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Is the Apple App Store a Casino?

Posted by Unknown on from the dulcinea's-life-makes-ten-billion dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Fast Company takes a look at the Apple App Store and concludes that it's a casino where most developers are making tragic losses and a tiny few are striking it filthy rich. The article discusses a new book exposing the App Store millionaires, called 'Appillionaires,' which compares the psychological effects of a hit app on a programmer to a gambler's high. One millionaire programmer explains the intense feeling of being in the top-ten: 'The App Store had established some kind of intravenous connection to my body and was pumping me full of Apple-branded heroin.' But, the piece warns, the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app."

6 of 542 comments (clear)

  1. Welcome to real world by SharkLaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is how it works. Tiny few become really rich, most barely make a living. Some better, some worse. It's not a casino, and it's not limited to app store.

    1. Re:Welcome to real world by grub · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you sell your app for 99 cents, you only need sell ~144 copies in the year to break even on the $99 developers' program cost.

      That's small peanuts. Even moderately cheap webhosting would cost you that much for a year.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    2. Re:Welcome to real world by xaxa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do not compare this to other software distributors. The 99$ tag that you HAVE to pay per year to have your app in the appstore make it extremely hard for anyone to be able to make a profit

      If $99 is the difference between profit and loss, was it really worth trying to make any money anyway? That's 0.5-1-2 days work at minimum wage in most developed countries.

      Better to put your time into a free app, and feel good about it, rather than stressing about your $99.

    3. Re:Welcome to real world by thejaq · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hear variations on this claim quite frequently.
      Here are several links that dispute your recollection.
      http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html
      http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/ask/sa990930.htm
      http://blog.globalbx.com/2008/10/06/small-business-statistics-and-failure-rates/
      A collection of results that span from your estimation to the inverse, http://www.moyak.com/papers/small-business-statistics.html
      There also seems to be many discussions on the myth of high failure rates. for example, http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-myths/why-the-small-business-failure-rate-is-90-percent-smoke-and-mirrors/117

      This certainly isn't rigorous, but my 3 minute Internet estimation is that you are broadly incorrect. Apparently, the notion of failure is complicated. Failures appear to be inversely proportional to seed capital. It varies substantially with race and industry. And the definition of failure may include businesses that close for reasons other than financial inviability.

    4. Re:Welcome to real world by Bemopolis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, this is *actual* capitalism at work. Now, if these developers were to fail due to their greed and rank incompetence and receive an 800 billion dollar taxpayer-funded bailout...

      --
      "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
  2. I'm making money by tylersoze · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm reliably making money from the App Store, $75000 (on the side, in addition to my day job) in the last year and half actually. How? By writing apps for all those people that think they're going to get rich from App Store. I'd say probably 10% of my clients have made any money from their apps. Personally I don't try to feed their notions, I just produce the best product I can for them, and they can worry about making money from it, I'll take my money upfront for the coding thank you very much. I always turn down the projects where they want to do "profit sharing".

    I do laugh at the guys that make me sign an NDA before they show me their super secret idea. Dude, ideas are a time a dozen, somebody's probably already thought of whatever idea it is you have.