In many ways, I think the success of the App Store has caused a lot of problems for the indie developer. The press parade various rags to riches stories and, inevitably, people assume that the majority of developers are getting rich quick. The reality of the situation is that the majority of App Store developers are probably operating at a loss. Because the cold truth of it is that good application development is an expensive process.
But one that certainly deserves to be rewarded.
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Nial Giacomelli, responding to Neven Mrgan’s post on people pirating The Incident.
It’s not just the difficulty of making an honest living from sales of a 99 ¢ (though that’s almost impossible: once you take into account Apple’s 30%, you have to sell 1,814 copies every single month to make the equivalent of US minimum wage). The real damage is that the 99 ¢ app bonanza has created in your target market artificially low expectations regarding what constitutes a ‘fair’ price for apps; most people balk at the thought of a $3 app, and gripe about paying for an upgrade regardless of how significant it is. Trying to get these same people to pay even $10 for an app, no matter how much they’ll use it, becomes almost impossible. (I’m guilty of this too; even a $1.99 purchase can become an agonising decision.) That isn’t a healthy market to be developing for, and it isn’t going to sustain more than a few lucky developers as anything other than a hobby. |
