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The Realities of Selling On Apple's App Store

Posted by kdawson on from the languishing-on-the-midlist dept.

Owen Goss writes "Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reality is that with the App Store now hosting over 25,000 apps, the competition is fierce. While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money. In a blog post I take a hard look at the first 24 days of sales data for the first game, Dapple, from Streaming Colour Studios. The post reflects what is likely the norm for developers just getting into the iPhone development game."

9 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. The value of being brutally honest. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I am more interested in, is how many sales he gets after being "brutally honest" and then being posted on slashdot for doing so.

  2. Crappy color matching game. by MrMista_B · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What, a company makes YET ANOTHER crappy color matching game, and people are ASTONISHED they don't get rich?

    What are they honestly expecting? If all you're going to do is repeat, for the nth time, yet another basic, basic, simple crappy puzzle game, you ARE NOT going to make much cash, or get much recognition.

    Why is that a story? Just because it's an 'Apple's App Store' thing?

    Release a crappy color matching puzzle game onto the web at large, and they'll probably do worse.

    Gets right down to the most basic of basics: if you're not going to put the effort in, don't expect to get rewarded.

    In terms of the story - make yet another crappy duplicate of yet another crappy puzzle game, become yet another crappy also-ran.

    1. Re:Crappy color matching game. by vrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While the parent poster has clearly had too much coffee, the overall point made is valid. There are so many colour/pattern matching games available it's no surprise that this one failed to make an impact. It must be disappointing for the author, but he has to be honest with himself as to whether the game is actually any good and if there's any space in market for it at the chosen price point.

      Obviously it would have been better if these questions had been asked and researched before spending six months and thirty-two grand on development; but what's done is done.

  3. Color me shocked by vivaoporto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reality is that with the App Store now hosting over 25,000 apps, the competition is fierce. While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money.

    And how is that different from what happens IRL (or, as the cool cats are calling it now, AFK)? You enter a market, develop a product and compete with hundreds or thousands of similar offers. A couple will succeed, some will get by and most will flunk and disappear in its own mediocrity (averageness, ordinariness as a consequence of being average and not outstanding).

    That is not the "[r]ealities of Selling On Apple's App Store", that's the reality of selling. People will copy your idea and sell. People will copy your product look and feel. The toughest ones will survive, the rest won't, but maybe will make enough money to keep the viability of their business choice. Or not. At all.

  4. surprise by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money.

    What a surprise. Not so different from the real world, is it? Where every now and then, some idea goes big and makes someone rich, and for every one such lucky guy, there's a thousand whose ideas never work out.

    What's even the story here? "Some products sell real well, most sell average"? Why not take it further? "Bell curve distribution confirmed for the 4,000th time!"? :-)

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  5. Re:How Piracy Can Boost iPhone App Sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reading an article on how piracy boost sales on torrentfreak.com is like reading about the Bush legacy on foxnews.com.

  6. No surprise by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, a color matching game. How incredibly groundbreaking. And it's only selling for five times the minimum application price. Sorry, but the value isn't there for a game of this simplicity. I've got two games under development, both immensely more complex than this, that I will sell for at most half the price.

    So my appraisal:
    1) Clone of a clone of a clone of the color matching / bubble popping games that can be written in less than a week. No surprise people aren't jumping up and down with excitement, or going out and buying iPhones so they can play this game.

    2) Price is way, way too high for this game.

    I do thank the author for his concise summary of sales though.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  7. Re:article text by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you do the math, you can see that I need to sell about 9,150 units in the U.S. before I break even on Dapple.

    Then he should have done the maths before spending time developing the app, and either not bothered or worked out a way to reduce costs. Only a few apps get wildly successful and make everyone rich. Budgeting for over 1000 sales on a simple puzzle game running on a single platform is fantasy land.

  8. Re:Appstore apps are too limited by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No the most telling thing about the Iphone store is that the app iFart has sold an insane amount.

    Cater to the lowest common denominator and you got a goldmine. Cater to those that have a brain and you end up poor.

    If you can figure out how to text real farts to other people no matter what phone they have, you have found a way to be far richer than bill gates.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.