[threeseed]

Facebook, Google, Twitter etc all offer advertising products targeted at app installs.

So if you imagine a fictitious world where anyone could just install apps off the web then you would need to buy ads through the main 3 players above to get any visibility. Just like how it works today for SaaS or eCommerce products.

And given that we know roughly how much CPC and volume is for certain keywords e.g email app then it's easy to get a picture of whether Apple is being unreasonable or not.

[oauea]

What on earth are you talking about? I'd just host the .ipa on my website and tell my existing users to install it. Easy and done.

Instead in this insane reality I have to pay Apple $100 every year for the privilege of distributing an app to my already existing user base.

[threeseed]

I am talking about the cost of acquiring customers.

It's great that you have these existing users but almost all developers don't. And so when people say that 30% is expensive often it's because the are ignorant of how much it costs most businesses to acquire customers.

And I have to pay to develop apps for most platforms so pretty confused why you feel like this is somehow unusual.

[wayneftw]

Nobody finds apps through the app store. They find them on Google and click a link that opens the app store.

[ryanwaggoner]

This is ridiculously false. Discoverability on the App Store could be much better, but anyone involved in App Store marketing will tell you that you get a huge boost by being featured. For example, this article claims 800%: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/ios-11s-new-app-store-boos...

[wayneftw]

Great! So, I am guaranteed to get featured in exchange for my $100 per year developer license and a 30% cut of my sale price?

[ryanwaggoner]

Wow, so you moved the goalpost from "nobody discovers apps in the App Store" to "not every app is featured in the App Store".

[oauea]

Name one other platform that charges nearly as much as $100 every year.

[libertine]

Assuming you only rely on paid media, yes, you'd need to pay for visibility (arguably through one or more of the 3 main players you've mentioned), or invest in other forms of earned and owned media.

But paid media is a small fraction of the marketing mix when it comes to sell and distribute a product - doesn't matter if it's software or a physical product.

Being unreasonable or not should be up to anyone of evaluates the distribution/sale/communication channel. But I'd limit this fee to be for the "access" to the only distribution channel - because you don't have a guarantee of clicks/impressions/downloads or any media KPI for that fee.

The CPC of a paid keyword is a subset of many subsets of media alone.