You are hardly alone in this point of view among iPhone users I have heard from. I mean this as no disrespect to you personally: software writers who intend to make something with a little more functionality than "farts, belches, and wiggles" should probably choose a customer base which pays a wee bit more money for applications.

(A little bird mentioned "grown women" to me.)

I have a lot of difficulty doing the math on how advertising is supposed to make money at the $1.00 price point. It took a bit of work for me at $25, even though my clicks cost a few pennies. Are the conversion rates for iPhone apps just stratospherically high (10%+ of clicks on an ad) or are people just hoping the advertising kicks off the snowball to get you on the most popular list?

You know how many complaints about price I've heard in the last 3 years? One, and she was really complaining about the bug that was preventing her from getting her $30's worth.

BigFish and the other casual companies have conclusively demonstrated, by the way, that women will pay $20 for a good match 3 game.

There are already 25,000 iPhone apps after just 8 months and all reports seem to indicate that the growth rate is quickening. So you better have some significant resources behind you if you want to get noticed.

(1) "I never made close to the amount of money iFart did, but my app LifeTimer paid 2 mortgage payments (therefore paying for the dev license AND the iPhone.) My suggestion is to download the SDK first, play with it, and if you get a good start on an app then pay the $100."

(2) "I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff."

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page...

The reality of the iPhone app store is sobering. If you build something average or maybe a little above average, they will not come in droves. I believe if you build something truly kick-ass and inform the right influencers - word of mouth via Twitter will get you on TechCrunch and its ilk in 24 hours or less.

I also believe, however, that there will always be a small market for iPhone apps that are relatively novel and/or useful on a daily basis (useful: Tweetie is the best paid Twitter client in my opinion - integrated Summize search).

For example of something that is novel, iPhone Pano (guides you through taking six photos and stitches them into a fairly impressive panoramic photo - you used to need Photoshop/Gimp to manually stitch them together). I use it quite a lot. It cost $2.99 and I think I've gotten way more out of it (friends wondering what the heck I was doing with the iPhone and being wow'd by the resulting picture that I emailed once I sync'd with my MacBook).

Should I quit with learning iPhone SDK since the market is so competitive? I've rationalized to continue the learning curve (more off than on though) because I want to write some apps that I would personally use. I will probably get the $99/yr license just to deploy my own apps once I make it up the learning curve. It's not about an embarrassment of iPhone app riches - it's about an interesting new hobby - one that your non-geek friends (who likely have an iPhone) might appreciate eventually.

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I can't believe he has the audacity to brag about making 41 crap applications that take less than a day to build. Maybe I'm making a presumptuous statement, but I seriously doubt his apps are as useful as he claims. This is exactly the problem with the store, particularly when you combine it with the broken economics driving it.

I'm an iPhone developer and consumer, and my days of searching for great apps are gone because of developers like him. Affluent/older customers are pushed out while the children with hours of time on their hands are searching for .99 novelty apps, so you couple that with 24-hour volume driven charts = perpetual waste land. Now I just wait for the media to report on a cool new app or via twitter, but then this type of group-think strips away the charm of the AppStore in regard to finding awesome indie developer creations.

We've got 5 applications (1 is pending approval), and 4 of which took much longer than a month to build before releasing version 1.0. Since version 1.0, we've spent a lot more time than that continuing to improve the products and listening to our customers. We've had modest success but nobody has quit their day job.

The problem with guys quoted above, they build these shit apps with limited functionality and no long-term vision, but they insist on gaming the system and releasing 'faux' updates so their shit apps dominate page 1 of each category. In turn, developers who are seriously committed to making a good product are over-shadowed by parasitic profit scrapers and the 30% cut given to Apple for distribution/marketing benefits are minimized. In addition, the 30% cut also makes it difficult to have extra funds to advertise outside of the store for bootstrappers.

@wallflower — never quit! Do it because you love it, not because you want easy money like most of the schmucks turning the AppStore into crap. If you have a vision, build it, improve it, support it, and thank your customer. Half these guys don't have a clue about building a consumer product or listening to their customers. If Apple is actually listening to the complaints (speculation that they like the volume-driven charts to churn sales), then the long-tail looks pretty good.

Life ain't fair and ofcourse systems like the AppStore are subject to major gambling and spamming. You either find a way to shine through the noise - or you get eaten.

I'm not sure why you feel a need to talk down to the spammers, though. I, personally, have nothing but envy for the creators of the "SoundGrenade" and such. Spent a day, made a few dozen kilobucks, that's what I call a good hack, no?

You know the old saying; if you can't take the heat...

It's a lot easier to be a contributor to the problems than it is to show restraint and professionalism for your peers given the state of the store. Please make no mistake about it, there's nothing stopping us from playing the same game except our commitment to be a provider of quality. Obnoxious penny-scraping behavior is not something we intend to be apart of out of respect for other developers. We could very easily repackage our apps 10 ways to Sunday, submit faux updates every few days, game the ratings/reviews, etc. and would certainly be a lot better off fiscally.

I'm not trying to sound like an AppStore Hero here either, this is something that a number of developers have all agreed upon to attempt to set an example and respect each other.

My snide remarks aside — I think it's perfectly acceptable for people to have a few novelty apps under their belt for no other reason than to have fun — we have one and I'm sure we'll make another one at some point in the future. But to have 40+ (I've seen some devs with 60+ of useless crap) just because "you can" is a gluttonous, self-serving assumption that deserves no respect. Sorry, call me an whiney ass for all I care. It's no different that email spammers.

I think my preference would be a completely open-market for iPhone applications that's disconnected from the AppStore, whereby the AppStore only contains applications that Apple hand-picks if developers are inclined to give up 30%. It would seemingly solve all the problems, aside from the burden Apple shoulders of dealing w/ customer support for their iPhone/iPod due to 3rd party crapware.

Obnoxious penny-scraping behavior is not something we intend to be apart of out of respect for other developers.

That idealistic attitude is honorable but a bit out of this world, too. It's somewhat akin to entering the tiger's cage and asking him: "Can't we just be friends?".

Okay, maybe the tiger will fall into your arms, cry, and tell you how he has waited all his life for this moment. Then you'll be watching TV and killing a sixpack for the rest of the night.

But I think more likely is that the tiger will fall into your arms and do something else entirely...

For the last 3 months, two of our products been Top 50 in Social Networking. That's pretty difficult to do for an indie shop not leveraging an established/existing brand (ie: twitter client), yet we've maintained a position without gaming the system. Things are changing now because devs are putting their apps in Social Networking section, even though their app shouldn't even be there in the first place, and obviously it's those guys that focus their time on exploits rather than the product. The health & fitness charts are filled with top apps that are ONLY in their respective place because they're being gamed, not because it's a quality product that deserves that spot.

These people don't want to work hard, they just want easy money cause they got caught up in the fool's gold. It's easier to post a fictitious update in 2 minutes, than it is to spend a week building a new feature and improving.

Honestly, I could go on and on but I'll just stop. I'm becoming redundant explaining the problems of the AppStore to people that don't get. You can call me idealistic or a whiner, but I have 4 months of daily sales and marketing data across multiple products and monitor the AppStore on a daily basis. I've been living and breathing this since August and its frustrating to say the least.

ps. Apple has promoted 3 of our products, and I'm still whining because the economics of the AppStore are flawed and hurting more people than it helps.

You make it sound here as if Apple had some kind of obligation to turn the AppStore into a fair market. They don't. Their obligation is to make profits and to push the platform forward. If a fair app-market helps with that then they'll do it. If an unfair app-market helps with that then they'll do that.

Tough luck I say. You could also build desktop applications or develop for a more open mobile platform (Android?).

The difference between the app store and more traditional methods of selling software (i.e. you have a website that you sell your app through, you advertise to your audience, etc.) is that even google and the search engines will help out a "better" app and the absolute shit (i.e. fart apps) will eventually get filtered out...or at the minimum, they won't be crowding other apps out except for their own direct competitors. The app store doesn't do that so well by itself. There's about ten gazillion improvements Apple should be making to improve the whole process...at least they've just NOW started to show reviews by version number.

Now from the developer perspective...the thing that's been pretty much hammered into my head as I've gone through the experience of publishing an app on the store is that the app store itself is virtually useless unless you get into the top 10 for category (even this is questionable if you're not in games) or top 100 overall. Sales spike usually on weekends and from outside sources, although being in the top 100 for the category is probably helping for random sales (although, I must admit, they're generally unwanted sales requiring the most amount of tedious handholding of the user). If the guy in the original article is whining after not releasing a free/lite version of a (comparatively) expensive application, it's his problem for being ignorant to iPhone app marketing best practices.

If someone spent a day to work on an app times a dozen apps and makes enough money to quit his or her day job...good for them. That doesn't have much relevance to the problem overall though. Yes, people will always buy shit apps that give them little amusement for the money, but that shouldn't crowd out the wonderful and polished applications out there that aren't games or fart apps that someone would still want for their iPhone.

If someone spent a day to work on an app times a dozen apps and makes enough money to quit his or her day job...good for them. That doesn't have much relevance to the problem overall though. Yes, people will always buy shit apps that give them little amusement for the money, but that shouldn't crowd out the wonderful and polished applications out there that aren't games or fart apps that someone would still want for their iPhone.

At this point the chances of hitting the jackpot as an iphone dev are low and getting lower. But it should be possible to build solid sustainable businesses that have a mobile app as part of their overall strategy.

If you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme this week, look twitterward :P

all those people who have already visited won't take a second look after he lowers the price. its too late for that - he should have realized the price was wrong and that he needed a lite version after the poor kotaku conversion rate.

What makes a huge difference, is how far from the front page you are, meaning the absolute best thing you can do for sales is release regular updates.

Pricing is a game of reward and risk. If the perceived reward is in line with the risk of getting the reward, you've found a starting line for your price. The thing with the app store is that there seems to be a very steep price/reward curve. At the low-end, the $1/$2 level, iPhone users seem to be okay just throwing their money around. When you start moving from there, the app is going to need something to push it over the edge. While I don't follow the available apps very closely, I'd venture to say the competition in the $5 level is a little steeper. You're probably dealing with large software companies (who's name reduces perceived risk), established brands (again reducing risk), and a decent promotional mix of advertising and PR.

A "lite" version should be on the radar of EVERY game developer. I don't see a good way around it unless you can consistently get good online reviews and coverage. You need a way to reduce that risk to the consumer and giving them a demo product is a way to do it. I'd package the lite version with some sort of messaging system too so that if you decide to do another game, you can pump ads into your old lite versions for the new games. With the lite version, you need to convert people to the full version, and drive as many marketing messages to the users as possible without becoming ridiculous.

//edit: Real question here. Especially since I'm (and I'm assuming others are) looking at doing iPhone dev at some point in the future.

With a $5 app I might enjoy it for maybe a couple of minutes if it's not crap. I've seriously downloaded free apps, played them for 30 seconds, thought "this is not fun", and exited the app. I'm personally scared of having that same experience with a $5 app. With a $0.99 app I could try out 5 different apps instead of just one, while putting the same amount of money at stake.

If I spend $5 I want to be fully aware of what I'm getting for it. I hope that the author's new Lite version helps achieve this.

As to rationality, I think the impulse buy works because people know if they buy 5 or 10 things, some will turn out to give them a lot of enjoyment but others not so much. Buying $1.99 apps instead of $3.99 apps means you have twice as many "tickets" to spend in the hopes of finding a few things that are actually fun.

(If you are not selling fun, but actually eliminating some real pain people are experiencing, you can probably price more aggressively.)

In other words, coffee from somewhere like Starbucks is a pricey respite from pain, albeit only a little less painful.

For applications at the 5 USD price point, I'm simply not feeling the pain.

Though, I feel like i need to defend my coffee drinking habits; Since when is there something special about a large iced latte at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts + tax when its hot out during the summer?

$5 is too much. I don’t understand why the author doesn’t try other pricing strategies.

Where is the pain and where is the relief in TFA? And is it worth 5USD?

What if a trickle of further reviews, word-of-mouth, and incremental low-cost marketing (minor updates, free 'lite' version, half-off promos, light SEO) results in ~$500/month revenue for many months or years with very little cost in time?

What if some of the code or lessons learned mean the next similar app only takes $10K investment to make, and makes more than $500/month from the get-go?

The only problem here -- if any -- is sky-high expectations for the first step up to the plate.

My first app did about 340 sales in the first month, for a development cost of $0 + 6 hours of time. I haven't had a day of 0 sales yet, and I'm not nearly played out in terms of updates and improvements.

Unfortunately this leads to a lot of crappy applications.

Ironically (?) this guy will probably have a huge spike in sales of the app due the attention he's receiving (and people feeling sorry for him)

I would have bought it myself if it was <2USD, considered it for <3USD. At 5USD, I would need to be in some kind of pain of boredom to consider buying it.

He missed out, and perhaps that says something about why his product isn't doing too well.

Mobile Orchard's value is that it provides iPhone developers with summaries of the latest news relevant to them as well as editorial content. This post is a summary. It still has value to our audience (2000+ iPhone developers).

And, clearly our headline was of value.. except it's now being used without credit to link directly to the poorly titled original. Ethics? What were they again?

(Seriously though, I don't think this is spam.)

The publisher (in this case apple) should state the median (and possibly percentile points for 75% and 25%) return for developers on the platform.

People didn't think much of the idea when I proposed it for portals, but I still think it's a fair thing to ask. It lets you know how much you can expect to make if you do better than average. If the numbers are good then publishers should be proud to state those numbers. Refusing to disclose such information in the face of requests should be seen as a warning sign to all developers.

$5 isn't much for an app, but you have to remember that this is a game - a very special kind of app that's not actually useful. It's perfectly possible that your sales will increase enough by decreasing the price so that you'll find yourself profitable. Of course, there's no guarantee of that.

Yes.