Charles Perry (no relation), wrote this follow-up to Brent Simmons’ Love post (app store, indies, etc).
Here’s the question I posted to Charles – Does it change if the ice cream truck is the only one you’re allowed to sell on, yet the entire menu is only the top-sellers?
@mistercameron The App Store only features a tiny fraction of apps. We need to put up billboards advertising our “ice cream”. Marketing!
— Charles Perry (@DazeEnd) July 2, 2015
Sure – don’t blame the delivery truck, but there is significant impact when your product is effectively hidden from view. (How many times have you searched for the exact app title to be presented with dozens of unrelated results?).
Advertising is the obvious answer, and I think that has been the answer for years. I struggle with doing it right. How, where, and how much are all questions I don’t know the answers to. When bootstrapping something and your team is small, it’s a tough sell to spend money on things that may not have a direct correlation to income. BUT how else will people find out about our apps?
We (indies – I count myself as such, though I’m not making a living off it), need to figure this business out. Apple isn’t going to come to our rescue. They’re just the BigBoxRetail of apps. We need to do a better job getting the word out. More traditional advertising channels? Sure. Is there any reasonable way for us as a community to go about educating the average Joe and Jane that AppStore.app isn’t the only (or best) way to find apps? Actually, I wonder if they even care. See my previous post – perhaps the craft and quality movement will creep into digital.
Stay tuned. I hear the ice cream truck coming.
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Apps As Art
We seem to be on a roll again about this whole “indie is not viable” discussion. Next up, Allen Pike on Supply-Side Blues.
If you haven’t read them yet, I posted a couple other articles on this topic [see indie].
Allen’s post is spot-on with my assessment – the AppStore is becoming much like the music industry. Heck, when I was 16, I wanted to play professional saxophone. I might have actually had the chops to do it. At one point I started considering what my career outlook would have been. I noticed my saxophone teachers all had one thing in common – playing wasn’t their main source of income (or probably not; one guy played broadway shows in LA, but even that was inconsistent as shows come and go all the time). Average salaries were low.
Let’s look at another music angle. I have a family member with a reasonably good shot at making it big in the industry, but even then the sacrifice is large for an unknown, and certainly unrealized, payoff. Pick your poison – take a “real job” and do the things you love when you have time in the evenings, or go for it and make peanuts until (if) you make it big.
That’s why this whole thing is bananas. Apps are becoming art in much the way we approach music. And here’s the kicker – as indies, we LOVE to emphasize the care we put into the craft – paying attention to every detail, making it perfect. Tell me that doesn’t sound like something you’ve read on Etsy!
Friends, the gold rush is over, and we’re in this strange, mature, creative industry now. Customers expect loads of great things for free, we do it because we love it and have no expectation of making it big, and the only real money for most of us is taking that other job that actually pays. You know, that one converting CSV files for the sales team.
But you know what – it’s not going to stop me. I will keep on keepin’ on.