The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
bloomberg.com
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There's a huge difference between climbing to the top and then instantly failing and actually staying at the top.
A full day in Top Grossing on the Mac App Store gives you something like this:
Ranks #10 to #20: at least $2-4k per day. Ranks #30 to #80: around $800-1k per day. Ranks #80 to #150: around $500-$800 per day.
All sums are after Apple's cut. They fluctuate a bit depending on the day of the week.
I make more than the mentioned $454 per day at ranks of around #200.
My revenue report from last year can be found here: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014.
It's shit article.
See, some time ago (feels like ages now), I contacted him to see what would it take to add Chicken Scheme to the list of docsets. His response was quick and helpful.
My company got "bought" and I suddenly had zero free time to follow up. But that boosted my respect for Dash considerably. A assume other people will have similar experiences. I've recommended it to every single developer with Macs that I've met.
Now that I got reminded of it, let's see what I can do about that docset...
Kudos all around and, while it ain't $2-4k, I hope you appreciate my sincere 'thanks' today.
The point is that being in the top doesn't mean what it means on iOS. On iOS you will be able to stay in the top purely by being in the top because people use the app store much more frequently.
On the Mac app store you being in the top is more a product of a lot of other things you do.
If you hit a nerve just like you did and I to some degree did you will do well even if you aren't in the top of the app store.
At least that's how I understood it, but perhaps I am putting too much of my own bias into it.
Also much more sites are looking at the top in the app store and so your exposure for getting there is many many times more.
Further more much more iOS apps are inherently social so that helps too.
Since you're here: have you considered adding Kickstart file syntax? RHEL's pages tend to be pretty bad (the CentOS ones are better I know).
Did you simply release that app and customers come after? Or did you have to pay a certain amount to acquire customers (i.e. paid advertising)? Or did you acquire customers some other way?
I've tried different marketing things along the way, like sponsored posts or Google Adwords. Probably spent around $500 in total on marketing during the lifetime of the app. None had a meaningful effect so I kind of stopped trying.
I mostly focus on engaging my users as much as I can and trying to make them happy, so that they will recommend Dash to others.
And you shouldn't be shy about direct-linking your app (as well as the blog post)...I didn't know about it until now but it looks right up my alley. Thanks!
I don't think they care about someone making a living on the App Store. They either care about failures or about getting insanely rich.
However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good innovation resulting in a lot of apps fighting for the same space.
I was top 10 in paid apps for a while and top 5 in productivity apps. On iOS it would normally be pretty good but that meant nothing for my mac sales as such.
I realized that the mac app store is purely a distribution channel. It's my product but it's their store and so I am now thinking about them as a Wall Mart with no specific importance as such.
I found Google ranking to be much more important plus the ability to sell your product a lot of other places.
And so this week we are going to start selling directly from the website with a 14 day trial. We are using paddle.com for that an amazingly good service.
I am planning to do a writeup about all this as soon as I have some more numbers.
Also as a side note. I would like to see Apple undergo the same scrutiny that we treat our politicians with. When you say you create so and so many jobs you really need to be talking actual jobs that people can live off for that to have any meaning.
Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing, especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows version and a relationship with a VAR or two and enterprise friendly pricing/terms?
I don't see how Apple can help you. You're selling running shoes to people in wheelchairs. Find where the runners are.
People have been saying things like that about apple since forever, yet even NextStep was able to maintain a viable community of full time software developers and companies that exclusively published for the platform. Some of them are still around. Just look at OmniGroup. Do you think they're likely to be doing better nowaday, or worse?
The fact is the Mac has always done well as a third party software platform because Mac owners have always been more willing to pay for high quality software than PC owners. It's just that the OSX App Store has never really taken off as a distribution channel for that software.
No more than any other Windows machine.
If we're going to throw around anecdata, virtually everyone I know who uses a computer to work on these days uses a Mac. This is a vast turnaround from just a few years back, when Windows was virtually compulsory. For much longer than that, it's been University Student => Mac laptop, only rarely Windows. When I meet with folks from Very Big(tm) software companies, they invariably have Macs.
There are definitely domains that are Windows strongholds. AFAICT, none of the major CAD/CAM suites run on OS X (e.g. Solidworks, Pro/E, Geomagic (nee Alibre) Design, etc.) Stuff like major site planning software (e.g. that keeps big airports running) is virtually all Windows.
For all that, it's easy to miss that Mac has for a very long time been on a user-driven vs. enterprise-mandated upwards trajectory. This seems similar to the forces that pushed acceptance of iOS (and Android) into the enterprise: where user demand ultimately broke the stranglehold that the entrenched, enterprise-friendly solutions had. (I'm looking at you, Blackberry.)
Didn't the sandbox give you trouble, though? I thought it wouldn't be possible for a sandboxed app to get the user's context like that.
We basically had to white label the apps we want document support for and we have to have the user to install document support manually too.
But we did make it so that people who know a little applescript can add their own apps and in general add all sorts of scripts to their apps. You can see how here http://www.ghostnoteapp.com/blog/how-to-manually-add-new-doc...
I was putting off developing an app for the store because of the whole sandbox app whitelist issue. I should have done more homework.
Thank you!
My advice is that you think about the app store as a distribution channel and use something like Paddle to sell online so you aren't only relying on the mac app store.
Totally agree - the MAS needs to be seen as a single distribution channel. I think the broader problem is that devs rely solely on the Mac App Store to drive sales for them, which is a risky approach. There are a bunch of different ways to drive app sales; it's just a matter of putting in the work.
Glad to have you on board with Ghostnote, and looking forward to that write-up too! :-)
Fabio @ Paddle.com
I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd like to see at least SOME mention of that aspect of it.
As for Monument Valley, that's a pretty poor example. They invested 1.5m and made 5.8m. For a core team of 8 people it's not fuck you money. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc...
They didn't even make 10x their investment. There is a strong argument to made that a 10x project is the minimum you need just to have a sustainable company. Sustainable! That's a long, long way from rich. http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...
There are many ways to define success. ustwo is a 300+ person design company. Their mobile games could lose money but still be considered a success.
"One Mac app developer made it up to No. 8 with just 59 downloads"
If you make it to number 8 with so few downloads, there probably isn't much of a market.
[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quick-resizer/id498486288?mt...
In all seriousness, when you figure it out, that's about $15/hr. I think a number of entrepreneurs would give their right arm to make that kind of money right at launch. And when you consider that he's probably going to be selling at least a few more copies of this, the money he'll make off of his time investment will grow.
In any event, I hope he didn't quit his day job to make a photo-blurring utility.
http://www.panic.com/blog/introducing-coda-2-5/
Other publishers have done the same thing. (with regard to upgrade pricing, usually, but I'd assume a similar approach to avoid backlash if they left the MAS) However, your concern still stands, as not everyone will do that.
edit: i do wish apple would relax the sandbox strictness a bit and other editor review criteria so it was a more attractive alternative to self-publishing.
1) It talks about an app that reached #8 in "Top Paid". The more interesting list would be "Top Grossing"
2) It talks about a trivial app that was created with very little effort. While gimmick apps might work on iOS, people prefer to buy actually useful software on the Mac.
The title is still somewhat true: It's unlikely you will become very rich by selling Mac Apps. But you can make a decent living; I currently make around 6000€/month (gross revenue) from two Mac Apps.
I agree with the trivial app comment but I have a unique app which is doing pretty well. However compared to the iOS store it's not potentially self sustaining to be in the top once you get there.
You do see it used quite frequently in enterprise situations where desktop users have outgrown Excel but aren't quite ready to deal with a server-based database.
Filemaker Pro is still hanging around too, for what it's worth.
When I go to migrate data it's very convenient to pull up an Access viewer on OSX to get a feel for the data structure so I can inform the customer on what will be migrated. Saves the minute it takes to boot up a Windows VM (and pay monthly for Access 365).
I could hypothesize about ways for Apple to turn the ship around... but I doubt they care. Apple's happy to have something conceptually coherent with iOS - an Apple Store employee can show a college freshman to "just update apps like on your iPhone". They decided long ago not to chase gaming. It's a pretty updating app.
At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works.
Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible. There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!
The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut), it's probably worth investing a few hours in.
Apps that stay at the top for weeks on end make lots of money -- up to several millions per year.
As for the App Store, just like ANY OTHER marketplace, it won't make you rich in itself, just for appearing there and "putting the work"...
The article claims the Mac App Store sales is measured in thousands for the top apps. Care to point to your sources which claim three magnitudes more?
Paid Mac apps, no. The article is about the Mac App Store, not iOS. Even among iOS, however, the most successful apps are free ones with a viral incentive to do in-app purchases.
Most of the top apps have an external influence. 4 of the top 10 come out of Apple. Look at top games on Mac - most of them are major publishers. Even "independent" apps had a following outside of the Mac App Store, like 1Password.
Citation needed.
I'm pretty sure Pixelmator, 1Password, Angry Birds, Call of Duty, GTA S.A., etc -- apps that are consistently on the MAS top ten make lotsa money.
Apps that stay there for a few days or so, because of initial momentum or some good review, don't -- but that's a matter of the algorithm favoring them.
>Most of the top apps have an external influence. 4 of the top 10 come out of Apple.
Actually in the current top 10 only one comes from Apple (Facetime). And it's still one until the top-40. That might be the case on my country's MAS though, but still.
>Look at top games on Mac - most of them are major publishers.
Sure, why wouldn't it be the case? They have the best products, more polished, and more marketing money (and tons of pre-existing fans for their game series).
But that's beside the point (the point being whether it pays well to be on the top of MAS or not).
Regarding MAS not making you rich for a couple weeks effort app like Redacted, that just chanced to be on top for a few days and didn't have a stable top path (and the respective big sales), that's obvious. No known market will do that.
This year, the revenue from iOS is around 10% of the Mac app.
Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your computer is a big change.
1) Upgrade pricing. At best you'll get convoluted instructions on how you can obtain an upgraded version: http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/
In many cases, you can't go back and forth (bought on website, bought v. 2 on MAS), so you're expecting people to understand that it's a "different" version - imagine if you had to explain that because you bought the Best Buy XBox One, you can't play games purchased at Wal-Mart.
2) Sandboxing. If users are going to pay anything near full price for something they expect full functionality.
Due to these headaches, publishers are abandoning the App Store:
http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/
Personally I wish the MAS was a better solution for the reasons you described (I have purchased a good amount of software there)
- download desktop trial
- buy iOS app
- begin to like the combination
- buy desktop app
But, in its hey day, it did really well. It even beat iMovie for a few weeks. Though now I am sitting here almost five years later and I have no idea who my customers are, beyond the handful that went out of their way to contact me.
I had some down time this past spring, so I rewrote the entire thing from the ground up using AVFoundation. I haven't launched this new version yet because I'm waiting to finish the iOS version to launch both within the same time frame. However, I won't be putting the OS X version on the Mac App Store for a few reasons:
- I want to know who my customers are
- I want to be able to contact my customers
- Sandboxing restrictions are workable, but not a good customer experience imho.
- Lack of paid upgrades isn't viable for an app not everyone needs
- MAS seems way neglected
So now I'm going to be going with Paddle (http://paddle.com) since it sort of replicates that experience really well and the guys there are super responsive. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but not likely.
That distills down to about $15,000 per US job if the $10 billion doesn't go anywhere else in the world and before business expenses such as the $99.00 developer fee.
A high profile example of that is: https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac...
But, it's a man bites dog story! The outcome defies typical logic, and so news websites keep running the story.
If a story is in syndication and "evergreen" in nature it could run on it's own for quite some time. [1]
Doing a google search for this particular article it's clear what has happened (although the results are mainly it appears around May 2015)
[1] I was featured in a story in the late 90's and could tell every time it hit a new town newspaper because orders would predictably come in from the new area. It all started with a story from the local paper and that was then distributed (Knight Ridder iirc) for any paper anywhere in the US to pick up. In this particular case it did translate into real dollars as well as many years of repeat business.
That seems to be a low ceiling on success, no?
It's indicative of the state of the App Store that there are so many apps like this. The worst culprits - in my view - are 'distraction-free text editors'. I guess if the market is there for a $20 text editor that does nothing, then people are going to try to exploit it.
> I have abandoned their development and support a long time ago. > sales started to drop more and more every month and continued development
So there were obvious support and continued development costs, so I expect that the true hours you'd add to the ROI calculation are well more than 30.
I can spend almost no time on an iOS app and make myself rich. Even kids can do it.
According to the hype. So it must be true.
Business owners should think of an app as an extra benefit to a paid service or product rather than the product itself.