100k Apps means you better be on one of Apple’s lists, and why are people led like pigs to a slaughter?

Congratulations on reading this. You are one of the few people who have gone above and beyond the App Store’s doors and have actively found something outside of the App Store. In fact, you are so few in number reading this that the fact that you’re even here is a testament to the human race, let alone the slaughterhouse that the App Store has become.

I’ve gotten so sick and tired of all the moronic “stop crying – do more marketing” posts that have surfaced in the last few months relating Indie developers to somehow being complete idiots who deserve failure for failing to do any marketing. The presumptuous idiocy that these posts have inherited speak volumes for the reality that all developers must face: Most consumers don’t care about you. In fact, most consumers find it more fun to laugh in your face than give you any bit of helpful advice, let alone go outside the App Store.

Some of these posts go so far as to mock developers for not understanding concepts that are covered in all marketing 101 books, even though, not too surprisingly, they mention not one detail on how they plan to do what they tout (such as be the purple cow). How quaint.

Now, I don’t want to point fingers to direct posts (because I guess that’s “unprofessional”). Do a Google search – I’m sure you’ll find plenty. I’m sure you’ll also find plenty of Indie developers who are writing about things the App Store could do to not only make it easier for Indie developers looking for their “big break”, but also create more fun and interesting experiences for the consumers of the platform.

There are 100k Apps, and developers are saying they have tried everything to market their Apps, and consumers are complaining that they can’t find a developer’s App and so blame the developer. I wonder what’s going on?

I have seen countless posts talking about how it’s the fault of Indie developers for not marketing. It’s funny, really, that these people sit on their pedestals as critics and think that the world should revolve around them – that all the visibility in the App Store should ever need is the various top 100 lists. That the reason for the failures is simply that they, as an individual, haven’t seen your App due to the developer’s own pathetic efforts at marketing, and that the developers should orient their life around just these critics’, as though their opinion counts. Funny that they mention how they never seen your App when all they do, like all the other pigs to a slaughter, is look at only what Apple has provided, and severely limited.

Many of these developers aren’t crying – they’re frustrated that Apple has, as the middle man, shot themselves in the foot, and are taking consumers, and especially Indie developers trying to run viable businesses, with them.

By far, in my honest opinion, the biggest problem with the App Store is that it’s limited to top 100 lists. If you take a look at this, over 100k Apps, yet you can only see the top 100 in any category, what kind of coverage does anybody expect to see? Even if you take 1/10 that number, you still have a harsh market to compete in, let alone the full 10/10.

And this assuming people will go to places other than the App Store, or pay more than 1$ for anything, let alone 1$ to begin with (they’ll pay $200.00 plus for an iPod touch or an iPhone, yet spending 1$ on an App that took somebody 8 months to make is such a stretch as compared to spending 1$ on an Icee that it took a store clerk 8 minutes to put together).

The reality though is that the typical and general means to market simply don’t work, and relating to my own personal experiences here is why:

1) Review sites won’t even touch you. Unless you have something really neat, or pay them (which we’ve done, 3 times, and have only 1 paid review up at TheiPhoneAppReview (7/10), and 1 free review at AppGirlReviews (9/10)), or have some sort of backwards connection, well, forget even trying. Their intake on review requests is absolutely staggering /w 100k Apps, and unless you have a brand name you’re working off of… you’re screwed for reviews…

2) Mobile advertising is expensive and has a low conversion rate that doesn’t translate well to sells. To let your ads go world round, AdMob, the largest advertising service for iPhone, you can put down $0.03 bids on per-click. We put down $50.00 and had that used up within a few hours. We tried again, this time localizing to just the U.S. and had to pay $0.10 bids on per-click. That was used up within two days. So, what has the convergence rate been? We’ve made, maybe, 5 sales. Not enough to cover costs. So $100.00 was dropped that resulted in hardly anything.

3) Website advertising is expensive, and doesn’t translate well to visits (and usually you can’t get CTR data since the owners don’t have it set up correctly). We put down $50.00 for about two weeks of main banner at AppGirlReviews, another $50.00 for a month of side 125×125 icon on TheiPhoneAppReview, and 15$ for a 1/2 page ad for Indie Game Developer Magazine. Out of all of this, our analytics clearly shows that the rate of which we get people from those redirects has very minor influence from those sites, even after dropping yet another $115.00 for only meager visits.

4) In-App-ads don’t get clicked on enough to matter. Although our App has a Lite version available, which is downloaded 10-25 times every day pretty consistently, we haven’t made more than $1.00 off the AdMob adverts (that we get paid for by-the-click). So even though we have expanded the revenue stream to include money coming in from such, it still hasn’t made much of a dent.

5) We also put down $50.00 for business cards that we sent out to various people to hand out. We’ve dropped $150.00 for trade/expo shows that we spent all day at (not including traveling costs). We have even talked to professional marketers about our approaches. Doesn’t matter what we try, nothing translates to sells very well. Another $200.00 down the drain.

6) We even tried getting into cross branding opportunities, such as App Treasures. We tried doing promo code contests (half of them aren’t even being used that we have freely displayed on various websites), as well as experimenting with price drops to spark events in the sites that automatically scan for price changes on Apps in hopes for coverage.

7) We have even went to communities we recruited from, posted forum posts, thanking the communities for the talent that helped us complete our projects, and hardly anything resulted. This also includes getting into fights on forums and the likes.

So what translates to sells?

The reality is that consumers are, with all due respect, lazy. Of course they are – they are relaxing and want to be spoon fed entertainment, just like our modern society has grown up with. By you reading this, you probably aren’t in that group, so you don’t count, but the real reality is nobody cares (especially about the “whinny Indie developers”). They do the top 100 lists on their devices and that’s more than enough. Hardly anybody is going to go beyond that system to look for other Apps – it’s information overload. For those that do go above and beyond, probably do find posts like these, and probably find our Apps even, but even then…

Top 100 lists = quality, ease of use, an appearance of a “filter” to just the good stuff, and… most importantly… the most consumer visible.

If you get your App featured in one of Apple’s lists, especially top 100, you’re set. I’ve talked to a variety of developers, and for those who haven’t been featured, who have been doing everything they humanly can to market their product, it’s the same ball game. For instance:

1) I’ve heard of developers that have come to the conclusion that they will stop writing games for people, and start writing them for just Apple (because Apple has a “what we’re playing” list). Apple becomes their biggest costumer, because the potential to be “sponsored” is of much more value than what any consumer would ever think.

2) I’ve heard developers talk about how the App Store lists system sometimes screws up so badly that, for instance, the “recently released” list is displaying Apps that were released from over a year ago, or that their App, which in one case the author self admitted to being of inferior quality, is placed on a top 100 list in error for several days or sometimes weeks. Developers who are lucky to be in the “bug” are making bank.

3) I’ve heard of other developers, that haven’t already bailed for more reasonable platforms like Android, going the route of offering a free app with a buy-in mechanism, basically the freemium path (Google it).

4) And of course, developers who have existing brand names find very little problem getting involved and making sales. Anything that a developer can do to “expand their brand” is a business decision that has far reaching benefits.

In my honest opinion, consumers in the App Store want everything for nothing. They are led like pigs to a slaughter to a list that represents less than 1% of the available Apps. By opening the doors to everybody, prices fell to nothing. Although the early birds made bank and attracted the modern day “gold rush”, anymore unless you have a AA – AAA quality title or a brand name backing you up, you have nothing. Nobody is going to waste spending any money on trying out a brand that they don’t know or haven’t heard of, or isn’t featured on one of Apple’s lists. It takes too much of their time to click to go further and look for themselves.

So really, we’re sitting in the modern day version of the digital gold rush, and, like always, the consumers, the ones we Indie developers rely on for our livelihood, are laughing at us for “not marketing”, yet don’t realize just how much we’re doing behind the scenes, and meeting with no success. Obviously it’s our fault for trying everything, but the real success being the almighty top-100 list.

But no, we should trust the pigs going to slaughter that the real reason is just that we’re not marketing enough. Of course! What a novel opinion by those who see not where they’re going.

Best of luck… You’re gonna need it.