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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Whichever you do, you can't assume that someone else will take care of discovery on your behalf.

On the web, it's obvious that nobody will find your site by accidentally typing its URL. On mobile, many people still seem to assume that users can find apps on stores without any marketing to drive them there. That hasn't been true for at least five years.

Dominating mobile game companies like King (Candy Crush) and Supercell (Clash of Clans) spend over 500 million USD yearly on marketing. Unless you have that kind of money, you can't pay your way to the top of app store listings, so your marketing should probably focus on some very specific niche.

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Absolutely.

I don't watch much TV where I live, but I was in Japan last year and it was amazing how many adds for Candy Crush played on TV. And they used celebrity actors as well.

I am not under any illusion that my side project is going to make any money on the app stores, but I do wonder what will happen if this view of powerlessness spreads through the developer community and most importantly to the companies who pay for app development.

I still want to have the possibility of a job in the sector even if I can't make it as an independent software producer.

>> Whichever you do, you can't assume that someone else will take care of discovery on your behalf.

Why not? Isn't that the whole idea behind syndication? What about adding more information to filter apps on besides name, category and star rating?

I agree that marketing is a powerful tool, but from a developer point of view, I find the premise that you need to spend obscene amounts of money to be successful in the mobile app space, even if your app is of outstanding quality, quite depressing.

That's business- it's fundamentally a combination of Product and Distribution. Both need consideration (not necessarily obscene amounts of money). Most 'Product' people, including but not limited to developers, underestimate the challenges of Distribution. Ironically, many are the first to call out the flaws when a 'Distribution' expert starts talking about "a great idea for an app/site/SaaS product, I just need someone to build it for me".

But it's not out of reach for Apple or Google to change the premise on their own market places.

They just need motivation to do so, and avoid scaring away the majority of developers that don't have a big company backing them up _might_ be that motivation.

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