The App Store: Casino Odds or a Goldmine?

November 4 2011, 5:59pm

In an article on TUAW, Mike Schramm examines the nature of iOS sales in the App Store. Is there a tried and true marketing plan for success? Or are developer’s fates in the hands of Lady Luck?

The iOS studio L’Escapadou has made $200,000 from the App Store to date. In a blog post on the company’s site, developer Pierre Abel walks readers through a step-by-step guide of their production-to-release regime. One thing is clear from the blog article; releasing an app is hard work and their success is most likely a result from well executed press coverage exposing them to the right audience. Schramm also notes that one potential contributor to the company’s success are the multiple update releases. Stating that, “none of his apps soared in revenue right out of the gate; [L’Escapadou] had to provide new content based on customer feedback and support his released apps before he saw the charts curve upwards.” L’Escapadou’s level of success, however, is rare. Schramm points to a recent article in FastCompany. FastCompany proposes that the App Store is “more of a casino than a gold mine” because it is the “world’s most competitive software market.”
What is the answer, then? Can developers expect to make $200,000 or risk it all in the casino odds of the App Store? Schramm concludes: “Of course the truth is somewhere in between — some great apps do sit there for a while before anyone notices just how good they are, and some terrible apps get caught up in hype or marketing and pick up lots of revenue anyway. In the end, the App Store works very much like any other marketplace: You need to have a product that people want, and then show people it exists and convince them that they want it. Despite the “gold mine” dreams, creating and releasing an app is a lot of work, even if some people are better or more experienced at that work than others. There is money to be made on the App Store — that’s for sure. But how that money is made and by whom is controlled by many factors, of which luck is only one.” Source: TUAW