What Does Having the #6 App in a Mac App Store Category Get You? $15.42 | Hacker News Reader

What Does Having the #6 App in a Mac App Store Category Get You? $15.42

hanchorllc.com

95 pointsOsiris38 comments

Even in the iOS App Store, there's a world of difference between sixth place and first place in terms of revenue. (I've charted in the US in both positions for the productivity category.)

It took Pixelmator 20 days to take a million dollars on the Mac App Store[1], so his suspicion that 'the stats aren't that great' might be true for most people, but it's not true for everyone.

This isn't surprising, though, because the Mac App Store will be subject to the same formula for profit as the iOS App Store:

  1. Build something unique with mass appeal.
  2. Polish it until it shines.
  3. Market it to a big list of loyal fans.
  4. If you don't have a big list, build one or piggyback someone else's.
  5. Update your app, improve it, and do one thing every day to spread the word.

Consistently, the apps doing well appear to get steps 1-to-5 right, which often results in Apple featuring them. Earning $15/day isn't reason to give up, though. It's a great starting point; there's plenty of room to grow from there.

[1]: http://www.pixelmator.com/weblog/

Actually being featured is the single biggest factor to success in the App Store. Sure, having a good product is necessary for continued success, but many have done well initially just by having a contact on the review team and getting placed in a prominent position (Color comes to mind).

Or Angry Birds. It only became a success after the devs got a publisher with contacts to Apple.

> "we went to Apple with Chillingo and said, 'We've got something here.'"

> On February 11, 2010, Apple agreed to feature Angry Birds on the front page of the UK App Store as game of the week. In preparation, Rovio made a YouTube trailer, only the second ever for an iPhone game, which has now had over 17 million views.

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how...

You can't expect to make much money on the Mac App Store with an app priced at $2 in a niche category. You'll never get the volume of downloads necessary to be profitable, unlike on iOS, whose market is many times larger than the Mac.

My Mac App Store experience has been rather different. I have several applications in the store ranging from $5-$20, and daily revenue is usually in the $100-$200 range. The Mac App Store has brought much greater exposure and increased sales.

To generate income on the Mac App Store, you really need to be aiming for products that can be sold in the $20 range if your product is in one of the smaller categories.

"You'll never get the volume of downloads necessary to be profitable, unlike on iOS, whose market is many times larger than the Mac."

We all know this stuff but it still amazes me, not so many years ago it would be nonsense...

Same here, I get 100-200 downloads a week for [Space Gremlin](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-gremlin/id414515628?mt=...) and do just fine with revenue.

Awesome app. This is random, but I was just looking for something similar

Great app.

I have an app called SongCleaner (to delete double MP3s) that I sell at $5. It floats around in the top 20 of the Music Category. Peaks at around #14 then goes to #30 and so on.

I make about $35 a day on that app. Peak was $70 and bottom was $17. That's about 10 downloads to 20 downloads a day.

I'm quite satisfied with the income considering it took barely 2 weeks to develop (part-time), but consistently brings in a steady income.

There is a competitor who sells at $20 and also does the same floating around that my app does. So I guess he's making 4 times as much money as I do, but I personally don't think $20 is a fair price for something you use once or twice.

1. This is MAC App Store. Not sure why people are mentioning Android.

2. This was only over 1 (ONE) day.

3. This was in the Dev Tools category.

The ranking mentioned is also the "Top Paid" one. That is pretty meaningless for a relatively inexpensive app ($2) in a niche category.

My direct experience has been with the iOS App Store where I've never once been above #25 in the top paid photography category but am always within the top 10 of top grossing photography. I make considerably more than $15.42 in a day because I charge more.

The article cites sales of Panic's Coda and BBEdit.

Panic has been around for a long time and has an established brand among Apple users. If I wanted a Panic product, I'd go directly to Panic.com where I've purchased from them before, and I'd prefer to give them their full price instead of 70%. Random Hanchor LLC product of questionable usefulness? I'll let Apple shield me. Hence, lower App Store sales of reputable products, higher sales of unknowns.

Coda and BBEdit are also relatively old products. Citing their slow sales as evidence that the Mac App Store is ineffective would be the same as citing slow sales of Adobe CS3 on the App Store if it were for sale. The primary purchasers for those products owned them well before the App Store even existed.

You wont get the nice upgrades. I always get the mac app store version because you can't convert from one to the other.

Panic's stuff already has nice upgrades.

I bought the app a couple weeks ago. It can be downloaded from github and compiled, but I wanted to support the developer. Small world I suppose.

I wanted to expand a little more on the app store itself. I pop it open every couple of days, looking for new tools, but new software seems to take a while to show up. Until there is a huge base of software like there is for iOs, sales are going to be slow. I also feel that in general, the pricing is a touch too high. I want to buy apps that will inexpensively solve an immediate need. I will pay a dollar to save a minute. The need doesnt have to be huge, but the app does have to nail it. The authors app is in this category, along with an app I purchased to quickly resize icons, and another to create buttons.

In general, the store doesn't provide enough detail for high-end app sales. Going to the apps website kind of defeats the point. I'm not willing to bet too much money on something I'm evaluating from a few screenshots.

Of course, there may be demand, but the fact that the author is selling an app to developers, who can download and compile the app for free, may skew the numbers.

We have a $.99 app for a sports team. One 3 day period we were #3 in the Sports category in the US. It yielded 703 sales during that period, and a sustained period of 3x downloads pre ranking.

is this iOS or Mac? Sounds incredibly high to me if this is Mac App Store, but sounds about right for iOS (I've been #2 in sports on iOS)

Sorry it was iOS - I didn't read.

I guess this is the opposite end of the spectrum..

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140208

It has to also depend on the category you are in. A lot more people will be interested in a easy to use photo editor over some iOS beta delivery software.

I work on one of the top 100 free apps in the mac app store (its been as high as the top 20s). Our volume is surprisingly low considering we are ranked so high in the overall category. I guess its telling about the overall volume in the store.

Any chance of sharing the numbers?

I'll share some numbers: I've got three utilities in the Mac App Store, two currently free: WindowFlow[1] & Window Keys[2], and one paid: Optimal Layout[3].

Firstly, from what I've seen, only the US store really matters for paid apps. I've seen very low numbers move Optimal Layout to close to the top of the category: e.g 5 sales in Canada placed it at #5 in the top paid utilities.

In the US Optimal Layout hit #4 in the top paid utilities and #40 top paid overall with 82 units sold in a day.

For the free apps, WindowFlow was the best performer getting the most downloads in Japan & France (for some reason) hitting the number 1 spot in both store with about 700 downloads a day. Neither of these translated into many sales for Optimal Layout, but it was just great to have lots of people trying out the apps.

So overall it's not a big market yet, being a part of bundle like MacUpdate or MacHeist delivers access to a much bigger market (40,000+ in 2 weeks) but it's relatively steady and only going to get bigger.

I'll revive my blog soon and post a more detailed analysis of how I see it playing out.

[1]WindowFlow: http://most-advantageous.com/windowflow/

[2]Window Keys: http://most-advantageous.com/window-keys/

[3]Optimal Layout: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout

So how much did he spend on advertising? Why is he saying that all of his advertising only goes towards a single day of sales? Shouldn't it really be seen over a week after and week prior to get a good idea of the impact it had?

I don't think that was the point ... the point was he's achieved a prominent position in the Mac App Store, and that's not worth many sales.

I've spent almost no time in the Mac App Store, when I want software I go to Google and when I want games I go to iTunes.

He hasn't really achieved a very prominent position in the mac app store though. The post there shows he is 6 in the 'developer tools' category. I suspect this is one of the least used / lowest sales of any of the sub-categories. Most developers probably aren't looking in the app store for their tools, they already have them, and even if they are, developers make up a small percentage of mac users. Perhaps, only 1% of all mac owners are potential customers... Even less really because they must be mobile developers to make use of his application.

His sales vs position has nothing to do with the appStore and everything to do with being in an extremely tiny niche market.

Achieving a prominent position in the Mac App Store in a category like Developer Tools isn't worth many sales. That doesn't surprise me in the least.

Going against the old adage of "Don't dig for gold; sell tools to miners"?

That works great, unless said miners have an almost ridiculous quantity of tools just lying on the ground waiting for someone to clean them up a bit and start using them.

But there's a big, big pile of gold (normal iOS or even Mac users).

Developer tools can't be an easy market to succeed in. You aren't going to get many impulse buys.

Yeah but the gold have been dug for awhile now, plus there are competitors with just as easy access to the market and his is only a little different from the competition.

The point in the article is that it is ahead of other apps in Dev Tools from established companies who should be selling more than 10 copies a day.

Could the rankings be factoring in how many people looked at the app? Or maybe the sales rate? Maybe everyone flocked to the app right at the same time creating a spike over a short period of time that Apple noticed. I actually heard the podcast in question (5by5) and it's broadcast live, so there could be a discrete bump.

The main problem is that I feel developers don't look for apps on the Mac App Store. And being a cheap app in a niche category doesn't bring money.

Let this be a warning to the mobile platform app devs: this is your future. Get all the gold you can, while you can.

Why is this a warning to mobile app developers? The article is about the Mac App Store.

I think he is trying to say that mobile is still in a gold rush, and the Mac App Store is what an app store on a stable platform looks like. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's not completely unrelated.

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