14 DAY TRIAL // You’d think that in order to make it big in the App Store, you have to burn the midnight oil coding until your eyes pop out of their sockets. Well, not according to John Hayward-Mayhew, a 6-foot-8 former basketball recruit for California State University, Northridge. He just hired a developer to do the coding for him.
Interviewed by Cultofmac, Hayward-Mayhew reveals how an initial investment of $15,000 /€13,000 (which could have been far less had he not paid by the hour) turned into a cool million.
Make hundreds of versions of the same app
“Apple’s discovery system really isn’t that good,” Hayward-Mayhew tells the site. “This is what pushed me to create the business model I did, where I’d push out 600 games rather than trying to hit it big with one app. I’m realistic about how slim the chances are of doing that.”
When he realized that getting thousands of hits and zero downloads was not the way to go, he decided to re-skin the source code by changing the game ever so slightly to look like something else. He’d then publish it in the App Store under a different name and with different marketing (i.e. description, screenshots).
He even has some valuable advice for those who plan on doing the same: watch the trends and don’t slip up on the marketing - it matters more than you think.
App Store revenue split
Imagine that some developers can barely break even after raking in only a few thousand dollars, of which Apple takes its 30% cut. This is an issue raised by a former Apple staffer in an open letter to Tim Cook, in which he proposes a tiered rate.
Jeff Hunter, who worked at Apple for five years, believes indie developers deserve a chance to make a full $100K / €100K without having to part with 30% of that money in the first year. It’s an interesting prospect, but it will probably fall on deaf ears, just like it did on Reddit.