it would be nice if you told us what your app does.
Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#52The biggest point made here is the following: whatever perception you have about money, you are right. If you think you can't make more than $1k a month, you are right. Same with $10k, $100k, etc.
The author stunbled with this by accident. I bet you he will now focus on finding another product that will allow him to repeat that.
Another minor point is that marketing works. Its up to you to find what. So don't stop when your ad words campaign fails. Keep iterating.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#53At $1-$2 prices, purchases are made mostly on impulse. This is why I think e-books should come down to that price, too. For many authors the sales would just skyrocket, because people will just start buying 10 books at a time, without even thinking that it may take them a full year to read them all. But they will just "want them there" for a later read.
But once they do realize that they have a year's worth (or more) on their reading list, why would they keep coming back to the store to buy 10 more books?
I'll go on Amazon and buy several cheap Kindle books before I travel. Invariably I don't finish them all, and set the Kindle aside for a few weeks. Then I pick it up, see the unread books and read them before buying more
I've always wondered how much more money Amazon would make if they didn't highlight unread books, and how much people would care about the lack of that feature.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something that has already been made can be copied much quicker than it was originally developed.
Touché. "Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal"
> "Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal"
"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or
inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal..." [1]
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#55Congratulations on your well-earned success and thanks very much for your forthrightness about your numbers. But I think this really shows just how hard it is to make real money in the app store. You have been as successful as any of us could hope to be there, yet your peak bounce is $8k/day. This is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but chances are very high it will quickly taper off the way these bumps usually do. I…
Thank you! And I agree with what you're saying (although it pains me greatly to admit it). It really is difficult to make a sustainable living from the App Store. Even the top apps don't pull in all that much and sales always drop off very rapidly after the initial hype wears off.
I think you'd be crazy to abandon a salaried job in the hope of making it big on the app store. I've been working on Dropzone pretty much full-time for almost 5 years now and only now am I starting to see some payoff. I'm wondering whether having multiple apps might be the key to a more sustainable income. Then you can cross sell and hopefully make more money overall.
Relying on Apple to distribute your apps is also very frightening. I feel that policy changes with regards to things like sandboxing could easily put me out of business, and there's no money to speak of to be found from selling outside App Store.
I love writing apps though so I really hope I can continue to do so.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#56Did you actually have any angry customers contacting you who paid full price for the app?
I have no customers who were angry about this. Not one. So this fear I had of upsetting customers who missed the discount appears to be unfounded.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#57It actually surprises me that so much promotion, and such a large price drop, didn't result in even more purchases. It'd be interesting to see the sales curve after you raise the price again.
Well he was in the #2 and #3 spot in the U.S. App Store, he was selling more than almost anything else there. :)
Sounds like the implication is that Mac App Store sales are lackluster in general then.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#58That's impressive. Are you considering adjusting the price slighly downwards to maximize your potential due to the better exposure?
Yes, I dropped the price to $9.99. So we'll see how that goes. I don't know what I'm doing at all with regard to pricing but the result from this sale does make me think that $14 may be too high.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#59Interesting, so 6000 x 2 ($12,000) vs 300 x 14 ($4,200) a price elasticity factor of 3. If you are reading John, how did you pick $14 as the price? Pricing software is always difficult because you marginal costs are 0. One school of thought is to take the time needed to write something, pick an hourly rate of what you would have had to pay a person to write it (or use what it cost you to produce it [1]) and then divi…
Honestly, I don't think this is the right approach. Development time is a sunk cost at this point, and doesn't have any impact of the profitability of the app in the future. John's only concern now should be maximizing profit, and profit's going to be a function solely of the market for his app.
The type of analysis you've described is more applicable to consulting work, where there's a hard limit to how much output you can produce.
Re: Show HN: I made $8000 in one day on the Mac App Store
#60Congratulations on your well-earned success and thanks very much for your forthrightness about your numbers. But I think this really shows just how hard it is to make real money in the app store. You have been as successful as any of us could hope to be there, yet your peak bounce is $8k/day. This is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but chances are very high it will quickly taper off the way these bumps usually do. I…
Thank you! And I agree with what you're saying (although it pains me greatly to admit it). It really is difficult to make a sustainable living from the App Store. Even the top apps don't pull in all that much and sales always drop off very rapidly after the initial hype wears off. I think you'd be crazy to abandon a salaried job in the hope of making it big on the app store. I've been working on Dropzone pretty much…
I like writing apps too (iOS), although I'm slowly letting go of the idea that I can sell enough on my own to support myself. The job market for iOS/Mac developers seems strong enough, so you probably can pay the bills with those skills and consider your own apps as a portfolio.
May your tail be long!