From MacHeist:
"That's why we're declaring this The Week of the Independent Mac Developer, and in an effort to spread the word about these hidden gems, we've put together a collection of some of the best darn software available on the Mac for a steeply discounted $49."
Well, that's a big crock of shit. How about this alternate title: "The Week Where You Devalue and Fleece A Bunch of Good Mac Devs". Yea, that sounds more like it.
I'm sure it's a great deal for anyone buying the bundle, and it's a hell of a deal for the folks running MacHeist and the charities, but it certainly isn't for the indie mac devs. If you do the math, that's $3.67 per copy if they are splitting the money evenly. And that's the extremely optimistic view. How much is MacHeists' cut? Are they splitting it, or are the devs getting a flat rate? Let's say it's a $5k flat rate, and they sell 5k copies. That's only a buck a copy. What if they sell 10k copies? That's 50 cents a license. That's not how you "support" indie mac devs, that's how you tie up all their development time answering support emails.
I'm certain the developers who are participating in the bundle know what they are getting into, and have good reasons for doing so. But for MacHeist to call it "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" and to practically give away the software... well, that's just a fucking insult to me and all the other hard working developers out there.
Update: John Casasanta (one of the macheist guys) responds and mentions that I turned down an opportunity to bundle with macheist, and I reply with the numbers on why that was.
What pisses me off even more is that they are trying to discuss it as some crock for charity, when in reality, the whole thing is about money, for them. Marketing and money.
I'm not sure whether to be pissed that it's an 18 year old kid who gets high when his forum buddies tell him he's 1337, or give him props.
Won't even go into the whole "locked until we have sold worth $300K bundles" plan for the last apps..
I think I will make this week my own Indie Mac Dev week and buy a couple apps directly from their authors. Given my needs I shouldn't really end up spending a whole lot more than $50.
In all seriousness, though, I totally agree with you and everyone else about all the gimmickery in the Mac software world these days. Lame.
From my POV there is little difference between 5 and 10 bucks, but for a developer across many sales that's a fair chunk of cash.
Someone should run with that. Would be a great thing for everyone to get behind, just before Christmas, or maybe after Christmas, in a 'lull time' for developers' incomes.....
Right Gus. So you're implying that the devs involved had guns held to their heads for this.
You had the chance to be involved here and you turned it down. And we respected that. The devs that got involved did it knowing exactly what they were getting into. And in the end I STRONGLY feel like it's going to help their businesses through the word of mouth that's gained through thousands (or hopefully tens of thousands) of new, happy customers. I know this from experience with my shareware business.
You going on your little tirade here is just classless, IMO. I'm sure we'll see yet another wave of hate and me-too posts like the last round with all the Disco fallout.
Instead of trying to divide the Mac community, which up to recent days has been pretty tight, why not everyone try to work together? That's what we've been trying to do with MacHeist.
I just don't understand the attitude going on here with your clique. But that's fine...let the wave o' hate, envy, and bitterness continue...
You must have skipped the part where I said "I'm certain the developers who are participating in the bundle know what they are getting into, and have good reasons for doing so".
John said: "You had the chance to be involved here and you turned it down."
I turned it down because it was a horrible deal for me. At the time, the deal was 5k to the developer for the rights to sell the app for a full week. I tried to negotiate for a percentage and was told there was no negotiating, the deal was the same for everyone across the board. And at the time there would have been at total of 5 apps. I was also told that you guys need to sell 2k to "break even". Let's look at the math for that and why I turned it down.
49 * 2000 = 98000
98000 * .75 = 73500 (this is the number after charity)
73500 - (5 * 5000) = 48500
And let's just say it was 5k for credit card processing, which is a bit on the high side but that's ok because the numbers make you guys look better.
So that means you guys needed $48,000 dollars to "break even". That set off a ton alarm bells in my head, and they were all shouting that you guys were going to screw me over.
Let's say that you do make 10,000 sales like you hope, let's look at the numbers for that- and I'll even double the amount you guys are paying the devs to 10k.
49 * 10000 = 490000
490000 * .8 = 392000 (charity + 5% credit card processing)
392000 - (10 * 10000) = 292000
$292,000 profit for you guys. Yea, that's fair.
The point is that a lot of people, like myself, have used the anonymity of software usage to sucker off the works of others. Things like mydreamapp, macheist, etc. remind me that there's human beings on the other end, working hard and producing this stuff... cool stuff that I like and thus cool people who I want to support. This may not work fiscally here... but it might work better in the long run when it wakes up users like myself.
The Guy
I just wanted to make some notes on your numbers.
First off - if you look at the site's running tote-board you would note that average selling price for each bundle is less than $49. Currently it is $39.20.
Let's talk about the 2k bundles that you used. We don't know any of the details of what the pricing would have been if there had been only five apps so lets look at the eight apps that are in the bundle.
39.20 * 2000 = 78400
78400 * 0.7 = 54880 (25% for Charity and 5% for transaction fees add up to 30% or .3)
54880 - (5000*8) = 14880
The real numbers make this thing look better. After you cut out all the real costs of starting up a business and creating and maintaining all the resources used during the event it is no where near the $48,000 number you quote.
Now on to the target of 10,000 sold. We'll use the bump you used in your math.
39.20 * 10000 = 392000
392000 * .7 = 274400
274400 - (10 * 10000) = 174400
So, if everything went to the ideal target of 10k copies sold it results in $174,400.
-Joe Kavanagh
Stat Monkey At Large
A few apps are Disco and AppZapper.
If you've actually took the time to compare AppZapper to a few other apps out there, you'll realize is a piece of crap.
Check out CleanApp (cheaper than AppZapper, does tons more), heck, even TinkerTool which costs like 7$ has an uninstaller, plus a bunch of system utils.
Disco is another app that basically takes all the apple frameworks and bundles them into a somewhat functional workflow. There just isn't a lot of innovation there.
Yet users are piling over themselves to get these apps. I'm not saying the developers shouldn't get credit, but c'mon, do people these days have any idea what real software is? Or do they just buy the crap that's the "most popular" of the bunch.
It sickens me.
You just embarrased yourself.
Hint: Gus never said the devs where forced into it.
[/sarcasm]
And mysterious, currently the macheist home page read 1748 bundles sold, 1748 x 49 = 85652, 25% of that should be 21413, but the page shows 17144.
I am sorry but I just don't understand.
WORD!
In fact, those apps are probably some of the best of the entire bundle.
I was talking about how much marketing an app like Disco or AppZapper gets and nobody wants to try any alternatives. You look at people's wishlist of "must have" apps and when I see things like AppZapper or a few others, it makes me wonder if these people just want these apps because of the marketing or if they really tried AND compared them to alternatives.
I use AppZapper as my example because it's probably the most overhyped under-delivered app I know of. CleanApp 2 is MILES ahead of it, yet CleanApp receives no marketing whatsoever. (Go try it, i'm sure you'll agree).
There are a few other apps, but it seems like there's a few elitist "new-era" mac developers are stealing quite a bit of limelight while leaving other, possibly better apps in the dust. Sure, it's not their fault, and I don't blame them. I blame the users for jumping aboard the hype train.
@ Arsen: Thing is, quite a few people aren't paying 49$ for the bundle, If you buy two bundles at once, you get 2 for 78$, I think you can also buy 3 bundles for 98$. There's also MacHeist bundle discounts if you played through the Heists (up to I think 12$ or something). So basically, if people don't pay 49$ for the bundle (and there are quite a few of them), that means less money goes to charity since it isn't a fixed amount but a percentage of the total value.
IE: I can currently buy the bundle for 43$ as I've participated in 3 heists and saved a whole 6$ off the 49$ price. Meaning only 25% of my 43$ will go to charity.
More info here: http://carpeaqua.com/archives/2006/12/11/support-developers/
Developers should be rewarded for their hard work.
The problems with this is the creators of MacHeist have done absolutely nothing. It's a 18 year old kid who took advantage of an opportunity and started a mac themeing forum when he knew a bunch of people would come over to it. Since then, he's been using it, to get him coverage on Digg. Then he's used that coverage to get PR for crap like this, the sole reason being so "he can profit"
Which, is normally fine, except the weight of his profit compared to the dev's (you know, the people that do the actual work) is totally off.
To me it should be: Dev: 65%, Charity: 25%, MacH: 10%
And again, if you read Gus' post again, he's not upset about the idea, just upset at the fact that they are masking the idea as "something for the dev's" when it clearly isn't.
Like Coudal eh?
The number to charity is lower because the $49 is WITHOUT the Macheist discount. For most people that took part in Macheist, they got up to a $10 discount.
I'll be honest -- I think these gimmicks have been good because they've made me, a user, take a serious look at apps I wouldn't have before. I know some of them I'll continue to buy and upgrade when I wouldn't have before. I do understand where Gus is coming from, but from a user perspective it has worked well.
1. The "distributor" did get some attention for the authors, which has value. Sure they made some good money, but they only made money if the products sold. What about the people that went directly to the product site and licensed it? The "distributor" didn't make any money, right? He took on some risk here. I'll probably buy an app or two, but not throgh MacHeist (I have been registering shareware since PC Write).
2. You will make upgrade revenue on the bundle versions. Yes, a low percentage of them will upgrade, but it still needs to be factored into the equation.
3. The online press on this was outstanding. I actually read all of the product pages, assuming that these were "best in class" applications.
4. You have to experiment with your marketing, and this was a low-risk and low-cost way to do it. Measure the results and do it again if it worked. If it didn't, don't do it again. But don't be upset about experimenting.
5. It calls attention to shareware in a positive way. I've been following shareware since the days of PCWrite (one of the first), and it's hard to get credit cards from people who think you're working for free. Anyone that can help you do that deserves a fair share of the revenue.
Yeah, it seems to suck, but I did the Ingram distribution thing with CompUSA, Microwarehouse, etc., and they have all of these marketing programs and "line items" that eat into your margin so you're lucky to break even (if they pay you on time).
I see that you were smart enough to rain on their parade to get some exposure, even though you weren't part of the program. It's all marketing. ;-)
- Mike K.
If you'd taken the time to check out the actual Heists, you wouldn't say that the MacHeist guys did nothing. They created five official (and a couple unofficial) games/riddles/whatevers that people had to solve. Some of them involving putting multiple websites together. It's not a "sit back and fleece the devs" thing. They're trying to bring awareness of the developer community to a bunch of people who didn't know about it. I'm one of those people who had *NO* idea that there were so many awesome applications created by independent developers out there. I'm still a new Mac user, and I just had no clue. But now I do thanks to them.
And seriously, you guys can't get pissy because some people are better at marketing than others. Hi, Betamax anyone? If you want to succeed, you have to have a decent product AND decent marketing, that's how it works... I've been running my own business for nearly three years now, and I know my product is better than some others out there, but they get the attention, because I'm a craptastic marketer... but instead of whining about it, I'm trying to get better at it.
MacHeist provided some developers with the chance to get a BUNCH of publicity. Short term, of COURSE it's a shitty deal for them. I assume what they're all hoping for is that the publicity pays off in the long term.
I, for one, really hope it does.
Who are you to say it's a "crock of shit"? You didn't participate, it's obvious you didn't think it was worth it, so why do you care? Did that one line strike a nerve that hard that you had to go rant on your blog, and in the process completely lose my respect (and I'm sure many others as well)?
Seeing projects like MyDreamApp and MacHeist gave me a warm fuzzy feeling about the Mac community. Everyone was having a great time, working together, developers and users alike. Completely the polar opposite of the Windows community, really. This post brought my feelings of the Mac development community back down to earth, and it made me realize all it takes is a few scummy people out there to ruin the core.
I'll tell you one thing though. Your immature outbust just cost you a customer. I don't care how much of a "hard working developer" you are, there's something to be said for bringing the Mac community together and letting them enjoy owning a Mac, with software created by that very community. When your definition of "The Week of the Independant Mac Developer" means high profits and to hell with our customer base as long as they pay up, well, let's just say I'm glad I'll never be supporting you again.
However, my definition of "The Week of the Independant Mac Developer" is giving everyone a fair deal. It's not, as you imply, "high profits and to hell with our customer base". I'm not sure where you got that idea from, but it's certainly not how I feel.
1. It seems to me that you are assuming that after you turned down their offer that they kept it the same (i.e kept offering 5k to each developer)
2. This is one week of sales. And not even exclusive rights. people who go to your website and want to buy it still can. the website does not say "GET 10 APPS AND SHAFT US BY GOING TO ...."
3. If it was a bad deal the devs wouldn't have done it. or at least they would have put some sort of version\time lock on it. but they didn't (except disco, which gives the same restrictions as buying from their website)
people who are plugged into the community may buy the bundle and get a license. or they may not because they only want 2 apps and will choose to buy directly from the developer.
and not important to your point, but important nonetheless:
3. MacHeist does not look like it was something cheap and simple to put together. they have gone and made five (and soon six) very pretty hard puzzles that made you go around and look, and think, and try to solve. sure you could have cheated, but it does not look like a lot of people did.
Yeah, that's what was said about the low-level Enron employees whose retirement savings was wiped out when the executives drove the company into the ground.
In all honesty, I am not too sure what the real complaint is here.
Are you mad that others decided to try something that you chose against doing? Do you feel like the pariah of indie Mac developers?
It seems rather silly that you are insulted - and feel that your works are devalued - because of what other people decide to do with their works.
You must absolutely detest freeware developers.
It concerns me that you might have only been offered a fixed payment of $5000 for your software inclusion on MacHeist. I like to think that my $39 paid for the app bundle will have directly resulted in more money going to the developers. That is, as a purchaser of the bundle, if sales made result in $50k going to charity I am rewarded with the license to an extra application (NewsFire). I made my purchase with the impression that the developers also would be rewarded in kind.
As a MacHeist participant I have been influenced greatly by this event.
The greatest effect being that I have purchased the application bundle! -discounted by $10 as a reward for successfully completing the five 'Heists' run over the last five weeks.
Over my lifetime of exclusive Mac usage I have never once purchased software from independant developers like yourself, until now. MacHeist has changed this 'fear' of purchasing independant software in a very meaningful way:
Over the last five weeks I have contributed nothing but my time to the MacHeist event. In return they have given me a very entertaining and enjoyable time while introducing me to what appears to be a wonderful community of developers. Developers who are passionate about what they do, beyond selling a product for money. They have given me licenses to software (17 not including bundle) in reward for participating in this event, all in good faith. Faith being that I would see these developers as people I want to support and a community I want to be a part of.
Community is something that the MacHeist team has created and given to me without requiring anything in return. This community is about Mac software and surrounds those developers involved. This community is something I want and something I don't fear contributing to by buying the software of those involved. It is something I can be involved in, getting what I need and giving what I can.
When I give money to you as a software developer I know that I worked hard for that money and it means a lot for me. I don't know the same for you. As part of a community together, I can see that my hard work is reflected in kind by the developers involvement and contribution to the community, I don't have to worry so much about the numbers and how the dollars balance for me and you.
I think this community should offer the same for you as a developer as it does for me as a consumer.
Sure maybe MDA and MacHeist bought the mac community together but thats not the most important thing.
The MDA/MacHeist guys make more then any of the developers which is not how it should be if its truely "The Week of the Independant Mac Developer".
MacHeist is NOT a good deal for any developer as gus has pointed out. I'm a developer myself and there is no way id get involved in anything like MacHeist because its not going to bring in a huge amount of extra revenue in the long term (if any at all) and it will costs developers alot of money answering support emails.
If all your intereseted in is something that brings the mac community together then join a mac forum
And a comment for everyone who reads this....
If you want to support developers then buy there apps at full price and give them the reward they deserve.
I had to make that assumption, because that's the data I had to go on. However you'll notice that in the 10k copies sold scenario, I doubled the payout to the devs. It would be cool if MacHeist would make their numbers public, but I imagine some developers are getting more than others.
And I never said MacHeist was cheap or simple- I did however point out that they were getting a sizable chunk more of the profits than the developers that wrote the applications they are making money off of.
Seeing all the apps in the bundle, I decided to wait until TextMate is unlocked or anywhere near it. Probably a bit "selfish", but you cant blame me (or others) for that. I do own some of those apps including the unlocked NewsFire, so I don't really care about them, and I have no friends to give to. I won't be considering buying TextMate if it is not in the bundle, due to its lack of CJK support.
And one more thing, based on my own experience, some of those developers are really "flexible", several years ago when one of the apps in the bundle (not NewsFire) was first released I gave it a try and was quite satisfied with it, but their purchase system failed to charge my credit card, so I sent the developer an email and ask if they have alternative payment method such as PayPal or so, within 24 hours I received the reply email with a free serial number.
I am not saying they do not care about sales, I just think they are doing it in a better way, because they knew I am gonna pay for it once there is a method available.
John Casasanta,
Only if your making money from it right ?
You or no one else from macheist have said anything about what gus has said about the money so we can only assume gus is right about the amount you guys are making.
JR,
You are completly right. There are lots of apps that are all eye candy over substance being released at the moment. There are much better alternitives to most of them and many are free.
When the developers use viral marketing so heavily though you can only expect that users will get sucked in. If you look at who does the marketing and developing for all these apps you wont be surprised though.
however, the apps that were given away seem like the smaller, simpler, one guy in the basement, type of apps. i would imagine that they got some amount of money (and that would have had come from the MH profit money in your equations). plus i have bought 5 of the 17. full licenses from the devs site (which is what the aim really was). for all we know the authors of the free apps were also all offered 5k for thier program.
its 12:05 and im tired from staying up for MAAD; Earthdesk (which i own, for PC and OS X by the way).
i guess the point of my post here is that the problem is WE DONT KNOW what the MH people or the devs involved know. we dont know if the bundle developers got 10k or 20k. we dont know if the developers of each of the 17 free apps got 1k. until the macheist people post their financials (which they probably wont do) we need to assume that the devs got a fair deal. otherwise why would they do it.
sorry aout the lack of structure in the post. like i said, its late.
Interesting take on the topic, thanks for the numbers. However, I think you are being a little naive on the costs of MacHeist. I don't think they take 100% of the money they make as profit. You are not assuming bandwith cost is zero, are you? And I would assume that is not their only cost.
I am not a big fan of marketers, but I have to admit I am very bad at marketing, although I consider myself a reasonably good coder. So, if somebody can chip in their knowledge for marketing, I'd take it. That's what business is, after all, a bunch of guys with different knowledge getting together to make some money.
I got exposed to a number of websites and apps. I am considering a list of them now, and only because I got to know them from MacHeist. Heck, even you benefited, cause I landed in your page and learned about your tool. And you didn't even have to pay MacHeist a single penny.
I'd bet Microsoft, Apple, and every major software company out there spends a lot in marketing every year. I'd bet it is a huge amount, not even close to how much they pay their devs.
Anyway, I still think the discussion is good. It makes us all think about these issues.
Andre
No longer can you simply define your product sales in this one to one manner with the introduction of these sorts of package deals, if one so chooses to participate. And it leads to a lot of confusion because you have to really understand your userbase, the userbase of these deals, and a million other factors that now play into the cost-benefit of being in one of these sorts of promotions. I'm just going to go off-the-cuff with a few comments on the matter:
1. The frequent promoter - yeah, I'm looking at you, appzapper. Appzapper gets included into every one of these sorts of promotions. It's been given away in maczot bundles, on its own, hell, they even created a site where every 5 minutes they just threw out a serial number to someone. And these promotions are all tied together to the same group, so I'm guessing there is a lot of user retention from promotion to promotion. Being involved in several promotions adds to the cost benefit because after 4 of these promotions, i'd say its safe to say that well over half of the participants already have your application. So thats basically free money, no burdon, no lost sales, etc. While Appzapper somehow made it out of this one, Disco is jumping up into its place, and my guess is they can form some sort of tag-team duo in the price-slashing market.
2. The Audience - MacHeist clearly was geared at a demographic of users that was under a certain age, and I'd be interested in what percentage of these folks would have actually ever bought the app. I wonder how many of these users were running pirated copies of the apps they now have serial numbers for. And I wonder how many of these users have been even exposed to the applications in question. Exposing your app to a new demographic has tons of word-on-the-street potential, and getting money where you can off of users who can't normally afford your apps is hardly unwise. Additionally, I get the feeling that some of the apps in this bundle were hard to market. FotoMagico springs to mind, because looking at it now I can see potential for the average user having a purpose for this application. But prior to today, I wouldn't have looked at it, because the price tag would have scared me away. Getting your App out there is important, and for some applications, this is the perfect way for it.
3. The Re-registered - harping on an earlier point, a lot of these apps may have been previously registered by users. I legitimately bought (no promotion or whatever) Shapeshifter when it came out, and this will be my second serial number. I don't need that, but now, I have it, and Unsanity can get a little free support booster from me. Same with Disco, but I did get that at discount (come on, theres hardly a way to not pick it up on discount).
But now you see where the price margins start working out. I bought Disco for $5 originally. Now its going to make money off a user who isn't going to use a second license. Say it gets $4 for this promotion. Well now they've basically sold me a license for $9. And now its becoming worthwhile down the line.
Thats all im trying to say. The math on these things brings in so many factors that you cant just support it or deny its validity. But this is The Game now. This is what users like to see. And if it becomes the norm, well, its Social Darwinism at work. Adapt or don't, but that inherently means survive or don't. And yeah, its not that big of a deal now, but if this trend continues, then you're going to have to give it a serious look. And that means actually sitting down with pen and paper, and statistics of the registered users, and see whats profitable and whats not. My feeling is if you commit to being on the bandwagon of these bundle deals, your profitability skyrockets, but again, I don't have the research to prove it ;)
Man, opensource is just so much easier...and yet, so much less...profitable :P
If EMI started putting out CD's at 10 for the price of 1 then you can be sure the other record companies might have a wee problem with that and I can fully understand why.
Each developer had a choice to join Mac Heist so they get whatever they deserve. But the fact is, the more we see these cheap software deals the harder it is for other developers to sell their software at full price.
I agree that Disco, Cha-Ching, Tangerine et al are very pretty apps that I'd NEVER shell out for (and I probably won't use Cha-Ching which I got free in a heist), but PLEASE give Mac-users the credit that we are smart enough to know which apps are quality that we want to pay for, and which we know we won't. Also, why can't it be okay that some Mac-users do want to shell out for Disco/Cha-Ching because they like fun eyecandy apps? It seems like it only helps the shareware community in the end. Finally, one conscious decision I have made (us non-devs DO make conscious decisions, btw) is to not support devs who I think are pompous, divisive jerks. I don't buy/use apps when I think the developer has an agenda or looks down on his/her users. Other people think this way, too.
(Sneakin on MH and MDA)
I do in fact take time to read actual heists. I have been a member of MacHeist since it's inception and have played along with the little games. I have also been involved with MyDreamApp and I was one of the original members of MT and MTF.
I know exactly what I'm talking about and have been around long enough within Phill's "career" and his little helpers to know.
I agree with you, MH certainly isn't "no work," but common, if you are trying to sell the idea that the work they put in to MH is even comparable on a 1% level of how much work goes into an app, then I'm laughing.
No one is pissed that they are good at marketing. What everyone is upset about is that they're doing something extremely good for themselves and trying to make it out like it's extremely good for other people, when really, they are the center of it. Again, if you can't see this, then oh well, but I guarantee you if you saw the numbers on MH or macZOT, you'd be surprised.
It's like a retail chain with a 90% markup. It's absurd. It reminds me of the WalMart scenario, and how WalMart will work extremely hard to get products at their store (promising exposure of course) that often it will negotiate a price that is even below the cost for the manufacturer, in effect putting them out of business to get exposure. The difference with WalMart however, is you don't hear them exclaim "The day of the product manufacturer" on their ads. No, they exclaim "lowest prices," which indeed is correct.
I'm excited to hear that you are an entrepreneur yourself and first focus on making a good product. I beg of you though, in your search to become better at marketing, don't take the MacHeist or macZOT model. Don't lie. In an age where it's lasting relationships that matter, that model may spike traffic, but it's not the way to win raving fans of your product. It's a quick way to score some numbers, devalue a product, screw over a dev, and make some money. Pure and simple.
I do understand the reasons for your angry article. However, I would like you to look at what MH is doing from a different perspective:
Any indie developper should look at marketing as an investment and not as a loss. Because the magic word here is "volume". The amount of work you put in your app is not payed by the price per copy, the only important figure here is the total revenue. This is obvious, I guess.
Less obvious, it seams, is that in order to have a big user base you need high awareness. Companies spend big marketing budgets to get awareness, indie devs do not have the money to invest into this. This is why most of them stay small.
The way I see it is that MH produced an incredible awareness for the apps they promote among mac users. It may look expensive for you, but in fact you are paying for marketing cost from your margin. That is, you get exposure without getting money from your pocket.
In this respect it is totally irelevant how much money MH is making compared to the devs. I am a marketing guy and I can tell you advertising and media agencies make huge amounts of money only from communicating to the right potential buyers, with no guarantee that your product will sell. The only important thing is how effective the campaign was. And in this respect MH seems to be doing one of the best jobs I've seen in years.
That said, no one should look at MH as a magic marketing bullet. Awareness may not be enough. (think user minded: awareness->interest->need->buy)Constant marketing effort will be needed after that. But it is a very good kick start for indie devs.
If you sell 100 aps a month and one day you give away 10.000 serials for your app, how much money you lose?
I say nothing, you say 10.000 * sales price.
WTF is up with these sites? Most shareware is excellent value and if you register with the developer, you know you're supporting their continued development.
These sites are basically piracy 'lite'. I can't understand why some of the big-name developers are supporting them.
Yesterday, after I purchased two bundles from MacHeist, I bought licenses for four other shareware apps, independent of MH. I probably wouldn't have done that had I not been put in a support-shareware mood over the past few weeks thanks to MH and MAAD.
First let me say I purchased Voodoo Pad and the upgraded to Voodoo Pad Pro when it went to a new version and really appreciate all the great work you've put into it. That said, Flying Meat benefited from my being more open to purchasing shareware because of the MacHeist style "MysteryZot" things over at MacZot (sure it's only one user, but I'm probably not the only one).
I've been using shareware since I was using a Tandy 1000 TX in the 80s, but it wasn't until recently (and largely as part of the Mac world) that I started buying it. Part of that comes from a culture of supporting independant music and being involved in IT and starting to equate the two. And part of it comes from getting a few shareware apps for very cheap through promotions and realizing how good some of the software is. It's much like the classic drug-dealer cliche... the first hit is free and from then on you pay.
I'm not saying the MacHeist model is ideal, but I don't think it's as nefarious as you've made it out to be.
Thank you again for the great products you put out. I'm still a fan even if I don't agree with you on this.
"Hey (insert Mac enthusiast here), did you figure out the new MacHeist?"
"No, I couldn't figure it out. Want to help me?"
(also works great as a mac-girl pickup line..
Onto my real post.
You're right, Gus.
And most of the other people who spoke up about this were right as well. Keep on truckin!
Selling 5000 apps at $5k and perhaps 100 apps at $200 is better than selling 500 apps at $1k.
Just my 2 cents...
What saddens/maddens a lot of Mac developers I think is that this is a sign that the marketters are beginning to take over. The Mac software ecosphere used to be a meritocracy, with the good software (VP) floating to the top and the shit sotware (AppZapper) falling to the bottom.
So now we have these give aways and gimmicks and silly assed games and snakeoil salemen. I miss the old days.
And guys. one thing to remember about Gus' post. This is his blog. He can say whatever the hell he likes here...
Let's let today be hug a Mac developer day.
(Not a dev; just an independent Mac SW junkie.)
I mean, if you buy an app for e.g. $30 and see it included in a $49 bundle the next week, won't you feel a bit screwed?
I like VoodooPad. I think it's an attractive, well-designed and extremely useful application. That being said, I simply can't afford the $30 license fee. I would use VDP Lite, but it doesn't have the feature set I want.
I was _really_ hoping that VoodooPad would be in the bundle so I could own a license for your app and support you as well (in what little way I can right now).
And it's here where I think the MacHeist model starts to work: hook me for cheap, and I'll be your (full-price paying) monkey forever. Just because I can't afford it now, doesn't mean I can't *ever* afford your app.
I will likely come back to VoodooPad sometime in the future, but right this minute there's a bad taste in my mouth.
$39.20 isn't the average price of each piece of software in the bundle. It is the average people are paying for the bundle. There are two things reducing the price for people:
1. They got discounts for completing each heist
2. They get discounts for buying more than one bundle
And people are taking advantage of both.
I hope that makes more sense,
Joe Kavanagh
It would be really sweet if you guys and gals (Mac Indie Developers) went ahead and bought space, so we could set up a "Mac Indie Software" page in our magazine. And our advertising fees are probably the lowest in the business. We deal!
Contact Wayne Lefevre at wlefevre at maccompanion dot com, since he is our marketing and advertising guru.
We've been championing the cause for years!
Good PR and good marketing is part and parcel of today's development process. If you want to make money making software you can't just exist on word of mouth. Sure some of the recent apps have had better marketing than design. Great whatever. Insulting hard working people who crafted an original design to their puzzle site, drove traffic to a lot of developers that hadn't had any PR and made money for charity is something to admire.
Your anger times as it is, is nothing more than a pale transparent attempt at getting some publicity for yourself. Also I'd recommend if you're going to be on your high horse that you take a moment and get an original site logo rather than the retreaded flickr logo. Pure imitation is plagiarism not flattery.
I never claimed they did. They've obviously said that 25% goes to charity, and an unspecified amount goes to the devs and MacHeist.
I never would have bought Delicious Library. It's a neat application, but as I've seen others see elsewhere, I have this neat dashboard for seeing my book/DVD collection -- it's called a bookshelf.
Potential revenue from me - $0. When you bundle it, similar to a cable company bundles a bunch of channels I'd never watch, I end up paying something for it. The costs associated with supporting me on this app will be nil, I won't use it enough to need support. The developer is still making money off of me where he/she wouldn't have before.
I'm not making a quality judgement on any of the software here - I think they're all great apps, just not my cup of tea. Same's true with ShapeShifter -- I won't use it, but I'll still pay for it so that I can get a copy of Disco, RapidWeaver, DevonThink and potentially TextMate.
The other trick is that upgrades come along, which unlike others, I don't have a problem paying for if there's something significant. If you give me an app, and I become a huge fan (who knows, maybe my great Uncle Henry will die and leave me his 4,000 DVD collection...) then I'll be loyal to delicious library.
I've used Voodoo pad, it was neat, but didn't do it for me. I've decided that I'm not going to buy it. If it was bundled in MacHeist, I would currently be using it though (I have lite installed). I LOVE FlySketch, and will likely be buying that in the near future.
If they felt they were being harmed, they ought not to have agreed to participate. It would logically follow that given all the information available to them at the time of making their decision to get involved, they felt that their total revenue and exposure would meet or exceed any further costs and missed sales they would incur, either in the form of increased time spent supporting their applications, or missed future sales from those who discovered these apps through MacHeist and would have otherwise paid full price. Considering the highly-visibility nature of some of these applications and the largely-obscure nature of MacHeist, in tandem with the fact that MH's user community by nature is well-traveled in the Mac shareware landscape, there can only be so many of those people.
For these reasons, these developers concluded that they are better off participating in MacHeist than not. Furthermore, the website operators profited for their efforts to bring this event together, and some money also goes to charities that would otherwise likely not have made this money. In short, everyone has benefitted from this experience, because all of those involved elected to participate willingly.
I downloaded both and took a look at them. For me AppZapper did what it promised and no more. CleanApp did do much more, but it did stuff that I don't care about. AZ is simple, pretty and functional. And has an Automator workflow, so I can just right-click and Zap!
So for me that was $10 well spent. Although CleanApp has added more functionality, none of it is of any interest to me.
These days I am all about finding simple apps that ONLY do one thing, but do it well. And I want apps that look pretty. And I am willing to pay for it.
Just my 2 cents.
"Also I'd recommend if you're going to be on your high horse that you take a moment and get an original site logo rather than the retreaded flickr logo. Pure imitation is plagiarism not flattery."
While hoping not to derail this every so polite and restrained thread I would just like to say that Gus' flickresque logo is (channeling the spirit of Gus) intended to parody. It was created using a web 2.0 banner generator (which was all over the web a month or two ago: http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=web+2.0+logo+generator). If you can't spot the parody in the missing e in Mueller and the 2.0 rosette then you really need to step away from the computer and go for a nice long walk.
All this talk of Enron and comparing MH to software piracy is gonna give me a headache. It's about as ridiculous as saying VoodooPad Lite somehow promotes piracy of the full version.
Whether it's a good deal for devs, is up to them to decide. It is nice to see some estimated numbers, and such discussion is good. But destroying the software community? Marketing 'taking over' software?
Like I said, discussion is good. But instead of pointing fingers (I'm not referring to Gus but to some of the ridiculous comments here), go market your software.
People that can sell will always make more money than people that can do. You can call it unfair, you can cry and bitch about it on your blog, but it's the truth.
As for the rest of the developers jumping on the bandwagon, are you honestly suggesting that people are falling all over for these "eyecandy" apps and not your own well-coded, more robust, apps? People like what they like, they buy what they want, who are you to tell them any different? If you want it to sell better than AppZapper, you have to convince US it's better, not yourself... which you already seemed to have accomplished.
Again, people like what they like, I certainly take offense at any suggestions that we're mindless sheep, drawn by the carnie barker to empty our pockets.
Couple of potshots, in no particular order:
On Dec 12, 2006 at 06:37 am, Jonathan Wight wrote:
Tell it like it is gus.
What saddens/maddens a lot of Mac developers I think is that this is a sign that the marketters are beginning to take over. The Mac software ecosphere used to be a meritocracy, with the good software (VP) floating to the top and the shit sotware (AppZapper) falling to the bottom.
So now we have these give aways and gimmicks and silly assed games and snakeoil salemen. I miss the old days.
And guys. one thing to remember about Gus' post. This is his blog. He can say whatever the hell he likes here...
--
Uh... on your website you take a shot at Disco, how it does less than Disk Utility, but dig into the app to steal the Smoke effect and suggest other developers steal/repurpose it for their own profit/amusement.
On Dec 11, 2006 at 08:53 pm, Joshua wrote:
To me it should be: Dev: 65%, Charity: 25%, MacH: 10%
--
Joshua, then why don't you set up your own MacHeist style promotion and split the profits exactly the way you think it should be.
Every single license sold comes at a cost -- because every single support email you have to answer costs you time and money -- even the ones that say, "My license key doesn't work," because the user transcribed characters, or confused a 0 for an O. Say it takes you five minutes on average to answer a support case (some will be quicker, some will take a lot longer). Say half of the license fee ($1) goes toward paying for that five minutes -- which means you are not so much a developer, but essentially a help desk wonk making $12 an hour -- this means you're making $1 "profit" on your software. (A whole WEEK worth of ramen!)
Instead, if the developer had fewer licensees (or more profit, thus able to pay people to help do support) and could spend that hour working on a feature that makes the software better, more appealing, and more marketable (or even more self-supporting!), well, it seems like that's a better use of a developer's time, isn't it?
Looking at it this way, it's remarkable to me that any developer who answers support email would settle for a "deal" such as MacHeist.
On the marketing aspect: Apple would never participate in the kind of marketing going on here... while Dell and every other PC maker has been doing this for ages. Flying Meat != Apple... but perhaps FM doesn't gain from being in MacHeist because it is not the type of user-base that would be in the long-term interest of FM. Someone else already suggested here that MacHeist is targeting a much younger and thriftier segment of the Mac community...
For example, on macappaday, they had YummyFTP which I think is far superior to Transmit, but never gets any press. Maybe this way they get a couple more people to hear about it and spread some good press.
And it does strike me as paternal and a bit over-the-top to be so critical for something the developers agreed to be a part of. Sure, your app might compete with them and now they are offering it cheap, but that is competition and how it works.
but this reminds me that everyone seems to have an opinion of what i am looking for in an app... like the early example of competitors to appzapper (or gruber's comments long ago about how appzapper fills a need that shouldn't exist if developers wrote their apps correctly... i HATE this response... it's like the ass reply when i ask a question on a forum of how to do something, and someone says "don't do that" or "why would you want to do that?" instead of either a.) listening to me and what i want and replying or b.) leaving me the hell alone).
so seriously, if you're taking a huge amount of umbrage to the MH group hijacking the mac shareware developer banner for a week, please get over yourself. i have looked at voodoo pad, and i don't like its gui. could it change my whole life? maybe. would i try it if it were dirt cheap or bundled dirt cheap? maybe, and maybe after extended work, maybe i would change my mind. or maybe not. and you don't have to ever do that if you don't want to try to get folks like me to bite. but a lot of developers fall into a trap where they think that, with software, someone can make an educated decision, and build a loyalty to, an app over a time-limited (or featured-limited) demo. maybe that works for others, not for me. i just find a different way to do it.
ah hell, i'm rambling. gus, calm down. don't like it? either don't get involved, or do and have some say in how it gets happens. but monday-morning quarterbacking is just annoying... and i'd just ignore it, except rants like these, in the wonderful echo-chamber that is the tech and mac community, ends up landing spittle on damn near every blog i read.
Using a loss-leader isn't exactly unheard of either. Ask any grocery store why they would sell Coke or Pepsi for $.79 and they'll tell you because it works. Sure they make squat on the 2 liter but they're looking to a much larger picture.
you forgot to link to Bill Hicks on marketing <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo>
'if you're in marketing...kill yourself...you are Satan's little helpers...'
Let's hope that these marketing groups don't insert themselves successfully between the devs and the users and use their leverage...
'ooh, the anger dollar...'...'the trapped dollar'...
Good luck to all the developers. I buy your stuff - when I like it and need it - and hope it all keeps flying for you all.
I doubt gus is annoyed not to be part of macheist because if you look at the figures and support costs from the point of view of a developer then you will realise MacHeist is simply not a good deal.
Brian Ganninger,
Very good comment. Maybe MacHiest should change it too "Week of the Independent Developers who happen to be friends of ours" or "Week of the 10 lucky Independent Developers, and who cares about the rest"
If an author (book, software, game, etc) chooses not to self publish and self market, they are usually looking at between 3-10% on net (not gross). So let's say you write a technical book, and it's Amazon price is 29.95, the wholesale price on that book to Amazon is roughly 19.00, and the manufacturing cost is about 7.00, so net revenue per book is 12.00. Let's say you are an awesome negotiator and you got a full 10% deal (rare). That's 1.20 per copy, with the editor getting a percentage and the publisher taking the lion's share, to the tune of about 10 per unit.
This holds true in software as well, I just think there has been less exposure to it in the smaller Mac market.
I licensed a piece of work to a company that was probably dead without it, as they didn't have a Windows product, and the platform they had was dying. I got a good deal from them, and the owner of that company is a true gentleman who takes care of the people he works with, but even that deal was structured that he would make the most money, but he was also exposed to the most risk. Today, his company is doing very well, and though my compensation from the product has certainly diminished, the ROI was good.
That's the issue here though.
The MH guys are prepaying a lump sum, and taking the risk that they can earn back enough in unit sales to cover that initial investment. Because of this, they are also planning that should the risk be covered the reward is sufficient to justify the risk.
Gus, with you doing your own publishing and marketing, you are assuming that risk, and thus expect that reward, and you are gambling that your revenue for the week will be greater than the guaranteed income of that lump sum payment, thus your risk/reward election is different. Each developer has to review that balance for themselves.
One can quibble about the payoffs for developers who participate in these kinds of bundles. There's lots of room for speculation about how much a bundle might help or hurt sales, about support costs, and about the value of publicity.
But it's pretty clear that these bundles DEVALUE software and the work of independent developers. Never mind the economics - I would hope that a developer would walk away from this kind of sleaze-fest, just out of self respect.
First off, it isn't indie anymore. These guys have teamed up and set up as a small company and are just feeding into it. Most of the apps, especially AppZapper, are a part of pretty much everything that goes on, so there is nothing independent. Just because Panic is a small company, doesn't make them an indie developer. They do develop amazing applications AND make a ton of money, but you don't see their software involved with these over-hyped projects. Panic develops the great apps and built their community and loyal user-base based on their style. So everyone thinking that this is indie group, helping indie developers, it's not. It is the same group feeding into the same group. How is Austin Sarner (maker of AppZapper) an indie developer if he has a marketing guy, a site developer, a person in front of the camera and who knows what else? All these folks are involved together and are a COMPANY helping software from other developers in the SAME COMPANY. Just because they throw in a few other apps into the mix doesn't mean that they aren't benefitting far more than the other "outside" developers. They are using the other apps to legitimize their own apps and marketing project.
Another note. A lot of folks have mentioned Walmart. I am a businessman and have dealt with Walmart on a number of deals. Don't be fooled folks, THIS IS EXACTLY HOW WALMART OPERATES. Let me give you a real life deal that happened with Walmart. A pickle company got a distribution deal with Walmart for their "premium" pickles. They get the product in the stores and they were doing alright. Then Walmart told them that they should do a "non-premium" pickle pack at a far lower price, promising that the volume of sales would more then make up for the loss in margins. The pickle company hesitantly agreed, thinking that Walmart knows best. Remember, these guys were a small company trying to grow and they thought the Walmart route would be the way. They start selling the pickle pack and it is selling like hotcakes. They can barely keep up with the demand. Their volume of product going out the door was 10x what they were doing before. So you're thinking, "they must be rolling in the money now because more people know about their product and their volume is so much more." You are wrong. The company is now out of business....SOLELY DUE TO THE WALMART DEAL. See, this is how it went down. Even though their volume went up, their higher margin product got alienated and wasn't selling at all. The actual cost of bundling and packaging the "non-premium" pickles was more expensive in the long run despite volume then getting the "premium" pickles out the door and onto shelves. Volume doesn't mean anything if you margins end up dropping too low.
How does this relate to MH? Here's how. Just because these developers might be making 5-10k per week (disclaimer: I have no idea what is being made but I guarantee that it isn't proportionate) for the next 2 weeks, it doesn't mean that it is to their benefit. Their support cost goes up. Managing all the new users and their requests and issues grows astronomically. Now if the person wants to actually continue developing a new version or updates to the product, then something has to give. Either one of three things will happen.
a) They will neglect support requests due to sheer volume
b) Support response times will increase (different then point (a) where they might actually miss support requests)
c) They bring on some help.
None of those is a good thing. It doesn't benefit the developer or the end user. It also doesn't benefit the shareware community. Less innovation happens, less frequent updates happen. It also hurts the other developers that aren't in the same social circle as the MacHeist guys, even though their app might be better. The MacHeist guys didn't have an open call to developers of other apps to choose what would actually benefit the Mac user base. They choose apps their friends developed. There are a lot of other things that can adversely go wrong as well but that gets my point across.
In the end, this is a shady MARKETING business shrouded with "helping" developers or getting money out to charities. If they promoted themselves as a marketing company, people would be crying fowl left and right, but in the end, that is all they are...a shady one at that.
Don't get me wrong, good marketing is a hard to come by, but this is just hype. It is more like vapor-marketing(tm). MacHeist and the guys behind it are in it to make a crapload of money and nothing else. If they really wanted to help, the split would be more in favor of the developers and the charities. Something like this wold be more reasonable.
Developer: 50%
Charity: 35%
MH: 15%
Now I realize that putting this operation is not done magically and that their is a fair amount of effort put into it but in the end, MacHeist making 15% is more than fair considering it takes nowhere near the time to develop MacHeist than it does that actual apps that they are selling.
I love my Mac and the Mac shareware community. I buy every single piece of software on my computer and I do it at full price even with things like MacHeist and macZOT being around, so don't try and say that I don't care about the developers. I think they are the ones ultimately getting screwed the most out of this, and the ones that I am talking about are not people like Austin Sarner who is part of all of these projects and is good friends with Phill. He is making more than most, I'm sure.
(let the flaming begin)
However, I think that a lot of people are missing the point of these apps. Disco and AppZapper aren't great application because they provide a good practical purpose (although they do). For me, I like these apps because they're fun to use. I enjoy zapping my applications, and burning my discs with Disco.
That's not just theoretical, folks. Ask the font foundries about this. Back when Windows 95 was introduced and Microsoft was pushing TrueType, they did what they thought was a great thing: they licensed a few dozen high-quality fonts from big-name foundries like ITC, and released a couple "font packs" for users, each well under $100. Given that a *single* high-quality font family (i.e., the same typeface in regular and italic, usually in two or three weights) could easily retail for $100, that was revolutionary.
Unfortunately, it was a "revolution" which made Windows users *expect* fonts for that price. Foundries couldn't really drop their prices to that level to make consumers happy--Microsoft was essentially subsidizing those low-cost font packs. So what happened is that a lot of cheaper, crappier font knockoffs got created and TrueType, despite arguably being a better font format than Adobe Type I, became associated in the prepress/printing industry with "absolute crap." By making a big happy value bundle, Microsoft inadvertently relegated their chosen font format to second banana status.
I don't have the same level of antipathy toward MacHeist that Mr. Mueller does, but there's a basic point he made here that's also worth re-iterating -- the MacHeist people are going to be making a lot more money off this than the developers (or charities) are, and that's true even if you use Joe Kavanagh's numbers. It's certainly gotten a lot of attention and in a sense MH has been really cheap marketing, but one has to wonder whether sending a copy of your app to a couple influential Mac bloggers wouldn't actually bring greater return than selling your app at a fraction of its list price. I suspect one "this is a cool thing" mention on Daring Fireball's Linked List is much better marketing than being in a grab bag.
I decided that, based on these messages, today would be a good day to break down and register MailTags 2.0. I'm a pretty regular "independent" software user -- in addition to MailTags, I have about a dozen other registered shareware apps (and a few others under consideration).
Delicious Generation, indeed
Now, I'm going to have to wade through the forums at Devon Technologies with all the dopes who bought it and wonder why it's not more like Yojimbo. And at TextMate and wonder why it isn't more like BBEdit. Or at Delicious Library and wish it was more... wait: I've never had to search forums for Delicious Library. Let 'em come.
My software are my tools. I use them for my professional livelihood, and I don't want these cheap bastards wandering around whining.
@Bill: if $30 is too much for you to afford, you simply don't deserve a voice. It's like voting. If you don't go to the polls, you don't deserve to whine about your politicians. But now, what's this? We're giving votes to dogs, cats, hamsters, and goldfish? The cost to enter no longer requires actually liking the app or needing the app. No, it's that you're a cheap bastard who gets off using the Cheapest Possible Thing. I dread the future.
Finally, it's a myth that software has no volume costs. Every user costs, not in physical product, but in support. Every user costs. These developers *are* making a bad move, and they will lose money for it. If (and it's a big risk) they get enough exposure that there's secondary sales which provide a net profit (which allows them to provide the same or improved support in the future), then wonderful. But as it stands, MacHeist does a great job marketing to cheap, young guys who wouldn't spend the money anyway.
I just wish MacHeist was full of the crap these things are usually full of: AppZapper, iClip, and a bunch of crap I'd never heard of. That this really is good software makes me depressed and angry.
Other commenters opined that the devs weren't getting their 'fair' share, implying that creating the software itself is in fact the most important step in the whole process. Fact is, we're _just_ the developer. We have no idea about how to sell this stuff. If someone can make me 5k by selling some software I wrote, it really isn't important how much he pockets himself, if the alternative scenario is that I _don't_ make 5k. I would guess you don't earn 5k every week. (For myself I'm certain I don't!). Sometimes what feels wrong is actually just smart thinking. Life is counter intuitive.
Market economies revolve around consumers, not producers (all those experiments failed). Buying software shouldn't be about rescuing developers from the dole, but about getting the best bang for the buck. The popular attitude amongst developers that discounts endanger their livelihoods makes me think that instead of coding and improving their products, maybe they should be starting a macdev union and start a picket line outside the MacHeist headquarters....
Initiatives such as MacHeist are a clear sign that interest in buying software is picking up, new users are entering the market, and the market as a whole is growing. Instead of lamenting the fact that people with other talents are getting a piece of the cake, let's be thankful that they think this is a cake worth eating. Remember: merchants can sell anything, but for some reason they seem to think that selling Mac software is a growth industry.
For the first time in how many years?
I find this argument particularly unpersuasive - $30 is small enough that it's a question of priorities rather the ability to pay (and anyone who, despite having a Mac, internet connection, etc. still simply can't afford $30 for VoodooPad certainly can't afford to spend $50 for any other software). If Gus dropped the price he'd be subsidizing the spending decisions of a few people by forgoing a lot more profit from the majority of computer users who *can* afford them and are willing to pay for useful software. In absolute terms we're only talking about the cost of a meal or two, a week of lattes, etc.
I am a registered user of FlySketch and VoodooPad and I love your software. But I think that your attitude is wrong on this. If the other developers choose to lessen the value of their products that is there decision. I don't see how this affects you at all. People will pay for great software. Recently your tone has been very sour. Why can't we have eye-candy software such as Disco and functional software such as VoodooPad. In fact, I would really be happy if the two aspects could be merged together.
"Uh... on your website you take a shot at Disco, how it does less than Disk Utility, but dig into the app to steal the Smoke effect and suggest other developers steal/repurpose it for their own profit/amusement. "
Wow. Someone else missing the ability to spot parody.
My concern is that this kid has his fingers in resexcellence, my dreamapp (awesome idea), and macthemes as well as macheist. With the exception of macheist, none of these pages have been updated in a while. And his partner has been pre-announcing the next version of iClip for many, many months.
These guys are stretched thin. Very, very thin. And it's a shame, because if these cool ideas were done right, it could be a real boon to mac developers and users alike.
My guess is that you won't see any dream apps come out anytime soon. (It took well over a year for them to turn around a shapeshifter theme from the contest they had for that). Resexcellence will die a bit slower, but will never be back to its glory, and you won't see a macheist 2 anytime soon, either.
My guess is Phil will have a job at Apple in the next year or two, in the marketing department, and we won't see much more of this "new generation of shareware developers" after the unavoidable burnout that's about to happen.
$5k for the exposure you get out of a well promoted ad campaign that takes place over time (as opposed to a one-time placement in static media, like a newspaper or magazine) is just a good deal.
When you pay for advertising, you usually don't get any profit directly from the advertiser. When was the last time you were <b>paid</b> to place an ad?
Has the New York times called you up and offered to pay you $5k to place an ad in their media? I do not think so.
Granted