Hitting it big in the App Store ... or not

Lots of developers are aiming for huge success in the App Store, and it seems like nearly every day we're reading about someone who made a big game and is picking up something like a million dollars a day from customers clicking that little "Install" button.

L'Escapadou didn't make quite that much -- it's a studio that works on "educational and fun apps for iOS," and in this blog post, developer Pierre Abel walks through the $200,000 the company has made on the App Store so far. As you can read, however, it's a combination of a lot of hard work, and a little bit of luck -- Abel worked for months on the few apps he's produced for the store, and only after he got covered in the press for the right audience did he see a nice jump in sales. Also note that it took multiple updates -- none of his apps soared in revenue right out of the gate; he had to provide new content based on customer feedback and support his released apps before he saw the charts curve upwards.

But not everybody sees even that level of success. FastCompany recently posted an accusation that the App Store was "more of a casino than a gold mine," excerpting a new book called "Appilionaires" that suggests developers investing big in the App Store might as well just put all of their money on black at Harrah's. Maybe it's true, that the App Store is the "world's most competitive software market," but to hear this excerpt tell it, success with an iOS app is all luck -- being in the right place with the right app at the right time, to get swept up into the machine of fame and success, or losing all of your money and time invested with a great app that no one ever notices or sees.

Of course the truth is somewhere in between -- some great apps do sit there for a while before anyone notices just how good they are, and some terrible apps get caught up in hype or marketing and pick up lots of revenue anyway. In the end, the App Store works very much like any other marketplace: You need to have a product that people want, and then show people it exists and convince them that they want it. Despite the "gold mine" dreams, creating and releasing an app is a lot of work, even if some people are better or more experienced at that work than others. There is money to be made on the App Store -- that's for sure. But how that money is made and by whom is controlled by many factors, of which luck is only one.

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Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-the-a…

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Lots of developers are aiming for huge success in the App Store, and it seems like nearly every day we're reading about someone who...

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Art

Let me inject here a quick glimpse from a mobile app marketing perspective. It is impossible to get a crap app up to the roof of the App Store, sure there are methods to elevate an app on the App Store artificially but this is not only unethical but at the end of the day it's the perfect way to kill an app's marketing and it won't allow to generate any substantial amount of profit for an app developer. I believe there has been a problem of perception about what the App Store is, on its launch it was virtually empty comparing with what humongous number of apps it has now and that explained all stories about Gold Rush.

Right now iOS app marketing as hard as any other product marketing. That's absolutely right it requires updates to perfect an app after initial reaction, having a good grasp on what is your targeted audience and what message are you delivering on a particular promotional channel.

November 07 2011 at 5:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

John Parron

I agree that it can be a bit of a gamble on the App Store. I've tried all sorts of marketing with absolutely no results except having lost money in the process. The best tool for making sales beside making a great product is having great searchable keywords. I've had sales drop in half over night on a 4.5 star app just by releasing a new update with a different set of keywords. Developers would have it a lot easier if Apple actually provided some sort of analytics to give us an idea of how people are finding our apps, instead we are left to test the waters and gamble at the possibility of losing sales.

One thing I have noticed in the past 1.5 years since developing full time is that releasing a small simple app and improving it over time into something amazing actually causes me to lose sales. It seems as if customers only want one trick ponies. I've actually had people change a 5 star rating into a 1 star rating because they wanted the app to go back to being simple.

Also, customers DO NOT read app descriptions. I've had it on more than one occasion that people give my apps a bad rating because the description lied to them. The problem is, all my apps descriptions explain exactly which each app does and people simply don't read it! They convince themselves it's something it's not and then moan about it when they realize they were wrong.

November 04 2011 at 5:25 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

L'Escapadou

(I'm Pierre the author of the blog post that this post is talking about)
I agree Matthew, and yesterday I add a comment to the fast company post telling exactly what you say but it seems that it was not approved (perhaps also because I put a link to my blog post as proof of concept).
I think it's more sensational to say that they are only millionaires or big looser which is really not true

November 04 2011 at 11:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paris Paraskeva

its not all based on lack, a lot is based on marketing and indie developers might be very talented programmers but when it comes to marketing they simply suck!

the top 100 lists in the app store are limited if you consider the overall amount of apps! in order to get up there you might need to spend big $ in promoting what you hope iOS users will love and buy!

other than that users search the app store! they search a lot to find an app that does what they want! if you offer a GPS software in Cyprus and i can not find it by searching just that then you are doing something wrong!!

The internet is a big pool of websites and people search on google to find those services or the ones that do big promotions. if you cant do big promotion for you app then you should consider making sure that people can find it by searching the right things!

i have increased 5X the sales of my app by just tweaking the information that goes in the app store, a lot of developers don't bother doing that, they think they will publish something and people will buy like crazy!

Of course the best marketing ever is building something amazing!

but make sure people can find it easy enough!

November 04 2011 at 4:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Matthew Frederick

What's missing from this "casino vs gold mine" thinking is the many, many devs who make a very nice living from the App Store. You don't have to hit the jackpot/strike it rich to make it worthwhile.

That, and the fact that quality sells, and the majority of apps in the store are written by gamblers/gold miners who figured they could make a fortune off of any old piece of junk. These devs don't make a penny yet are counted in the success vs failure calculation.

November 04 2011 at 1:07 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Matthew Frederick's comment

Shawn

Exactly. Quality sells, and all marketplaces are full of ****.

There's still luck involved in getting that massive success, but in terms of making ends meet there's no mystery there.

November 04 2011 at 11:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply