[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".

[wayneftw]

Wow, not really. The point is that the vast majority of apps are never featured and you know it.

Everybody that’s paying the 30% still has to do their own marketing. Discovery through the app store is absolute shit. You’re trying to argue that getting lucky enough to be featured covers everybody that’s paying the 30%. It doesn’t.

[oauea]

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