Surviving the App Store

https://github.com/amirrajan/survivingtheappstore

by amirrajan • 8 years ago

118 22 8 years ago

chapium• 8 years ago

Title: “Surviving the Appstore, How to Make it as Indie Game Developer”

kumarm• 8 years ago

>A successful iOS game makes $4,000 annually (this goes for any app frankly). A successful Android game makes one seventh of that (one third at best)

Not true.

Source: I run a mobile apps company with popular apps on Android.

ChristianGeek• 8 years ago

So how do they really compare?

11235813212• 8 years ago

Can you elaborate? 1/7th sounds like a stretch because App Store revenue is only double the Play Store revenue, but game revenue could only be equal if Android sells effectively no business software.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apple...

spacehome• 8 years ago

Do the two stores have the same number of apps?

charlesdm• 8 years ago

I have to agree with you on this. I've built and sold several "successful" indie apps (iOS, macOS, Android) and almost all had sales well into the many hundreds of thousands $ per annum.

Where is he getting this $4,000 number from?

tinus_hn• 8 years ago

If you’d only get $4000 for a reasonably succesful app the store would probably have a lot less apps. You can’t run a business on that kind of money.

endorphone• 8 years ago

I also would deeply contest those number claims.

To speak specifically to the Android claims, this author does what so many others have done: Long after the hype has worn down (hype that including mainstream media attention) they eventually get around to an Android port and then report miserable Android sales.

Well, no kidding. I mean if it doesn't have the word of mouth pitch, does this look compelling-

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yourcompan...

It looks like a hello world app. And the com.yourcompany bit is telling.

We've seen this with a number of much more polished games as well: Release on iOS, get tonnes of press and attention, and then long after the hype has died down release something on Android. Do these people really think those users just sat waiting?

eps• 8 years ago

does this look compelling

It actually does. It looked intriguing enough that I bought it without hearing of it beforehand when it came out.

vonseel• 8 years ago

Every app makes the exact same amount of money! No android app ever outearns iOS!!!

Hydraulix989• 8 years ago

There's quite a few monetization models for games other than just charging for a download (arguably the worst way to get potential customers engaging with your app).

Reedx• 8 years ago

Then what are the actual numbers for iOS vs Android?

scarface74• 8 years ago

This isn’t about a random outlier it’s about statistics.

Jerry2• 8 years ago

Thanks for making it available!

PS: Does anyone know how to build an epub from it?

adzicg• 8 years ago

This looks like a source for a leanpub.com book (Book.txt gives it away, and the fact that this is all in a manuscript folder). I don’t think they have a command line tool to build epubs, but you should be able to get an epub from their web site if the author published it there

lightwin• 8 years ago

calibre [1] is also a pretty good open source tool, however there is a bit of work involved to convert html pages into epub.

[1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#how-do-i-convert-a...

bmaupin• 8 years ago

You can use pandoc if you don't mind a little bit of manual work:

https://gist.github.com/bmaupin/6e3649af73120fac2b6907169632...

warrenmiller• 8 years ago

eCPMs on Android are about 1/3 of iOS but you tend to get more installs so we make about 1/2 on android as we make on iOS. Not sure where the 1/7 comes from

bla2• 8 years ago

How do I read this? Click the manuscript folder and then click through the md files in an arbitrary order? Or is there some better way I'm missing?

heynk• 8 years ago

The book was just pushed to Github 3 hours ago, so it is likely still in progress. There is no table of contents, but this page gives a bit of info about the structure of the book, and how to read it:

https://github.com/amirrajan/survivingtheappstore/blob/maste...

ckrailo• 8 years ago

Great work on the book and RubyMotion!

Surviving the App Store

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