[kevingadd]

This program does not 'reduce apple's cut to 15%'. Under some circumstances, Apple will reduce your cut to 15% for a given year. But if those circumstances cease to apply your cut jumps back up to 30% for that year AND the next year. For products that you buy once and use forever, this can mean that a small business has a great "launch", earning over the threshold for that one year, then stops earning much the following year but still has to pay 30% for both of those years. This might look like '$1 million per year' in income, but what it actually means amortized across two years is '$500k/year before apple's 30% cut', which once you consider taxes and the cost of employee benefits (insurance, etc) is about enough to pay 3-5 salaries.

Note that Apple could have designed it not to work this way - they didn't, they chose this more complex system because they're greedy and want 30%. This program really only benefits lifestyle businesses and businesses with like 1-6 employees. A more "honest" program would be "15% on your first million dollars per year" which would achieve the goal of helping small businesses and be simple.

Also note if your income is largely being passed on to third parties (processing transactions for charities or individual small businesses), this eats into both your margins and the profits of the companies you're passing the revenue on to. The only solution for that is for every customer to create their own developer account and upload bespoke apps for themselves - something Apple prohibits under current policies.

[mattgreenrocks]

Good info, thanks!