click "Play" on a game, a huge honking ad pops up in front of it. And never once has the ad been of any interest to me. Such a horrible user experience. At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works. Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible. There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!
  - saturdaysaint 11y ago
    I wish games would move from Steam to the App Store, but it's not gonna happen. Valve has way more skin in that game and Apple have repeatedly shown that they're not going to compete over a medium dominated by expensive exclusive hits - as we watch Sony and Microsoft fight eachother into irrelevancy, this looks like a wiser and wiser strategy. They'll take their iOS game monopoly, but that's it. The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut), it's probably worth investing a few hours in.
ThomPete 11y ago
I have been lucky and is doing fairly well with Ghostnote on the mac app store. My product is also lucky to be the only one of it's kind as far as I am aware, which means no competitor and plenty of room to grow it. However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good innovation resulting in a lot of apps fighting for the same space. I was top 10 in paid apps for a while and top 5 in productivity apps. On iOS it would normally be pretty good but that meant nothing for my mac sales as such. I realized that the mac app store is purely a distribution channel. It's my product but it's their store and so I am now thinking about them as a Wall Mart with no specific importance as such. I found Google ranking to be much more important plus the ability to sell your product a lot of other places. And so this week we are going to start selling directly from the website with a 14 day trial. We are using paddle.com for that an amazingly good service. I am planning to do a writeup about all this as soon as I have some more numbers. Also as a side note. I would like to see Apple undergo the same scrutiny that we treat our politicians with. When you say you create so and so many jobs you really need to be talking actual jobs that people can live off for that to have any meaning.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  > top 5 in productivity apps. Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing, especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows version and a relationship with a VAR or two and enterprise friendly pricing/terms? I don't see how Apple can help you. You're selling running shoes to people in wheelchairs. Find where the runners are.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - simonh 11y ago
    >Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines People have been saying things like that about apple since forever, yet even NextStep was able to maintain a viable community of full time software developers and companies that exclusively published for the platform. Some of them are still around. Just look at OmniGroup. Do you think they're likely to be doing better nowaday, or worse? The fact is the Mac has always done well as a third party software platform because Mac owners have always been more willing to pay for high quality software than PC owners. It's just that the OSX App Store has never really taken off as a distribution channel for that software.
jakobegger 11y ago
The article makes some fundamental mistakes: 1) It talks about an app that reached #8 in "Top Paid". The more interesting list would be "Top Grossing" 2) It talks about a trivial app that was created with very little effort. While gimmick apps might work on iOS, people prefer to buy actually useful software on the Mac. The title is still somewhat true: It's unlikely you will become very rich by selling Mac Apps. But you can make a decent living; I currently make around 6000€/month (gross revenue) from two Mac Apps.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  I don't think it's a mistake as my guess is he is comparing with with the iOS app store where this would mean fairly certain success. I agree with the trivial app comment but I have a unique app which is doing pretty well. However compared to the iOS store it's not potentially self sustaining to be in the top once you get there.
- vijayr 11y ago
  One of your apps is to view Access DB on Macs. I'd have never guessed in a million years that people are still using Access, and that it is possible to build a business on top of it. Goes to show that all these rankings etc don't matter as much as we are led to believe.
  - slantyyz 11y ago
    Access is a pretty handy desktop analysis tool for running ad-hoc queries against linked tables, etc. You do see it used quite frequently in enterprise situations where desktop users have outgrown Excel but aren't quite ready to deal with a server-based database. Filemaker Pro is still hanging around too, for what it's worth.
  - leesalminen 11y ago
    We do data migrations for our SaaS offering. Most of our competitors use Access as the database. When I go to migrate data it's very convenient to pull up an Access viewer on OSX to get a feel for the data structure so I can inform the customer on what will be migrated. Saves the minute it takes to boot up a Windows VM (and pay monthly for Access 365).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
brudgers 11y ago
deliver their developers $10 billion in annual revenue... Apple, which declined to comment for this story, said in January that annual revenue from its mobile apps rose 50 percent last year and helped create 627,000 U.S. jobs. That distills down to about $15,000 per US job if the $10 billion doesn't go anywhere else in the world and before business expenses such as the $99.00 developer fee.
paulhauggis 11y ago
It's pretty clear that charging 99 cents for an app will not make you rich, unless you are acquired by a larger company to absorb your user base. Business owners should think of an app as an extra benefit to a paid service or product rather than the product itself.
italia20122011 11y ago
hi people i want to hack my instagram
jawngee 11y ago
I had a video editing app in the Mac App store since the MAS launched. It made high five figures for the first two years and then trailed off, mostly due to me neglecting it for more lucrative (and time consuming) consulting work. Also, it was heavily based on the deprecated QuickTime API, so it had a definite shelf life and upgrading it for each new iteration of OS X was fraught with all sorts of woes. Not to mention being trapped in 32-bits due to QuickTime being a 32-bit only framework (not QTKit). But, in its hey day, it did really well. It even beat iMovie for a few weeks. Though now I am sitting here almost five years later and I have no idea who my customers are, beyond the handful that went out of their way to contact me. I had some down time this past spring, so I rewrote the entire thing from the ground up using AVFoundation. I haven't launched this new version yet because I'm waiting to finish the iOS version to launch both within the same time frame. However, I won't be putting the OS X version on the Mac App Store for a few reasons: - I want to know who my customers are - I want to be able to contact my customers - Sandboxing restrictions are workable, but not a good customer experience imho. - Lack of paid upgrades isn't viable for an app not everyone needs - MAS seems way neglected So now I'm going to be going with Paddle (http://paddle.com http://paddle.com) since it sort of replicates that experience really well and the guys there are super responsive. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but not likely.
- fabiovirgi 11y ago
  Thanks a lot Jon; we can't wait to help you launch the app!
kapeli 11y ago
This is complete bullshit. My app (Dash) has been in the Top Grossing on the USA Mac App Store at pretty much any rank. There's a huge difference between climbing to the top and then instantly failing and actually staying at the top. A full day in Top Grossing on the Mac App Store gives you something like this: Ranks #10 to #20: at least $2-4k per day. Ranks #30 to #80: around $800-1k per day. Ranks #80 to #150: around $500-$800 per day. All sums are after Apple's cut. They fluctuate a bit depending on the day of the week. I make more than the mentioned $454 per day at ranks of around #200. My revenue report from last year can be found here: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Don't you think that you're probably a special case, rather than a typical example?
  - outworlder 11y ago
    Oh yes, he is a special case alright. See, some time ago (feels like ages now), I contacted him to see what would it take to add Chicken Scheme to the list of docsets. His response was quick and helpful. My company got "bought" and I suddenly had zero free time to follow up. But that boosted my respect for Dash considerably. A assume other people will have similar experiences. I've recommended it to every single developer with Macs that I've met. Now that I got reminded of it, let's see what I can do about that docset...
  - synthmeat 11y ago
    He didn't imply he isn't - quite contrary - but simply indicating non-factual premises and conclusions of the article. It's shit article.
  - kapeli 11y ago
    Every app is a special case, yes. I was just saying that the numbers in the article are not real. Redacted (the app) didn't stay in the top grossing rank enough. It just climbed and fell.
- 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
droidist2 11y ago
Neither will the stock market, Bloomberg.

140 points by checker659 11y ago

navait 11y ago

Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on, that's a pretty good ROI for your time.

patmcguire 11y ago
"Redacted, which peaked at No. 2 on the Mac App Store, sold 1,845 copies through May 19 and earned $6,600" That seems to be a low ceiling on success, no?
- navait 11y ago
  Maybe I just have low standards for success, but $220^H^H^H160/hour sounds pretty good to me. Also if it's sucessful on mac app store, a $2 version on iOS/android might be viable.
  - allsystemsgo 11y ago
    Well, you also have to take out Apple's cut (30%), plus taxes.
- xienze 11y ago
  That's not bad for a passive income stream, and for only having spent 30 hours on it.
  - pidg 11y ago
    And for an app that just lets you selectively blur out bits of images. GIMP can do that in seconds, for free. It's indicative of the state of the App Store that there are so many apps like this. The worst culprits - in my view - are 'distraction-free text editors'. I guess if the market is there for a $20 text editor that does nothing, then people are going to try to exploit it.
bdcravens 11y ago
I seriously doubt you could design, develop, prep, submit app, and market for 30 hours and have anything that anyone would download for free, let alone pay $5 for. The sheer volume of users doesn't obviate the fact that there's a minimum level of quality for discoverability to kick in.
- suby 11y ago
  30 hours is the amount of time the author of Redacted claims to have spent developing the app.
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    That's just development. There's time spent on support, marketing, prepping app store submission, responding to interview questions, etc.
  - igrekel 11y ago
    Plus the amount of time it took to master the language, the framework, the platform etc. before even starting to develop the app.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- DrJokepu 11y ago
  I have actually done exactly that. Twice. If I can do it, anyone can.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Mind sharing? I didn't see apps on your site.
    - DrJokepu 11y ago
      I don't want to get into specifics because I have abandoned their development and support a long time ago. The first one was a developer tool priced around $10, the second one was a more generic IT productivity tool priced around $5. They've both made around $10-15K over the years. In the end I had to abandon them because sales started to drop more and more every month and continued development didn't seem to stop that.
marvel_boy 11y ago
An app in 30 hours? Believe me that this is not the usual time it takes to build an app !
- thebouv 11y ago
  That's not what all the articles and media are telling me. I can spend almost no time on an iOS app and make myself rich. Even kids can do it. According to the hype. So it must be true.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I'd be curious where you're getting any kind of hype that states "I can spend almost no time".
    - thebouv 11y ago
      I'm curious how you haven't seen any miracle articles of the kids who just learn iOS programming in a week, spend a few hours on a game, and make serious cash. For the longest time those were coming out weekly, which always made my boss say "Why can't we do that?"
- prawn 11y ago
  Exactly. You can spend 30 hours just preparing screenshots in various languages and device sizes, preview video and so on.
xienze 11y ago
People are also forgetting that the time spent writing an app in your free time is "fun", or should be. I program in my free time for fun, getting paid after the fact is gravy. Getting paid $6600 for 30 hours of fun time (or so he says) is awesome.
- outworlder 11y ago
  Yeah, if you have no expectations at all of getting paid (like, say, Wozniak), a check is a very good surprise. However, since you are jumping through the hoops to get your app approved, you are expecting (or hoping) to get paid to some degree.

coldtea 11y ago

This confuses getting to the top (which depending on the algorithm could just need a small initial spark aroudn your app) with staying at the top. Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. As for the App Store, just like ANY OTHER marketplace, it won't make you rich in itself, just for appearing there and "putting the work"...

chx 11y ago
> Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. The article claims the Mac App Store sales is measured in thousands for the top apps. Care to point to your sources which claim three magnitudes more?
- PirateDave 11y ago
  I can back up his claim. I work for a large entertainment company that has a top 50 app, (in top grossing) and it consistently brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. When it was at its highest, around 15, it was bringing in about 400-500k per week.
  - URSpider94 11y ago
    It's a Mac app, not an iOS app?
- usaphp 11y ago
  https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014
- coldtea 11y ago
  The article is a bad piece of journalism based on a single sample -- a trivial app that just happened to stay on the top for a short while due to momentum.
bdcravens 11y ago
> Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year. Paid Mac apps, no. The article is about the Mac App Store, not iOS. Even among iOS, however, the most successful apps are free ones with a viral incentive to do in-app purchases. Most of the top apps have an external influence. 4 of the top 10 come out of Apple. Look at top games on Mac - most of them are major publishers. Even "independent" apps had a following outside of the Mac App Store, like 1Password.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

The bit I found most interesting about this whole Redacted app story, but haven't seen mentioned anywhere, is that the app also happened to be at #1 on Product Hunt for a good portion of that same day.

xienze 11y ago
The thing I've found most interesting is this guy has found success by whining about how little he's selling. This has to be the third or fourth separate news source where I've seen this story run.
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  I think that's an unfair characterization of the situation. Sam hasn't mentioned it since it happened. News outlets keep picking up the story because it's about Apple (hot topic), app stores (hot topic), and what most people would assume would be a source of obscene wealth (trending at the top of the chart). But, it's a man bites dog story! The outcome defies typical logic, and so news websites keep running the story.
  - larrys 11y ago
    "News outlets keep picking up the story" If a story is in syndication and "evergreen" in nature it could run on it's own for quite some time. [1] Doing a google search for this particular article it's clear what has happened (although the results are mainly it appears around May 2015) [1] I was featured in a story in the late 90's and could tell every time it hit a new town newspaper because orders would predictably come in from the new area. It all started with a story from the local paper and that was then distributed (Knight Ridder iirc) for any paper anywhere in the US to pick up. In this particular case it did translate into real dollars as well as many years of repeat business.

bluedino 11y ago

On the other hand, the Mac App store isn't as cluttered, and Mac users are much more willing to pay $19.99 or $29.99 for a Mac App. Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?

ceejayoz 11y ago
OmniFocus 2 is $39.99 on iPhone and very popular. Their suite is $149.99.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  Does anyone purchase it for iPhone that hasn't made the investment elsewhere?
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    That's a bit of a goalpost move, isn't it?
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      In what sense? The question is would anyone pay $20 for an iPhone app and I'd say no, unless there's external value. (Though I did pay $49 or whatever back in the day for the TomTom app when it was the first GPS app available on the iPhone)
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        The question was "Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?" I gave an example of a popular one, as do you with TomTom. Disqualifying it because it's most useful coupled with a desktop version is the goalpost move.
  - adiabatty 11y ago
    With Omni apps I have a habit (N=2) of the following: - download desktop trial - buy iOS app - begin to like the combination - buy desktop app

a2tech 11y ago

I think it's taking a long time for the Mac App Store to catch on-but I think it'll get there. When I find an app I want to buy I've gotten in the habit of checking the MAS to see if I can buy it there-I'd rather buy through the MAS and let Apple handle my credit card details and tracking of purchased software. Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your computer is a big change.

emgeee 11y ago
As long as Apple continues to take 30% I'm not so sure thats true. Mobile devs put up with it because it's that or nothing but as long as Apple allows you to side load programs on Mac I can't imagine it'll ever make economic sense.
bdcravens 11y ago
It's not just a matter of time and resistance to change. Two things that would need to change because they break the expectations of how software has always worked: 1) Upgrade pricing. At best you'll get convoluted instructions on how you can obtain an upgraded version: http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/ https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/ In many cases, you can't go back and forth (bought on website, bought v. 2 on MAS), so you're expecting people to understand that it's a "different" version - imagine if you had to explain that because you bought the Best Buy XBox One, you can't play games purchased at Wal-Mart. 2) Sandboxing. If users are going to pay anything near full price for something they expect full functionality. Due to these headaches, publishers are abandoning the App Store: http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ Personally I wish the MAS was a better solution for the reasons you described (I have purchased a good amount of software there)
rbritton 11y ago
I tend to do the opposite. If I find something on the MAS, I usually check for a direct purchase so that the developer gets that additional 30%, I'm eligible for upgrade pricing, and I don't have to wait a week for bug fix updates.

danso 11y ago

Anyone else reluctant to buy through the Mac App store because of the perceived lack of uptake? For example, I've been a longtime owner of a Transmit license...it's worked for years now. If I don't keep up with OS X releases, I can still download past binaries and use the key (within a limit...for example, Transmit 3 owners were required to upgrade to 4.x). But what if the developer decides that it's not worth maintaining the binary on Transmit? Do you get a license key for the App store purchase? From my perception, once you buy into the App store, you're bound to its limited upgrade routine. This has bitten me plenty of times on iOS, where the developer doesn't feel like keeping up with iOS upgrades, leaving you with broken apps with no ability to get them working again. I'm not talking about fly-by-night developers, but AAA developers like Capcom.

bdcravens 11y ago
The publisher of Transmit will likely do the right thing. See another title of theirs, Coda: http://www.panic.com/blog/introducing-coda-2-5/ http://www.panic.com/blog/introducing-coda-2-5/ Other publishers have done the same thing. (with regard to upgrade pricing, usually, but I'd assume a similar approach to avoid backlash if they left the MAS) However, your concern still stands, as not everyone will do that.
dilap 11y ago
nah, I figure it's not going anywhere, and a lot of the software I bought using homegrown licensing schemes I ended up not using, since it's just too much of a pain in the ass to try to hunt up the licenses and restore everything on a new computer. edit: i do wish apple would relax the sandbox strictness a bit and other editor review criteria so it was a more attractive alternative to self-publishing.
- micro-ram 11y ago
  I think Apple just needs to review their policy and add another entitlement "Entire Current User Folder ~/" to allow apps that traditionally cannot be sandboxed. I am sure they want us to re-imagine a way for FTP apps to work, but I don't want to change my workflow. I want to be able to browse any folder on my Mac on the left pane. So I won't buy the Mac App Store version. I fully agree with Panic and why they bailed out.

outworlder 11y ago

Go figure. The store limit app developers so much that a lot of otherwise useful software is being sold outside it. A high profile example of that is: https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac-app-store/ https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac...

bdcravens 11y ago
Ditto for Coda 2.5

usaphp 11y ago

"dash" app developer says he made $188k+ last year just from App Store alone: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014

b0sk 11y ago
But it seems he also includes iOS App Store figures. The original article is about Mac App Stores.
- kapeli 11y ago
  The Mac App Store is my main revenue source. I released my iOS app in November 2014. The revenue from it wasn't worth mentioning separately in last year's report. This year, the revenue from iOS is around 10% of the Mac app.

mickanio 11y ago

Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd like to see at least SOME mention of that aspect of it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nipponese 11y ago
Additionally, App Annie ranking is not the same as actual Apple App Store ranking. One should consider the motivation and incentives for AA to hand you a positive rank using methods unknown.
forrestthewoods 11y ago
It's not that you should get rich from such an investment. It's that basically no one is getting rich from the Mac App Store. The desktop app store is a failure in many respects. It did not take off the same way mobile app stores have. As for Monument Valley, that's a pretty poor example. They invested 1.5m and made 5.8m. For a core team of 8 people it's not fuck you money. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc9f7/t/54b80483e4b0f32f8253d06c/1421345934518/?format=1000w https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc... They didn't even make 10x their investment. There is a strong argument to made that a 10x project is the minimum you need just to have a sustainable company. Sustainable! That's a long, long way from rich. http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...
- emsy 11y ago
  I've read the second article and I think you should take it with a grain of salt. I don't want to elaborate much but I think it's targeted at the "quantity developers" which pump out low to mid quality games, hoping for a hit. On the other end of the spectrum you have quality developers like ustwo who don't need to finance 9 unsucessful games. Of course in reality it's much more complex than that but I don't think that "you need to make 10x your investment" is a hard rule to measure success.

s_dev 11y ago

This explains why they merged iOS dev accounts and Mac accounts at WWDC. I wonder if this will help - I've been an iOS dev for a while and have always been curious to run some open source OS X apps like mpv on my Mac but was restricted.

realityking 11y ago
You could always run your own apps (and any random download) on OS X without paying for a developer account. The only thing paying gets you, is access to prerelease software and the Mac App Store.

saturdaysaint 11y ago

As a user, I'm glad it's there as an easy updating mechanism for Apple apps and a store for handy utility apps, but there's not much of a place for a centralized app store on the desktop. Steam poaches the most lucrative category and makers of prominent professional apps don't need any help with digital distribution... what's left? I'd imagine that this hollowing out makes it advantageous for software that might benefit from an app store (say, a $50 nichey app) to avoid it, conditioning/encouraging users to use Google and letting them keep all of the profit. I could hypothesize about ways for Apple to turn the ship around... but I doubt they care. Apple's happy to have something conceptually coherent with iOS - an Apple Store employee can show a college freshman to "just update apps like on your iPhone". They decided long ago not to chase gaming. It's a pretty updating app.

vitd 11y ago
I couldn't agree less. The MacOS app store has made it so much easier for me as a user. Apple might not be perfect, but to compare them to Steam? Just last week I had a problem with a Steam app and getting it resolved was farcical. Not to mention that literally every other time I launch Steam, it fails to see the network (even though all my other network apps are working just fine), and I have to quit and restart it. And when it does restart, just as I'm about to click "Play" on a game, a huge honking ad pops up in front of it. And never once has the ad been of any interest to me. Such a horrible user experience. At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works. Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible. There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!
- saturdaysaint 11y ago
  I wish games would move from Steam to the App Store, but it's not gonna happen. Valve has way more skin in that game and Apple have repeatedly shown that they're not going to compete over a medium dominated by expensive exclusive hits - as we watch Sony and Microsoft fight eachother into irrelevancy, this looks like a wiser and wiser strategy. They'll take their iOS game monopoly, but that's it. The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut), it's probably worth investing a few hours in.

ThomPete 11y ago

I have been lucky and is doing fairly well with Ghostnote on the mac app store. My product is also lucky to be the only one of it's kind as far as I am aware, which means no competitor and plenty of room to grow it. However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good innovation resulting in a lot of apps fighting for the same space. I was top 10 in paid apps for a while and top 5 in productivity apps. On iOS it would normally be pretty good but that meant nothing for my mac sales as such. I realized that the mac app store is purely a distribution channel. It's my product but it's their store and so I am now thinking about them as a Wall Mart with no specific importance as such. I found Google ranking to be much more important plus the ability to sell your product a lot of other places. And so this week we are going to start selling directly from the website with a 14 day trial. We are using paddle.com for that an amazingly good service. I am planning to do a writeup about all this as soon as I have some more numbers. Also as a side note. I would like to see Apple undergo the same scrutiny that we treat our politicians with. When you say you create so and so many jobs you really need to be talking actual jobs that people can live off for that to have any meaning.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
> top 5 in productivity apps. Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing, especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows version and a relationship with a VAR or two and enterprise friendly pricing/terms? I don't see how Apple can help you. You're selling running shoes to people in wheelchairs. Find where the runners are.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 11y ago
  >Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines People have been saying things like that about apple since forever, yet even NextStep was able to maintain a viable community of full time software developers and companies that exclusively published for the platform. Some of them are still around. Just look at OmniGroup. Do you think they're likely to be doing better nowaday, or worse? The fact is the Mac has always done well as a third party software platform because Mac owners have always been more willing to pay for high quality software than PC owners. It's just that the OSX App Store has never really taken off as a distribution channel for that software.

jakobegger 11y ago

The article makes some fundamental mistakes: 1) It talks about an app that reached #8 in "Top Paid". The more interesting list would be "Top Grossing" 2) It talks about a trivial app that was created with very little effort. While gimmick apps might work on iOS, people prefer to buy actually useful software on the Mac. The title is still somewhat true: It's unlikely you will become very rich by selling Mac Apps. But you can make a decent living; I currently make around 6000€/month (gross revenue) from two Mac Apps.

ThomPete 11y ago
I don't think it's a mistake as my guess is he is comparing with with the iOS app store where this would mean fairly certain success. I agree with the trivial app comment but I have a unique app which is doing pretty well. However compared to the iOS store it's not potentially self sustaining to be in the top once you get there.
vijayr 11y ago
One of your apps is to view Access DB on Macs. I'd have never guessed in a million years that people are still using Access, and that it is possible to build a business on top of it. Goes to show that all these rankings etc don't matter as much as we are led to believe.
- slantyyz 11y ago
  Access is a pretty handy desktop analysis tool for running ad-hoc queries against linked tables, etc. You do see it used quite frequently in enterprise situations where desktop users have outgrown Excel but aren't quite ready to deal with a server-based database. Filemaker Pro is still hanging around too, for what it's worth.
- leesalminen 11y ago
  We do data migrations for our SaaS offering. Most of our competitors use Access as the database. When I go to migrate data it's very convenient to pull up an Access viewer on OSX to get a feel for the data structure so I can inform the customer on what will be migrated. Saves the minute it takes to boot up a Windows VM (and pay monthly for Access 365).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

brudgers 11y ago

deliver their developers $10 billion in annual revenue... Apple, which declined to comment for this story, said in January that annual revenue from its mobile apps rose 50 percent last year and helped create 627,000 U.S. jobs. That distills down to about $15,000 per US job if the $10 billion doesn't go anywhere else in the world and before business expenses such as the $99.00 developer fee.

paulhauggis 11y ago

It's pretty clear that charging 99 cents for an app will not make you rich, unless you are acquired by a larger company to absorb your user base. Business owners should think of an app as an extra benefit to a paid service or product rather than the product itself.

italia20122011 11y ago

hi people i want to hack my instagram

jawngee 11y ago

I had a video editing app in the Mac App store since the MAS launched. It made high five figures for the first two years and then trailed off, mostly due to me neglecting it for more lucrative (and time consuming) consulting work. Also, it was heavily based on the deprecated QuickTime API, so it had a definite shelf life and upgrading it for each new iteration of OS X was fraught with all sorts of woes. Not to mention being trapped in 32-bits due to QuickTime being a 32-bit only framework (not QTKit). But, in its hey day, it did really well. It even beat iMovie for a few weeks. Though now I am sitting here almost five years later and I have no idea who my customers are, beyond the handful that went out of their way to contact me. I had some down time this past spring, so I rewrote the entire thing from the ground up using AVFoundation. I haven't launched this new version yet because I'm waiting to finish the iOS version to launch both within the same time frame. However, I won't be putting the OS X version on the Mac App Store for a few reasons: - I want to know who my customers are - I want to be able to contact my customers - Sandboxing restrictions are workable, but not a good customer experience imho. - Lack of paid upgrades isn't viable for an app not everyone needs - MAS seems way neglected So now I'm going to be going with Paddle (http://paddle.com http://paddle.com) since it sort of replicates that experience really well and the guys there are super responsive. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but not likely.

fabiovirgi 11y ago
Thanks a lot Jon; we can't wait to help you launch the app!

kapeli 11y ago

This is complete bullshit. My app (Dash) has been in the Top Grossing on the USA Mac App Store at pretty much any rank. There's a huge difference between climbing to the top and then instantly failing and actually staying at the top. A full day in Top Grossing on the Mac App Store gives you something like this: Ranks #10 to #20: at least $2-4k per day. Ranks #30 to #80: around $800-1k per day. Ranks #80 to #150: around $500-$800 per day. All sums are after Apple's cut. They fluctuate a bit depending on the day of the week. I make more than the mentioned $454 per day at ranks of around #200. My revenue report from last year can be found here: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014 https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014.

s73v3r 11y ago
Don't you think that you're probably a special case, rather than a typical example?
- outworlder 11y ago
  Oh yes, he is a special case alright. See, some time ago (feels like ages now), I contacted him to see what would it take to add Chicken Scheme to the list of docsets. His response was quick and helpful. My company got "bought" and I suddenly had zero free time to follow up. But that boosted my respect for Dash considerably. A assume other people will have similar experiences. I've recommended it to every single developer with Macs that I've met. Now that I got reminded of it, let's see what I can do about that docset...
- synthmeat 11y ago
  He didn't imply he isn't - quite contrary - but simply indicating non-factual premises and conclusions of the article. It's shit article.
- kapeli 11y ago
  Every app is a special case, yes. I was just saying that the numbers in the article are not real. Redacted (the app) didn't stay in the top grossing rank enough. It just climbed and fell.
11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

droidist2 11y ago

Neither will the stock market, Bloomberg.