How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness • Hacker News Board

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#121

Post by gaius » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 8:58 AM UTC

S_A_P wrote: post #9

I personally am pretty turned off to in app purchases. Most games are only getting worse. I cannot count the number of times that I have been approached by my 5 year old asking for me to "type in my name so I can have _______" while playing angry birds, jetpack joyride, or where's my water. The problem is that he doesn't realize that there is real money tied to that. To him, I just enter my iTunes password and the le…

I was hanging out with my old lady's 10-year-old niece the other day (technically I suppose my niece... whoah) playing iPad games, and it was amazing how often, without even really thinking about it, she ended up on a screen to buy something, or linked out to a website (the iPad launching the browser) to buy something. Being a good kid she just asked me how to get back to the game, but it was a real eye-opener as to the tactics being used by app devs now. I fully see the need to make money, but "tricking" people into purchases is not cool.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#122

Post by lmm » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 10:43 AM UTC

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #115

patio11 wrote: post #91

There's multiple aspects of this story you can tweak such that the business becomes successful. Pick any one of them: 1) There is an extraordinarily lucrative market opportunity in iDevice contracting right now, which they allude to but mentioned that they avoided doing to keep momentum. Giving that living on a couch is presumably not momentum-enhancing, a two week consulting engagement would buy them another 6~24 mo…

#3 is just wrong. These guys want to make video games. Maybe that's enough to make it work and maybe not. Time will tell. But by the logic of #3 we should all just do whatever puts money in the bank. That argument quickly devolves into a lot of would-be entrepreneurs sulking back to jobs they vowed they would learn to live without or building companies that are temporary money making opportunities, not something wort…

>These guys want to make video games. Maybe that's enough to make it work and maybe not. Time will tell. But by the logic of #3 we should all just do whatever puts money in the bank. That argument quickly devolves into a lot of would-be entrepreneurs sulking back to jobs they vowed they would learn to live without or building companies that are temporary money making opportunities, not something worth the devotion required.

I'm all for taking a smaller paycheck, or running a business that pays below your market salary, to do what you love. If you're only putting yourself out, and you can keep it up, then by all means live in a shack, or your car, if you prefer that to what you would have to do to earn more.

But at the point where you're taking money from your parents, relying on your friends' hospitality and giving them nothing in return, you have failed; give up and go get a real job.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#123

Post by rmc » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 11:17 AM UTC

revorad wrote: post #114

awolf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you'd have to sell to a hell of a lot of people to make any decent money No. This right here is where you're way off. Some hypothetical math: $3.99 app, $2.79 after Apple's cut. $2.79 X 50 sales/day = $139.5 revune/day = $50,917 per year. Enough to live and quite conservative if you make a quality product.

Isn't $3.99 on the high end of app pricing? Instapaper sells for $4.99 and is considered a premium product. How long does it take to make a $3.99 app? Do you factor in those development costs? If it's just one person and you make $50K, that's fine. But what if there's two of you? What's the probability of getting 50 sales/day and for how long? In the event that you get, let's say 25 sales/day, what's your fallback st…

Price is not always related to how hard it is to make. Google Search is a fantastically expensive piece of software, but is free. Charge what people are willing to pay.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#124

Post by colinplamondon » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

aeiowu wrote: post #117

colinplamondon wrote: post #109

They're now Top 200 Grossing on iPad- seems like they managed to trip their way into one hell of a marketing strategy. 1) Bitch about not making enough money because you boned your conversion funnel. 2) Get an article written about how you don't make enough money 3) Make money! Don't try this at home.

We didn't. We were homeless! ;)

Haha, well played!

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#125

Post by danweber » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 2:13 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #111

patio11 wrote: post #91

There's multiple aspects of this story you can tweak such that the business becomes successful. Pick any one of them: 1) There is an extraordinarily lucrative market opportunity in iDevice contracting right now, which they allude to but mentioned that they avoided doing to keep momentum. Giving that living on a couch is presumably not momentum-enhancing, a two week consulting engagement would buy them another 6~24 mo…

Great post, especially number 5. The only thing I would add as as corollary to 8, is to not assume that you know more than the market. Maybe you do know more and your product will revolutionize the industry, but have a backup plan. Even if that backup plan is going broke and starting over. Living the dream is romantic, but you can't eat romance.

Several times I've been a company that says "the way the rest of the industry does X is stupid."

Sometimes we broke the rest of the market, sometimes we captured a really big piece, sometimes we had to give up and do what they all do.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#126

Post by danweber » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #113

csallen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work with a group of developers in the MIT Media Lab who, honestly, were some of the most moral and upstanding individuals I've ever met. They spent a lot of time trying building software to help people in need. But the one thing that I could never wrap my head around was the fact that they saw money as inherently evil. They went so far as to actively avoid using or accepting money, to the point that it act…

People are motivated by different things, and that is neither good or bad. It is. The upside of people wanting to give their labors away in exchange for recognition or a university paycheck is that it has pushed the rest of us up the value chain. Big companies want to be like IBM in 1970 -- owners of the marketplace, who stick you with whatever makes sense to them. That's why greybeard mainframe types call everything…

All of this "giving away" of stuff has stopped our society from reinventing the wheel.

Unfortunately, the people "giving away" spend a lot of time reinventing fantastically-different but only-very-marginally-better wheels. Every week I see on HN about some new language or framework someone has invented that fragments the market even more. If you aren't being compensated in dollars, being compensated with being "the inventor of X" can come close, so there's a big supply of this.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#127

Post by trhtrsh » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 3:29 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #83

revorad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, I wrote about that yesterday - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4378546 Tripit and every other VC-backed company is in a completely different business than indie devs making apps. The product that companies like Tripit are selling, right from the beginning, is the company itself, not some free or cheap app. The app is just a marketing vehicle to increase the price of the company. The amazing thing is that…

For what it is worth, I have historically taken pains to avoid selling on HN.

You don't sell, but you promote your expertise and your personal brand for consulting, and offhandedly refer to how successful you are, with a indirect touch that is less off-putting and generates a bit of subtle mystique about "how does he do it? what is he talking about?"

A famous patio11-esque statement is a comment like "If you think that's a good sales technique, you don't understand the mindset of middle-aged schoolteachers" (while not repeating the fact that you market a product to that specific demographic.)

Can't fault that much. It would be extremely sacrificial to complete avoid saying "BCC" at all or ever mentioning that you generate X-figure returns for your consulting gigs, and spammily redundant to re-explain the whole Bingo Card business in every post.

You give away far more honest value (good, detailed advice) than you take away in "promotional references", contrasted against link-litter posts like this:

Headline: How X can help your business

Poster: Yeah, at http://mycompany.example.io, we use X.

You are like a human Google, giving away good, in-depth information, with a side of context-relevant promotion for your consulting business, but the information is valuable even without "clicking to learn the secret" or "buying the book". If all advertising were like that, the Internet would be a much nicer place.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#128

Post by robomartin » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

This is going to sound harsh. This story exposes a simple fact: These developers went at this in utter ignorance of the realities of business.

If their goal was to put out a free app and not try to make a living off of it, then fine. I take it back. You don't need to know anything about business or making money to give shit away. If this is the case, don't complain and be very thankful that people around you are kind enough to support you financially and beyond.

If, on the other hand, their goal was to offer a free product with IAP in order to earn money and make a living, well, their decision making reveals their level of business ignorance.

Why is it that the competitors they refer to have such intense IAP approaches? Could it be because that's a pretty solid way to monetize your app? If my goal was to make money in that segment I'd certainly stop all coding and look at what others are doing in detail. I would not hold myself back due to ideological nonsense. If it is a business, it is about making money. If it is a hobby, it is not. So, yes, I would copy, borrow and mutate ideas from others who, before me, trenched the territory and became successful.

The only exception to this is if you truly have in your hands one of these edge-cases that will succeed because it is so unique, entertaining and, yes, addictive.

This also demonstrates a reality of FOSS (even though this was not OSS): In order to provide FOSS someone has to be earning a living somehow or the equation is never balanced. That's why FOSS is never really free (as in cost) because the development costs are being banked by someone. Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of code ever developed.

This case was a simple failure to make the right business decisions and nothing more.

That's how you end-up on the street and broke.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#129

Post by shurane » Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 1:03 AM UTC

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #16

I'm currently building a game company so I sympathize with these guys, but it sounds like most of this is self inflicted. 1. Development cycle is way too long. You have to move much faster in mobile, especially for a casual game. 2. Assume financial failure for each game. Doesn't sound very encouraging but you should never count on income from a new title, especially if you're trying out new ways of monetizing. 3. Ke…

At least they'll learn from this venture. Maybe avoid the mistakes made on their next such adventure.