As an iPhone or iPad app developer you want to strike it rich selling your app to millions of customers, or at least tens of thousands of customers, to make your hard work pay off. Other equally ambitious developers hope to achieve a steady income and perhaps write apps full time and leave their other full-time jobs behind. While these goals are possible, it has become much more difficult over the past year to achieve such success.
There are several reasons. First, the sheer number of apps for sale on the App Store has made it much more difficult to stand out from the crowd. Instead of just a few similar apps in your category, there are likely hundreds, even thousands, vying for the buyer’s attention.
You are competing against free and paid apps, some brilliantly written and some not even worth giving away.
Secondly, the intense pricing pressure causes many developers to start off at a low price or quickly drop their price to $0.99, a figure that makes it extremely difficult to break even much less make any profit. According to the website 148apps.biz, almost 42% of all apps (games included) are priced at $0.99.
The sheer number of competing apps may seem daunting; however, these statistics are not presented to be discouraging. Rather, this article is designed to point out that the App Store has matured very quickly, and you have to develop a solid marketing strategy to realize success. The App Store is not running on Internet time, it’s on mobile time! Your marketing strategy also has to be tuned to work with your buyer.
The App Store is much like your local supermarket. In the 1980s, the average supermarket carried about 7,500 items. Today, that same supermarket carries upward of 50,000 items! Every vendor is fighting for shelf space so more people will buy their products. Manufacturers want their products positioned at eye level or placed on their own display at the end of an aisle.
They are willing to pay extra for this privilege. The supermarket makes its money through high volume turnover of its products. Those items that don’t sell well are pushed to the bottom of the shelves or moved to another part of the store.
Amazon.com is no different; vendors are trying to stand out in a very crowded market. Not counting other items, its bookstore alone boasts well over 250,000 titles. Many authors hope to achieve fame and fortune by landing on the top 100 list on Amazon’s book home page. Other authors hope to get their big break by being mentioned on Oprah.
As the App Store has grown, it has necessitated reconfiguration numerous times to further segment the apps into logical groups where buyers can more easily connect with sellers. Apple has improved the search capabilities of the store, added sub categories and added Top Paid Apps and Top Free Apps columns to each of the individual categories.
The App Store will continue to make improvements to help strengthen and refine the search process and showcase apps in the best way possible. After all, Apple has a vested interest in your success. The more apps you sell, the more they make. Perhaps more importantly, the more apps that are sold, the stronger the iPhone brand. Apple doesn’t publish App Store sales in its earnings results, but it has commented on earnings calls that it is slightly above breakeven on the App Store. However, no matter what it does to improve the store, the challenge will always be the same for you: how to get your app noticed.
In order to create a winning sales and marketing strategy for your app, it’s important to understand the dynamics of the App Store and understand that there are several strategies that you can employ. Most developers are trying to knock their app out of the park.
They want the grand slam and think anything less is failure. A number of developers give up, thinking there’s only two possible outcomes: the big win or no win. But, there are actually three possible outcomes: the Big Win App, the Steady Win App, and the No Win App. All apps fall into one of these three categories. Over time, and without marketing or product updates, all apps will eventually slide from one category to the next one below.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: George T. at 04272010
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