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The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

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Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#121

Post by Bamafan »

kapeli wrote: post #118
Bamafan wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about marketing costs for your app. Did you simply release that app and customers come after? Or did you have to pay a certain amount to acquire customers (i.e. paid advertising)? Or did you acquire customers some other way?

No marketing really. At the beginning, almost all users came from the Mac App Store. I've tried different marketing things along the way, like sponsored posts or Google Adwords. Probably spent around $500 in total on marketing during the lifetime of the app. None had a meaningful effect so I kind of stopped trying. I mostly focus on engaging my users as much as I can and trying to make them happy, so that they will r…

Thank you for answering. And wow, amazing results from using the default "marketing" you get with the Mac App Store (especially given the difficulties that so many others have reported).

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#122

Post by forrestthewoods »

emsy wrote: post #111
forrestthewoods wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The designer who wrote that article is behind the wildly popular Triple Town. It speaks to the reality of development for small development teams.

That doesn't contradict my point that ustwo might not need to make ten times more money than they spent developing the game to run the company (and to be considered succesful).

I was specifically referring to the statement "and it DID make them rich". That statement I think is provably false. Depending on how one defines rich of course.

There are many ways to define success. ustwo is a 300+ person design company. Their mobile games could lose money but still be considered a success.

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#124

Post by dhagz »

ttcbj wrote: post #103
kapeli wrote: post #91

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: arou…

Off topic, but I never knew that Dash existed. I frequently look up APIs through google, which always involves a few clicks, and Dash is going to make my life so much better! As I went down through the API list, I was amazed how many times I thought, 'adding that will save me some google searches'. I just bought a copy, thanks!

Plus with all the different integrations it has, it's really indispensable. I use the Alfred integration most of the time, since it's global. And I even got it on my phone, just to see what that's like. It's pretty nifty all-around.

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#125

Post by notduncansmith »

synthmeat wrote: post #94
kapeli wrote: post #91

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: arou…

I appreciate your transparency about your business model/data, amazing functionality and regular updates of Dash.app, no-bullshit attitude over maintenance of official docsets, and your involvement in the community. Kudos all around and, while it ain't $2-4k, I hope you appreciate my sincere 'thanks' today.

I'd just like to echo this. I'm a (very) happy Dash buyer, and encourage any developers reading this on OS X to give Dash a look. It's one of those tools that you don't always need, but when you need it, you really need it. Oh, and it integrates quite nicely with Alfred and Sublime Text :) Kudos to 'kapeli for building some very useful, usable software.

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#126

Post by hderms »

kapeli wrote: post #91

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: arou…

Yeah, but you're forgetting that's because Dash is awesome. I mean, it's really quite a useful app and I feel like it belongs in the top 10 for a very good reason, rather than the vast majority of apps.

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#127

Post by fabiovirgi »

jawngee wrote: post #85

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 mentio…

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

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#128

Post by fabiovirgi »

ThomPete wrote: post #50

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 in…

>> "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."

Totally agree - the MAS needs to be seen as a single distribution channel. I think the broader problem is that devs rely solely on the Mac App Store to drive sales for them, which is a risky approach. There are a bunch of different ways to drive app sales; it's just a matter of putting in the work.

Glad to have you on board with Ghostnote, and looking forward to that write-up too! :-)

Fabio @ Paddle.com

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#129

Post by coldtea »

bdcravens wrote: post #11
coldtea wrote: post #3

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"...

> 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 publish…

>Paid Mac apps, no

Citation needed.

I'm pretty sure Pixelmator, 1Password, Angry Birds, Call of Duty, GTA S.A., etc -- apps that are consistently on the MAS top ten make lotsa money.

Apps that stay there for a few days or so, because of initial momentum or some good review, don't -- but that's a matter of the algorithm favoring them.

>Most of the top apps have an external influence. 4 of the top 10 come out of Apple.

Actually in the current top 10 only one comes from Apple (Facetime). And it's still one until the top-40. That might be the case on my country's MAS though, but still.

>Look at top games on Mac - most of them are major publishers.

Sure, why wouldn't it be the case? They have the best products, more polished, and more marketing money (and tons of pre-existing fans for their game series).

But that's beside the point (the point being whether it pays well to be on the top of MAS or not).

Regarding MAS not making you rich for a couple weeks effort app like Redacted, that just chanced to be on top for a few days and didn't have a stable top path (and the respective big sales), that's obvious. No known market will do that.

Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich

#130

Post by coldtea »

chx wrote: post #6
coldtea wrote: post #3

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"...

> 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?

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.
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