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'Redacted' Hits Number 8 Spot in Mac App Store With Just $302 in First-Day Profit

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Apr 12, 2001
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App developer Sam Soffes today published a blog post detailing the early monetary performance of his new app Redacted [Direct Link], which allows users to easily obscure sensitive information on personal photos.

redacted-app-800x500.jpg
Screenshot of Redacted's image obscuring features​
​
After launching the app earlier this week, the $4.99 Redacted app quickly broke into the top paid app lists on the U.S. Mac App Store. Specifically, by the end of its launch day on May 5, Redacted was eighth in overall paid apps and first in top paid graphics apps. After some friends began questioning him about his expected profit, Soffes realized he hadn't really even begun to think about the possible profit the photo-obscuring app would rake in for him.

Yesterday, Soffes tweeted out a question, asking his followers to guess how much profit the app received in its first day on the market. While the guesses averaged $12,460.67, Soffes revealed his app had achieved just 87 paid downloads, earning him a mere $302 worldwide for the eighth top paid app in the U.S. Mac App Store.

redacted-profit.jpg
There were 37 guesses. I threw out the lowest and highest guesses which were both hilarious. The average guess was $12,460.67. 7 of those units were promo codes I sent out. Only 59 of those units were in the US. It's pretty nuts that 59 sales is top paid on the Mac App Store in the US.
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In response to Soffes' blog post, Dan Counsell, a developer of popular organizational app Clear, shared a few numbers on the app's profits over a single day. Counsell tweeted that Clear earned $453 the day before the tweet, noting the list app is third in productivity and fifteenth overall in the top paid app list for the United States.

The top paid ranking is a measure of download volume (with some tweaks to account for sales momentum), not profits, so developers of higher-priced Mac App Store apps are in some cases certainly doing better than Redacted. Even so, with a drop in sales following the launch surge, Redacted is currently the #81 top grossing app in the U.S. Mac App Store while sitting at the #19 spot in paid apps.

Towards the end of his blog post, Soffes mentions that he nearly decided to continue working on another indie app, Whiskey, in an attempt to make a living off of that app. "I'm glad I didn't," he states honestly. He now is employed at mobile payments solution Venmo as of early this week.

Article Link: 'Redacted' Hits Number 8 Spot in Mac App Store With Just $302 in First-Day Profit
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/07/redacted-mac-app-profits/
I haven't even bothered with Mac this generation - there's hardly any point putting time into it. The money is in throwaway 99c iOS apps.
 
It's true. These days everyone has entitlement mentality of "FREE".
Brian Y said:
I haven't even bothered with Mac this generation - there's hardly any point putting time into it. The money is in throwaway 99c iOS apps.
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$4.99 seems pretty steep for something you can do for free on Skitch and isn't something most people often need to use. If he can bring in $100-200 a day for a year he can comfortably live off of that. I'll bet he makes more than $302 thanks to this MacRumors story alone.
 
Billion and billions...but only for Kardashian booty and silly ass games. It would be interesting to see Apple's numbers for their largely-worthless iOS apps suite.
 
Big surprise. Nobody wants to pay for anything. Nothing new to see here.
 
An annualized revenue of $110k for a $5 app that does nothing but let you draw black rectangles (or blurs, or pixelate) parts of an image? That sounds remarkably good to me...

Even with sales falling off, it sounds like he did pretty well for an afternoon's work.
 
I've always felt kind of weird about never really recognizing most of the top paid apps there, and the ones I do are either relatively mainstream (Pixelmator) or Apple apps. Knowing this kind of puts it in perspective and really emphisizes how low of a priority the Mac App store must be for developers/Apple. This is actually kind of painful to read once you starting thinking about it.

At least iOS is doing well. :apple:
 
jpgr15 said:
Big surprise. Nobody wants to pay for anything. Nothing new to see here.
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You missed the whole point of the article then. The point is how easy it was to get into the top paid apps list, with so little money being made: "Redacted was eighth in overall paid apps and first in top paid graphics apps"
 
Analog Kid said:
An annualized revenue of $110k for a $5 app that does nothing but let you draw black rectangles (or blurs, or pixelate) parts of an image? That sounds remarkably good to me...

Even with sales falling off, it sounds like he did pretty well for an afternoon's work.
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This is all assuming they maintain sales like that for an entire year, which they likely won't.
 
Analog Kid said:
An annualized revenue of $110k for a $5 app that does nothing but let you draw black rectangles (or blurs, or pixelate) parts of an image? That sounds remarkably good to me...

Even with sales falling off, it sounds like he did pretty well for an afternoon's work.
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If you think that the sustained rate of a app's first week sales continue for the other 51 weeks in a year then you really need to brush up on your app research.
 
nick42983 said:
$4.99 seems pretty steep for something you can do for free on Skitch and isn't something most people often need to use. If he can bring in $100-200 a day for a year he can comfortably live off of that. I'll bet he makes more than $302 thanks to this MacRumors story alone.
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Heck, I do it for free in Preview. :rolleyes:
 
nrose101 said:
It's true. These days everyone has entitlement mentality of "FREE".
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That, or that five bucks for something that a particular is unlikely to be use more than once a month is quite steep. It's an app that does only one thing, after all...
 
nostaws said:
You missed the whole point of the article then. The point is how easy it was to get into the top paid apps list, with so little money being made: "Redacted was eighth in overall paid apps and first in top paid graphics apps"
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No, I didn't miss any point. Nobody wants to pay for anything therefore it takes very little revenue to make it to the top. Where is the surprise in this? Where is the point I missed? Of course it's going to be easy to get to the top putting a halfway interesting app out there.
 
I think its interesting, a little sad, and definitely a little concerning that other app developers are sharing similar numbers, for apps that do a whole lot more and are supposedly a lot more popular.

I'd share our numbers, but we sell direct and so there isn't as much correlation. We'll put ourselves on the Mac app store later this year, but now I'm not feeling as much of a push.
 
nrose101 said:
It's true. These days everyone has entitlement mentality of "FREE".
Click to expand...

There are so many apps out there that are complete garbage, what do you expect? $.99 may not be a lot, but buy enough of them and it adds up. IMO developers should always offer a free version, filled with ads, etc. If I like it, I will pay to have the ads removed. If it's crap, I'll delete the app. If you're expecting me to pay for an app based on questionable reviews and screenshots, without the ability to try first, forget it.
 
The market has spoken. With few exceptions, the future of app pricing is (1) free with IAP to unlock features, (2) free with IAP for game tokens, (3) free with subscription, (4) free with ads, and (5) totally free without ads.

To this end, Apple should redesign the App Store to indicate these 4 different pricing models AND make it easy for developers to create first 3 pricing tiers as well as improving analytics tools.
 
nick42983 said:
If he can bring in $100-200 a day for a year he can comfortably live off of that.
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Are you kidding me? $36500 a year? That's $3000 a month, before taxes. My rent is almost that much for a tiny 1-bedroom. And if you have a small business, you have to buy your own health insurance, at a much elevated cost. Besides you're not going to be in the top 10 apps for a very long time.
 
I suspect some people are going to be confused into thinking this article is talking about phone/iPad apps.

cppguy said:
Are you kidding me? $36500 a year? That's $3000 a month, before taxes. My rent is almost that much for a tiny 1-bedroom. And if you have a small business, you have to buy your own health insurance, at a much elevated cost.
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You live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Not exactly a reasonable comparison for most people.
 
BruiserBear said:
I suspect some people are going to be confused into thinking this article is talking about phone/iPad apps.



You live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Not exactly a reasonable comparison for most people.
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I believe the developer mentioned in the article also lives in SF.
 
i don't get it at all.
  1. when would anyone ever need to redact things?
  2. when would anyone who redacts things not know how to use simple editing software?
  3. even preview does this easily
 
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