A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year

I just went to the App Store and looked at the screenshots for the app. There's a surprising lack of functionality depicted in the screenshots. There's nothing about how feeds are presented, or how individual items in a feed are presented. Instead we get "full screen reading", "swipe anywhere to go back", "multiple themes", "rich sharing via OvershareKit" (whatever that is), and a testimonial from someone I've never heard of, who turns out to be the author himself. Oh, and the screenshots themselves are shrunk down to make room for the text annotation at the top. Nothing here makes me feel like I know what I'll be getting for my $4.99:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unread-an-rss-reader/id75414...

In contrast, my iPhone RSS reader of choice, Reeder 2, has screenshots that show exactly what you'll see on various screens in the app. It's much less of a risk to buy upfront when you know what you'll be getting:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder-2/id697846300?mt=8

Of course, it's easy to armchair criticize, but as someone who is in the target market for an app like this (I've bought and use several well-designed iPhone RSS apps), I thought I'd explain why Unread never managed to convince me it was worth buying.

Let's say he was simply much better at convincing people and had twice as many people purchase the app as he did. He still would only have made $50,000 from a year of working 60 hour days; and the majority of that revenue came in the days after release while it was still "new" and receiving lots of free press attention (and is not likely to repeat itself in the absence of a marketing campaign).

Keep in mind he now has to support the people who purchased his app while delivering improvements to a new version. Since you likely converted a large chunk of the people who would be interested in your app during your launch free publicity phase, there's a smaller pool of potential customers out there. You can either spend money on building features for users who will never pay you again, or you can spend money on marketing.

Moral of the story here is that the success of a product usually has very little to do with the merits of the product itself and much more to do with marketing. Marketing isn't something you can DIY; it costs money and if you're selling a niche $5 app, you're probably not going to see much return from a marketing campaign either. Without significant marketing or winning the viral popularity lottery, you're probably not even going to make minimum wage off the time you put into your app. The author is just opening his books so other people know what they're getting into.

But I still think it's worth for the guy to have pursued his dream. Not everyone makes it to major leagues, but it means a lot to the guys themselves who made it to AA. You are a lot better than the working stiffs who are.just sitting in the stands sir.

You don't need an MBA to know this. His app is competing with some pretty good free apps like Feedly. His screenshots don't sell the app. It's not really a big market. In-app purchase allows a "try before you buy" model. Was there any sustained marketing? Did he appeal to a niche? Maybe he would sell RSS subscription packs for specific areas: lawyers, programmers, biotech, investors, etc.