Extraordinary hype around the App Store
The hype around the iPhone App Store does not subside. The gold rush, stories about lone programmers and teams receiving hundreds and thousands of dollars daily for their programs on the App Store excite many. But what does this information mean for you personally if you want to join the game? Let's evaluate the real state of affairs.
Firstly, as you heard there are 60'000 or 600'000 (I heard both numbers) registered iPhone developers: I personally have about 20 programs in the App Store at the time of this writing.
Five of them are on the charts:
• Zen Jar # 34 Social Networking (paid)
• Zen Jar Lite # 54 Social Networking (free)
• Spirit Board # 36 Board Games (free)
• Spirit Board Pro # 95 Board Games (paid)
• PhotoZen # 31 Photography (free)
You can assume that with two paid programs on the charts I became rich. In the end, it's the gold rush, right?
The reality is more amazing. In order to take 34th place in the top of the social networking category, the application must be extended 30-35 times a day. With a standard app price of 99 cents and an Apple fee , the program must bring in just over $ 20 a day in order to be on that spot on the chart. And this despite the fact that social networking is a fairly popular category.
Perhaps you expect gaming charts to be more profitable. Board games (board) is not a very popular category, but nevertheless you will be surprised to find out that 6-8 downloads per day are enough to get into the charts. In other words, if you earn $ 4 a day, you will be in the top 100.
What does all this mean? Do not forget that the App Store now has more than 36'000(55'000 at the time of translation of the article) programs. If applications in the top of a certain category make such sales, then how do you think other programs are sold?
No way. Absolutely nothing. They are not for sale at all.
This is the problem that I am facing. Any normal business not related to software or the Internet is measured by its average productivity. For example, if you want to open a coffee shop in your city, part of your preliminary research will be to find out how profitable other coffee shops are located nearby and it is possible to study how the same restaurants of other similar to your areas feel.
You will find out the average performance of such establishments and understand whether the opening of your new cafe is worth the time and money investment.
As IT entrepreneurs, we repeat one mistake from time to time. We value the market for its greatest success. It’s the same as opening the Coffee and Joe’s Coffee Shop only after studying the Starbucks quarterly report and expecting to quickly grow to the level of a multinational corporation. Rational entrepreneurs, small business owners, unless of course they have enough resources to start, do not try to compete with huge, well-established corporations. They also do not expect their success to be at the same level. Joe will look at Sue's cafe to figure out what his business can become.
After several years working in the Web industry, I still cannot believe what people think in this way. How many startups began to think about profit only after they caught up with traffic?
It always seems that successful Internet projects are buried in gigantic cash flows. Imagine what would happen if the real sector would play according to the same rules - what would you invest in, Coffee and Joe’s Cakes Coffee House, which brings several thousand dollars a month, or MegaCafe5000, which works all over the world but suffers losses in a couple of million a day?
But back to the App Store: I published these numbers so that people understand how this mechanism works. The App Store is not a healthy and established market; rather, it is more like a lottery. When you submit your program to Apple, you buy a lottery ticket. Perhaps you will become one of the few who will quickly earn a couple of hundred thousand, but most likely you will be another near-minded developer who, when developing his program, has thrown his fingers into the blood and shed sweat and tears for the sake of a program that no one needs.
In the end, in the Internet industry, when we imagine how rich and successful our new web applications will make us, we focus on examples where people earned hundreds of millions of dollars. In the iPhone market, the most successful projects brought in $ 500,000-600,000.
Does anyone want to calculate the expected price of this lottery ticket?
Continued
I cannot believe that I have to do this. Although a very small percentage of readers could not understand what I wanted to say with this article, the popularity of this article is so high that even this small percentage has transformed into a huge stream of letters, so here are the answers to the most common comments that I received by email:
“ But people really make money! Just look at ______ ”
Yes, some people earn. The purpose of this article is to show how few such people actually are. I heard people say that this is a difficult game, but if you hit the charts, then you got rich. Well, I hit the charts. Now I have five programs in the tops in different categories. My programs are fairly stable in the lists of popular applications. But this does not mean that I earn at least enough to live on these incomes. Here is what I want to explain. Yes, people make money, but don't count on becoming one of them. Even if your application is successful, it must be very successful in order to bring you a lot of money.
“Well, your applications are trash, so they are not for sale.”
My applications are for sale., that's the problem. Four of them are in the top 100 in their category and two of them are in the top 50. Zen Jar is currently at the 35th place in the category of paid programs for social networking when I write these lines. My applications are exactly the type of programs that are sold. The point is that this does not guarantee excess returns. In practice, this means approximately $ 20 per day.
“You need to do promotion!”
What for? To raise revenue from $ 20 to $ 30? The problem is that there was a “race down” all the time, ending with the fact that the price of products of this category was set at 99 cents. How to promote a product worth $ 0.99? Have you ever seen an ad for products of less importance at the same price? Of course not, and the reason that you have not seen such advertisements is because the seller will never cover the cost of promotion.
Here are the reasons:
The program costs $ 0.99. Apple takes away $ 0.30. You have $ 0.69 left for each sale (actually a little less due to exchange rate differences, etc.). One ad conversion will cost you about three to twenty cents, leaving you between $ 0.49 and $ .66. We can assume that you will have $ 0.60 left. This scheme would work just fine if the ad conversion was 100%. In reality, the conversion does not exceed five percent . This means that the conversion price is between $ 0.60 and $ 2.50. Thus, at best, you will be left without a loss, and at worst, you will have to spend two dollars in order to earn sixty cents.
“ But if you get into the top 10, you will become a millionaire!”
In fact, it’s more likely to earn hundreds of thousandsbut you are right. The problem is that only a small percentage of developers will be able to get into this number. That's why I compare the App Store with the lottery. And let's be honest, in order to win a million in the lottery you do not need to do any work. To get to the moon you need to shoot at the stars.
“If you don't earn anything, why are you still doing this?”
Who says I'm not earning anything? Read the article again. I have almost 20 programs in the directory. Some are for sale, some are made to support sales. They are all in different categories of the game, lifestyle, social networking and photography. Diversification and volume have always been my strategy, I decided to stick to such a scheme because at the very beginning I realized that all this hype around the App Store is too good to be true. Instead of a single application, for making millions, I made several programs that bring me extra income.
I am also very lucky, because my Zen Jar program has gathered over 12'000 very loyal users whom I can inform about the release of new programs. The novice developer will soon realize that there is practically no opportunity to promote new applications. It only remains to cross fingers and hope.
“Why do you hate Apple / America / Freedom / etc?”
Actually, I believe that the iPhone is undoubtedly the best device I have ever had and the best $ 200 I have ever spent.
As a developer, I love this platform. I have millions of ideas for new applications. My new program, PhotoZen, breathed new life into my glowfoto.com photo site, six months ago I thought it was impossible to do this.
However, Apple continues to make decisions that sometimes don’t fit in my head. Either they have a general captivity that none of us can understand, or they really do not understand what they are doing. I am writing this article only because I want this platform to become successful. I have invested quite a lot in iPhone development and I cannot afford to just sit still and let Apple fail. I wrote for many months that I don’t understand why Apple makes such decisions and only now people are starting to join me in a big, collective “huh”?
"The quieter you go, the further you'll get! / The road will be overpowered by the walking! ”
No, if you collect $ 0.99 per download.
You can make money developing for iPhone. I earn enough to justify that I continue to do this, but for me these earnings are far from the main source of income. Once again I want to say that this is not a gold mine and having a good idea for the application is not enough. You also need to have a lot of luck, patience, and invest a lot of effort in development - just like in any other software market. The huge difference is that in other program markets you are likely to value your product more than a dollar and some other company will not select 30% of your income.
- Did you like the article? If you have an iPhone, buy one of my programs. I will accept any help I can get.
The author of the article stromdotcom.
Original article
Do you like the translation? Visit the appdev.ru website in the FAQ section - there is still a lot of interesting things for developers.
Firstly, as you heard there are 60'000 or 600'000 (I heard both numbers) registered iPhone developers: I personally have about 20 programs in the App Store at the time of this writing.
Five of them are on the charts:
• Zen Jar # 34 Social Networking (paid)
• Zen Jar Lite # 54 Social Networking (free)
• Spirit Board # 36 Board Games (free)
• Spirit Board Pro # 95 Board Games (paid)
• PhotoZen # 31 Photography (free)
You can assume that with two paid programs on the charts I became rich. In the end, it's the gold rush, right?
The reality is more amazing. In order to take 34th place in the top of the social networking category, the application must be extended 30-35 times a day. With a standard app price of 99 cents and an Apple fee , the program must bring in just over $ 20 a day in order to be on that spot on the chart. And this despite the fact that social networking is a fairly popular category.
Perhaps you expect gaming charts to be more profitable. Board games (board) is not a very popular category, but nevertheless you will be surprised to find out that 6-8 downloads per day are enough to get into the charts. In other words, if you earn $ 4 a day, you will be in the top 100.
What does all this mean? Do not forget that the App Store now has more than 36'000(55'000 at the time of translation of the article) programs. If applications in the top of a certain category make such sales, then how do you think other programs are sold?
No way. Absolutely nothing. They are not for sale at all.
This is the problem that I am facing. Any normal business not related to software or the Internet is measured by its average productivity. For example, if you want to open a coffee shop in your city, part of your preliminary research will be to find out how profitable other coffee shops are located nearby and it is possible to study how the same restaurants of other similar to your areas feel.
You will find out the average performance of such establishments and understand whether the opening of your new cafe is worth the time and money investment.
As IT entrepreneurs, we repeat one mistake from time to time. We value the market for its greatest success. It’s the same as opening the Coffee and Joe’s Coffee Shop only after studying the Starbucks quarterly report and expecting to quickly grow to the level of a multinational corporation. Rational entrepreneurs, small business owners, unless of course they have enough resources to start, do not try to compete with huge, well-established corporations. They also do not expect their success to be at the same level. Joe will look at Sue's cafe to figure out what his business can become.
After several years working in the Web industry, I still cannot believe what people think in this way. How many startups began to think about profit only after they caught up with traffic?
It always seems that successful Internet projects are buried in gigantic cash flows. Imagine what would happen if the real sector would play according to the same rules - what would you invest in, Coffee and Joe’s Cakes Coffee House, which brings several thousand dollars a month, or MegaCafe5000, which works all over the world but suffers losses in a couple of million a day?
But back to the App Store: I published these numbers so that people understand how this mechanism works. The App Store is not a healthy and established market; rather, it is more like a lottery. When you submit your program to Apple, you buy a lottery ticket. Perhaps you will become one of the few who will quickly earn a couple of hundred thousand, but most likely you will be another near-minded developer who, when developing his program, has thrown his fingers into the blood and shed sweat and tears for the sake of a program that no one needs.
In the end, in the Internet industry, when we imagine how rich and successful our new web applications will make us, we focus on examples where people earned hundreds of millions of dollars. In the iPhone market, the most successful projects brought in $ 500,000-600,000.
Does anyone want to calculate the expected price of this lottery ticket?
Continued
I cannot believe that I have to do this. Although a very small percentage of readers could not understand what I wanted to say with this article, the popularity of this article is so high that even this small percentage has transformed into a huge stream of letters, so here are the answers to the most common comments that I received by email:
“ But people really make money! Just look at ______ ”
Yes, some people earn. The purpose of this article is to show how few such people actually are. I heard people say that this is a difficult game, but if you hit the charts, then you got rich. Well, I hit the charts. Now I have five programs in the tops in different categories. My programs are fairly stable in the lists of popular applications. But this does not mean that I earn at least enough to live on these incomes. Here is what I want to explain. Yes, people make money, but don't count on becoming one of them. Even if your application is successful, it must be very successful in order to bring you a lot of money.
“Well, your applications are trash, so they are not for sale.”
My applications are for sale., that's the problem. Four of them are in the top 100 in their category and two of them are in the top 50. Zen Jar is currently at the 35th place in the category of paid programs for social networking when I write these lines. My applications are exactly the type of programs that are sold. The point is that this does not guarantee excess returns. In practice, this means approximately $ 20 per day.
“You need to do promotion!”
What for? To raise revenue from $ 20 to $ 30? The problem is that there was a “race down” all the time, ending with the fact that the price of products of this category was set at 99 cents. How to promote a product worth $ 0.99? Have you ever seen an ad for products of less importance at the same price? Of course not, and the reason that you have not seen such advertisements is because the seller will never cover the cost of promotion.
Here are the reasons:
The program costs $ 0.99. Apple takes away $ 0.30. You have $ 0.69 left for each sale (actually a little less due to exchange rate differences, etc.). One ad conversion will cost you about three to twenty cents, leaving you between $ 0.49 and $ .66. We can assume that you will have $ 0.60 left. This scheme would work just fine if the ad conversion was 100%. In reality, the conversion does not exceed five percent . This means that the conversion price is between $ 0.60 and $ 2.50. Thus, at best, you will be left without a loss, and at worst, you will have to spend two dollars in order to earn sixty cents.
“ But if you get into the top 10, you will become a millionaire!”
In fact, it’s more likely to earn hundreds of thousandsbut you are right. The problem is that only a small percentage of developers will be able to get into this number. That's why I compare the App Store with the lottery. And let's be honest, in order to win a million in the lottery you do not need to do any work. To get to the moon you need to shoot at the stars.
“If you don't earn anything, why are you still doing this?”
Who says I'm not earning anything? Read the article again. I have almost 20 programs in the directory. Some are for sale, some are made to support sales. They are all in different categories of the game, lifestyle, social networking and photography. Diversification and volume have always been my strategy, I decided to stick to such a scheme because at the very beginning I realized that all this hype around the App Store is too good to be true. Instead of a single application, for making millions, I made several programs that bring me extra income.
I am also very lucky, because my Zen Jar program has gathered over 12'000 very loyal users whom I can inform about the release of new programs. The novice developer will soon realize that there is practically no opportunity to promote new applications. It only remains to cross fingers and hope.
“Why do you hate Apple / America / Freedom / etc?”
Actually, I believe that the iPhone is undoubtedly the best device I have ever had and the best $ 200 I have ever spent.
As a developer, I love this platform. I have millions of ideas for new applications. My new program, PhotoZen, breathed new life into my glowfoto.com photo site, six months ago I thought it was impossible to do this.
However, Apple continues to make decisions that sometimes don’t fit in my head. Either they have a general captivity that none of us can understand, or they really do not understand what they are doing. I am writing this article only because I want this platform to become successful. I have invested quite a lot in iPhone development and I cannot afford to just sit still and let Apple fail. I wrote for many months that I don’t understand why Apple makes such decisions and only now people are starting to join me in a big, collective “huh”?
"The quieter you go, the further you'll get! / The road will be overpowered by the walking! ”
No, if you collect $ 0.99 per download.
You can make money developing for iPhone. I earn enough to justify that I continue to do this, but for me these earnings are far from the main source of income. Once again I want to say that this is not a gold mine and having a good idea for the application is not enough. You also need to have a lot of luck, patience, and invest a lot of effort in development - just like in any other software market. The huge difference is that in other program markets you are likely to value your product more than a dollar and some other company will not select 30% of your income.
- Did you like the article? If you have an iPhone, buy one of my programs. I will accept any help I can get.
The author of the article stromdotcom.
Original article
Do you like the translation? Visit the appdev.ru website in the FAQ section - there is still a lot of interesting things for developers.