My last Android app sales figures and why it's still great to start a mobile app | Hacker News Reader

My last Android app sales figures and why it's still great to start a mobile app

blog.edward-kim.com

114 pointsbarredo25 comments

Interesting hypothesis on app sales. The apps that I've seen do well more long term are not necessarily apps that are ever seen as "hot", but more of a brand growth steady increase while providing lasting and growing value. Example would be Spotify, Kindle, or Instagram. They have a service attached that makes their iOS app not their identity. This makes sense because iOS apps are usually a product, and service oriented offerings are more of a complete company offering. Products even outside of a mobile app store have a shelf life. I think if you want to make sustained sales in the current mobile market you need to think beyond a small iOS app and into a larger service style offering.

Agreed. Products that are pure mobile apps without a service attached to it will rely very heavily on marketplace rankings for sales. And marketplace rankings always have a time-based decay factor as a part of the algorithm.

This is a hidden secret of the "App Store economy". To see how strongly the "Hot & New" dynamics are embedded into App Stores, check out the sections of the iOS App Store (Featured -> New & Noteworthy) or Google Play (Top Grossing New Apps)

If you are able to catch onto a foothold, you can reap a lot quickly - but the fall will be just as fast as the author saw here. The apps that are able to stay on top have a very strong hook with increasing value (ie the popular social gaming apps with in-app purchases or the social/messaging apps). Anything else will result in the inevitable fall in rankings and therefore sales. This is why "app development companies" often have many many apps in the app store to continually reap from this cycle. There's another aspect to the publishing cycle and it's in-app purchases. The #1 paid app on the iOS app store is #31 top-grossing. 28 of the 30 before it are all free apps (which aren't ranked all that high in the free charts)

I know this a captain obvious:

Some of this smash-n-grab shovel-app development would be negated if the Apple App Store simply offered more meaningful app discoveries.

Also thanks to author for posting stats like this.

Very true that the lifecycle of an app can be very short due to the need for the app store economy to constantly unleash new blood. However, couldn't he have used his momentum to build a base of loyal users to help his future apps, rather than (as the article tends to suggest)(, start from the beginning again each time.

The successful app, should have yielded him a customer base of which would make it easier to seed a new app, rather than fstarting again from zero? More interestingly, more analysis into the cost benefits of when to do further updates, and when to release a newer version would be insightful.

This is exactly what I did when releasing new apps. By the time I had built Car Locator, I had built a following of loyal users who were willing to try out other apps I released. It made releasing and promoting subsequent apps much easier.

Is there a way to 'push' your new apps to customers or do you just have to wait for them to discover it themselves (pull)?

Notification messages?

Sometimes what I'll do is include a "see more apps from this developer" link within my apps.

Wow, you can actually do pretty well for yourself on the Android marketplace with the right app, a lot better than I honestly expected. Most people keep this kind of info a secret, so I appreciate the insight into the marketplace.

Seeing the list of apps he's selling explains much. He has cast a wide net. Hell, at least one of his apps was already on my list to get when I finally have an Android tablet.

Here is the list of all the apps he's selling: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Edward+Kim

This seems to be the money maker: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.edwardkim....

He has only 8 apps (The others are only trail versions / plugins for those 8 and a test app):

1. Car Locator

2. Smarter Alarm

3. Screenshot It

4. Copy Paste It

5. Print & Mail Photos

6. Audio Photos Free

7. Scare And Share

8. Camera Translator

I see there are no 99 cent apps. The "screen shot, no root" app is $4.99. Fairly expensive, isn't it?

It also has more 1-star reviews than 5-star reviews.

Surprisingly, that one has been making lots of money though. That fact changed my impression that Android users don't pay much for non-game apps.

How do you get an app into the "Top New apps" in the first place? I wouldn't have a clue how to stand out from the saturated mass of apps out there.

i hear that there are black market places you can buy faked reviews and download so that you get a foot in the door. one you'd get on the top app page, then merit will take over.

>then merit will take over

That seems so fair.

I wonder how much impact to this shady practice occurred when the Play store changed to Google+/Gmail profiles.

Edward is answering questions over on reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1e7el0/my_last_andr...

Are you still making 30K$/ month or am I reading the graph wrong ?

As of Jan. he was making 25K$ a month. That is the latest figure on the graph.

I stopped updating the chart in February. As the trend indicates, sales have continued to decline since then. My latest figure is 15k-20k/month.

Still ridiculously good for an indie.

Any suggestions on how to find profitable niches?

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