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

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

#51

Post by qq66 »

franzus wrote: post #48
rscale wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's awesome that they didn't want to engage in predatory behavior, but what they did was self-predatory, which is no better! The opposite of exploitative game design isn't a life of asceticism; it's value for money. I'm not a big gamer, but on the first page of my phone's springboard I count $300+ of apps, some of which have ongoing subscription costs. That's money that I paid because I got value. I'm happy with eve…

> and sold to a corporate buyer for $120m. That's a great business plan and not lottery at all!

If they had not sold the company they could have just kept running on the revenues and distributing dividends back to the owners. That's a lot different than a business that needs to "sell or die."

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

#52

Post by slevcom »

Most apps, particularly games are limited to a few dollars, which requires them to basically be hits. Reaching out to tons of people to make a hit, is difficult and expensive.

Giving a game away for free seems like an easy way to gain some marketshare. In practice it isn't enough. In other hit based businesses, companies use multi-faceted marketing strategies to get the word out, each one a lead bullet.

Unfortunately for app developers, measuring marketing efforts through the iTunes funnel is almost impossible. Where do they come from? What's working? Nobody knows. Its difficult for marketing pros, let alone a pair of developers who spend all their time developing and not marketing.

They just need to keep at it. Being an indie developer requires more than just developing. Marketing is part of the job. If they are determined enough they will get there. Its just tough to put 2 years into a project, thinking you are finished, and only realize you're at the halfway point.

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

#53

Post by pjbeardsley »

revorad wrote: post #32

"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion." You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Developers starving themselves to death because of a complete disregard to basic business sense and a misguided sense of righteousness. 5 easy steps to homelessness: 1. Spend years building products for a platform, where $1.99 is a high price. 2. Avoid doing even t…

I'm in no way saying that Apple's business practices are above scrutiny, but I think it's unfair to claim they are "making developers fall over each other". When the App Store debuted, prices started out in the $5-$20 range, but the market has settled around the $1.99 price point because that's where it ended up. They're not going around telling developers how to price their apps.

It may be Apple's petri dish, but this is the culture that's evolved in it, for better or worse.

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

#55

Post by jonhendry »

franzus wrote: post #50
FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't fathom the thought process behind burying the link to your sole source of income . And why aren't they considering fixing that, and reducing the amount of free content, to solve this? In fact, they say normal IAP is exploitative, but the fact is, they can still learn from the technique to make money without violating their ethics. The question they should have asked is "at what point are we crossing…

Those guys are the typical case of the "free" brainwashing. They see taking money as something filthy and immoral to do. It's how you start thinking if you grow up with everybody giving away their $product for free on the one side and the opensource/libre software hippies who give you a hard time if you try to make a living with software products on the other side. Now if the results were just some homeless developer…

"Those guys are the typical case of the "free" brainwashing. They see taking money as something filthy and immoral to do."

I don't think that's quite the case.

They went free because they saw a lot of profitable apps using the free + In-App-Purchase model.

The problem is they didn't think through what their own IAP model should be. They just focused on not being exploitative (the part that makes many of those free apps so profitable), when they should have been thinking about how much they needed to charge to be profitable, given the single IAP they had to work with.

They also might have gimped the free version a bit more to encourage people to buy the IAP.

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

#56

Post by revorad »

rscale wrote: post #41
revorad wrote: post #32

"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion." You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Developers starving themselves to death because of a complete disregard to basic business sense and a misguided sense of righteousness. 5 easy steps to homelessness: 1. Spend years building products for a platform, where $1.99 is a high price. 2. Avoid doing even t…

It's awesome that they didn't want to engage in predatory behavior, but what they did was self-predatory, which is no better! The opposite of exploitative game design isn't a life of asceticism; it's value for money. I'm not a big gamer, but on the first page of my phone's springboard I count $300+ of apps, some of which have ongoing subscription costs. That's money that I paid because I got value. I'm happy with eve…

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 PG himself has been clearly saying this for years. And we still refuse to accept it!

Blindly copying VC-funded startups' surface tactics is the second leading cause of indie developer homelessness.

If you are in the business of business, you've got to sell. Successful entrepreneurs, whether VC-funded or bootstrapped, know how to sell.

If you are funded, it would be stupid to try and do anything that doesn't increase the valuation of your company. The best founders know how to weave a compelling story, and are always selling their company. Always.

The most successful bootstrapped entrepreneurs are always selling their product. Notice how patio11 does not miss an opportunity to somehow weave in a mention of one of his products, while still coming across as the most helpful guy ever (because he is). And when he's blogging about SEO and other useful stuff for other entrepreneurs? He's selling his consultancy services.

If you're not selling, it's not a business. It's a hobby.

ABC: Always be closing.

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

#57

Post by clarky07 »

So many things wrong with this article and devs I don't know where to start.

1. Contract work sucks. You know what sucks worse? Being homeless. Do some work, get paid, save some runway, then get back to your game.

2. Man I'm having trouble making money on this thing I'm giving away for free. No kidding? If your app is free you should be making it really really obvious that there is more to be paid for that is really awesome, and then maybe have a button somewhere that actually allows your customers to give you money.

3. Don't spend 2 years on an app with an ARPU of a couple of pennies. The mobile app market moves really fast and you can't expect the revenue from this game to last you for the next 2 years unless it is a huge hit.

4. This app has been out for a week. This linkbait title is a joke. 200k downloads for a free app isn't that amazing, but it's not bad for a week. Even if it had 10 million downloads, they'd still be homeless as they won't be getting a check from Apple for this until October. Their stupid decisions over the past 2 years led to them being homeless. The success or failure of their launch week has nothing to do with it.

Clicking to the article I assumed this was going to be a case of giving away something and server costs bringing them down. Nope. We just decided to not have jobs for 2 years, not do any contracting, and not having enough money saved ahead of time.

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

#58

Post by larrys »

jonhendry wrote: post #55
franzus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those guys are the typical case of the "free" brainwashing. They see taking money as something filthy and immoral to do. It's how you start thinking if you grow up with everybody giving away their $product for free on the one side and the opensource/libre software hippies who give you a hard time if you try to make a living with software products on the other side. Now if the results were just some homeless developer…

"Those guys are the typical case of the "free" brainwashing. They see taking money as something filthy and immoral to do." I don't think that's quite the case. They went free because they saw a lot of profitable apps using the free + In-App-Purchase model. The problem is they didn't think through what their own IAP model should be. They just focused on not being exploitative (the part that makes many of those free ap…

"They went free because they saw a lot of profitable apps using the free + In-App-Purchase model."

I think it would be more accurate to say that they saw several well publicized stories about where that model worked. They certainly didn't read any analysis highlighting that strategy and how it worked for all that tried it that way.

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

#59

Post by briandear »

This isn't a sad story it's another example of developers being good at code but terrible at business. If code is your livelihood, treat it as such. Misplaced idealism is dangerous. Besides, doesn't giving someone a free game feed into their game addictions? Game pricing shouldn't be subject to some moral code. It's a game: if people don't like the price, they don't have to play.

This illustrates the problem with pirate software as well as pirate music and movies. People don't buy the cow if they get the milk for free.

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

#60

Post by pacifi30 »

revorad wrote: post #32

"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion." You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Developers starving themselves to death because of a complete disregard to basic business sense and a misguided sense of righteousness. 5 easy steps to homelessness: 1. Spend years building products for a platform, where $1.99 is a high price. 2. Avoid doing even t…

Thanks for Joel on Software article, it made me think hard on focussing on economics as well rather then just coding 24*7 when starting a company or building a product.

Yes I repeat "Commoditize my complements"

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