The App Store isn't going to make you rich | Hacker News Reader

The App Store isn't going to make you rich

stevenbooks.com

8 pointssbooks8 comments

App store search and ranking is completely broken. My app for HN was updated 3 months ago, another one is getting push out this week. There are 3 other apps above mine that hasn't been updated in over 3 years. Some of them don't even work on retina devices.

The second problem is feedback, but this is with all software in general. Out of 1000 happy users, maybe one will bother taking their time to leave a feedback. Actually I'm just BSing here, I don't actually know the stat of happy users. I've included a contact button, but most never contact me first about problems. They just leave a 1 star review and it stays there -forever-, even though it's because HN changed their markup, even though I scramble to push out an update the next day.

Fortunately, I didn't develop this app with other people's reviews in mind or to get rich. It's serves mostly as an advertisement to attract potential clients and for personal use.

The app store today is mostly a playground for big dev shop. A lot of apps are free and serves as advertisement piece for big corporation. Either that or they work on the zero revenue model like snapchat. So, develop an app, make it free, get buy up by facebook, profit.

Edit: One other problem I didn't mention is the lack of refund policy. This is a serious deterrent to potential buyers that no app preview video will fix.

Ranking doesn't mean much unless its in the top 100 free charts, because thats all anyone looks at when they go to find new apps.

Furthermore, a $19 from 62 downloads is quite good. You just need to learn distribution, it's the same as pushing out a website and not promoting it, then complaining that "web is dead". App store search and discovery is also broken, but that has nothing to do with a bubble.

I agree that distribution is key. I think the point was more that Apps are not making near the money I would have thought they were making. To be ranked in the top 20 in "Top Grossing" for Finance, I would have expected that number to be much higher. That means that the far majority of Apps in that category aren't making much. In other words, I have distribution down much better than others.

The bubble I was referring to is really the bubble of way-to-many apps on the App Store. This bubble is driven by too many people having the expectation of creating an App, and having it "Go Big". As that expectation "pops", there will be far less people getting into the App game.

That app is not going to make you rich - it's too niche, and the $9/year price is sure to drive people away as well.

Millions of people need to track their mileage for all kinds of reasons. It is one of the biggest tax deduction that is taken, so I don't really see it as niche (unless you mean something else).

I want to build a lasting business, that is why I charge $9 a year. I want to build something that will be around for a long time. I beat out a large majority of apps that are cheaper that do the same thing.

By niche I mean the number of people looking for a solution they can buy for their iphone. Most of those millions are using something already and even with some prominence your app only got 62 downloads, maybe your best case scenario is less than 200 downloads in a day which will be really hard to convert into a business.

You can confirm this by looking closely at other apps in your class to see if there really is a scenario where you could get eg 4 digits of downloads in one day.

I also think it's a weakness that it's not available outside iOS as it would be very hard for any company to standardise around you vs something all their drivers can use. It may also be a drawback that drivers have to pay for you themselves, or are companies able to pay subscriptions for them?

>> You can confirm this by looking closely at other apps in your class to see if there really is a scenario where you could get eg 4 digits of downloads in one day.

I am not sure how you could confirm this since Apple doesn't publish the number of downloads that an App gets in a day for a particular app or set of apps.

>> I also think it's a weakness that it's not available outside iOS as it would be very hard for any company to standardise around you vs something all their drivers can use.

It is also available on Android.

>> It may also be a drawback that drivers have to pay for you themselves, or are companies able to pay subscriptions for them?

Yeah, I am planning on making more of an offering for companies, however, in initial research it has been very difficult to 1) Find companies that need to do mileage tracking and 2) Find the right person to talk to and (3) actually sell them on a package.

Google Play tells you download number approximations, additionally on iTunes / AppAnnie you really want to see an app like yours ranking well in a bigger category, being featured by Apple etc.

You could also approach this market from the other end - everyone has to give someone this data, and that someone has to do stuff with the data, maybe you could streamline it on their end so it's about more than saving the driver a small amount of time. The app may even be superfluous in some cases if you can just process GPS data a company collects from all their vehicles?

Edit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esocialllc...

Seems like this is the biggest on Play, 100k - 500k downloads in 2 years, so there is hope, but it looks like unique differentiators and fast growth are a challenge.

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