selling statistc

[erico]

Hello everyone,

most people are not comfortable sharing such private things but I thought to ask anyway.
Of the ones selling apps on the apple store or pc apps of personal sites,
how is sale going in general?
Could you guys keep a steady sale throughout the year?

I have read that normal/simple games tend to sell 10-50 copies a day, does that hold true?
What about in a time schedule how does it go through 6 months?

I have come around a few articles on these, the most common ones:
http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/
http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot-effect/
http://www.markj.net/iphone-hit-tennis-sales-stats-marketing/

I found others too, will post if interests anyone.

But back on point, I'm not considering franchise games or hit games, but am interested on casual games sales.
I'm thinking about moving to this side of entertainment quite soon and anything related to these would help. I think if I could get some 4 apps selling within 6 months and they sell around 20-50 a day (.99 to 1.99 price maybe) I may be able to pull this off, any hints? thanks.

[ampos]

My (silly) Apps sold 0-3 per day, around 10 the launch day (glb forum people?)

I know about not so silly games selling 70 copies at launch week.

[erico]

thanks ampos,

I guess what is important is selling a little everyday, at least for my plans.
I'm thinking of putting up a game every 2 months, simple atari 2600 type games at first,
pretty they will be...

I'm quite interested in how many simple little apps can sell.
And also how they go being sold straight from a site for mac/pc/linux.

I should put this plan up early january, have some money to upgrade my machines and buy a mini-mac/ipad for such... hope it works out, if it pays the least I need to switch work area and do it full time it would be nice... I actually don't need much for that so I'm shooting for simplicity in quantities, pretty simplicity though.

thanks for sharing

[Ian Price]

Good question erico, as I plan to release several apps in the next few months and I was interested in expected/average sales too. Obviously each case will be different, depending on app type and time of year etc. Perhaps it's too early to ask for this info from GLB users, but will probably be available elsewhere.

Gernot has been selling apps for quite a while, I wonder whether he'd be happy to share his average app sales?

I am also interesested in hearing about tax with regard to selling apps. Does anyone have info? Obviously any additional income has to be declared, or does Apple sort out that side of things? How are payments made to you? etc. etc.

[erico]

I am also interesested in hearing about tax with regard to selling apps. Does anyone have info? Obviously any additional income has to be declared, or does Apple sort out that side of things? How are payments made to you? etc. etc.

Payments, from what I heard, are made when sales hit 150$ from a single country, then apple writes a check. Exactly how they pay I will still look into it when I open an apple account, probably the guys here that already have something going will now more.

Tax will sure vary from country. Here (brazil) my guess is that if I open an app account in my name, then I will pay for this additional income normally, if I open a company account then I will pay less taxes, something around  5% if my income is around 40k/year.

[erico]

will see to add more articles about sales whenever I come by any that looks interesting, it should give a good read for those thinking about starting something up.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31837/How_One_Man_With_An_Idea_And_1000_Made_The_Global_iOS_Hit_Trainyard.php

you best take a closer look here too
http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/

AS you can see from the second post down there, before the game became a hit, he sold something like 3.200$ within 4 months, 2338 copies. Those figures are really motivating, my guess is that if you can keep 4 apps on those figures it should be enough to get things well started (at least in my case, not married, no kids, dollar is high currency in brazil).

[Kitty Hello]

@erico - can you post what I PM'ed you? I have no copy in my sent-messages directory  !?

[erico]

Here it goes, Kittie's numbers:

well, I'm maybe not the best one to ask about app sales, because my apps usally are quick drawing with some easy programs that I put together within a few days.
But here's my sales for this whole year (divide by 11 to get average per month) so you can get the picture:
Wumbo's Adventure: 198,- EUR
Acrobastics: 50,- EUR
Dr.Shiver: 4003,- EUR
Dr.Shiver HD (iPad): 328,-
Fridge Game: 51,-
GooseBumpsters: 105,-
Spy's Kit: 1122,- (whoops! Didn't expect that much)

Here's a link to them:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr-shiver/id341772204?mt=8

[djtoon]

well here's mine
finger goalie: 10,000$ done with flash cs5
ipuppeteer : 1500$

thats it for now

[Ian Price]

Those figures are very encouraging

[shawnus]

Erico & Djtoon-

Congratulations! You look like you are both doing well.

I can see that many people would filter apps by release date on their device, so an app would sell in volume initially, but once its off the first 25 in the 3 filters (top paid, top selling & release date) its as good as lost unless someone is specifically looking for it, and for someone to look for it they must know it exists.

So my question is really- to what extent do you 'manage' these apps once they are up? Or are they essentially 'fire & forget'? If the latter is the case then are these apps proliferated via word of mouth / advertising, etc?

Cheers, Shawnus

[Kitty Hello]

I update then every now and then. Doing proper updates brings more sales, though.

[erico]

Erico & Djtoon-
Congratulations! You look like you are both doing well.

oops, those are Kitty's numbers not mine, but I hope I do that good too!

@Djtoon, what about time spam?
ipuppeteer is a nice app, you surely will sell more copies.

[Millerszone]

My pong game has been on sale for almost 3 weeks and I sold over 300. It has slowed down a lot, it is currently selling about 5 a day.

Payments from apple gets direct deposited to your banking account, about every 20 days.

Thanks Gernot for this easy and powerful developing tool, GLBasic. My dreams are are finally coming through, developing video games.

Just Pong:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=403868243&mt=8

[djtoon]

best way to beef up sales is facebook
i wish we had facebook connect support for updates on score its better then open fait
and with facebook connect i can post images directly to the users feed viral is the key for good apps
take angry birds and doodle jump for example