How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
<i>"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion."</i><p>You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Developers starving themselves to death because of a complete disregard to basic business sense and a misguided sense of righteousness.<p>5 easy steps to homelessness:<p>1. Spend years building products for a platform, where $1.99 is a high price.<p>2. Avoid doing even the most basic mental arithmetic to figure out how many units you need to sell at $1.99 to be able to pay rent.<p>3. Then set the price to zero, because <i>you're a nice guy</i>.<p>4. Sell in-app purchases for the super duper high price of $2.99, thus raising your customer's LTV to a magnificent $2.99. But, don't be an asshole. Ask for the upgrade politely and quietly, in the third screen of the settings. Remember, you don't work for $ZNGA!<p>5. Make it up in volume<p><i>"We really want to stick to the ‘free and pay 2.99 to unlock’ model, but if only .5% of users buy our game, we’re going to have to figure something else out. It’s very malleable at this point. Perhaps we’re giving too much away for free, it’s really hard to say until we see more data.”</i><p>6. Look a bonus step no.6! If after following steps 1-5 you're still not quite homeless, then it's time for some more data collection. Spend another year or so A/B testing the gradients of your upgrade button. And oh maybe, your upgrade price is too high? Yeah, test that.<p>Excuse me while I relieve myself of the agony of watching people do this over and over again.<p>AAAAAAAAAARGHH!!! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP IT!!!!!<p>Why do developers worship Apple, but absolutely refuse to take the slightest hint from them on how to do business?<p>Read this - <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html</a><p>And repeat after me:<p>"Commoditize your complements."<p>"Commoditize your complements."<p>The app store is the most brilliant and brutal execution of this strategy. Apple is selling $500 <i>phones</i> - the most expensive phones - while simultaneously making developers fall over each other and well, go homeless, to make software for their platform to give away for free.<p>As if that's not tragic enough, the celebration of the lottery winners has the public and developers believe that making apps is a great business to be in!<p>patio11 has been trying to drill these things into people's heads for ages. But, all he seems to get is upvotes and not enough people <i>getting his point</i>.<p>You don't have to suddenly go all Zynga on your users. There's a vast chasm between selling virtual sheep to addicted grandmas and giving away the farm for less than the price of a toilet roll. You can charge a good price, which does not depend on huge scale to pay the rent.<p>Edited to add: Lest I sound like some smug business know-it-all on a high horse, I've made the same mistakes. Most of us are like this. We need to make a conscious effort to be good at business.