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90 Comments
- seandfeeney, on 10/12/2007, -1/+37where is the Tshirt?
- greymarketbrain, on 10/12/2007, -5/+33And I'm sure Phil has every reason to disclose the actual truth and not ***** anyone....
/sarcasm - feens, on 10/12/2007, -7/+33It's funny that so many people are criticizing this, but from what I've read, the majority of the developers have stated they they are very pleased with the whole deal....and its not like they didn't know what the deal was when they entered the contract. MacHeist benefitted a lot of people. Charities, developers (despite the fact that one seems to enjoy spouting his displeasure) and the Mac community in general, and sure, themselves. They created a great idea and did well with it. I really don't see the issue here.
- staceyeileen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Inaccurate. This guy did not sell his app through MacHeist. In fact, the developers that did sell their apps through MacHeist are not complaining.
- RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19Now that this model has been proven, there is nothing stopping developers from doing their own MacHeist. The internet always peels away middlemen. People should be thanking the MacHeist guys for teaching them a new way to market software. Now that the idea is out there, anyone can do it.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21Could be worse. They could have given him socks.
- listrophy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18"...it's by no means a sustainable business model."
Who said it was? The idea is that it changed the state of the Mac shareware industry. I, for one, had never purchased shareware, windows or mac, before MacHeist. Now that I've seen what's possible, I'll probably end up buying upgrades, buying more shareware, etc in the future.
It wasn't about sustaining a business model. It was about kickstarting a languishing business model. For the developers, MacHeist was an investment... in the next few months/years, they'll see if it paid off. - meatmcguffin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16"Phill Ryu said his numbers were wildly inaccurate."
Yup, but you missed off the important bit of his quote:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/december#tue-19-ryu - chicagobiker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Don't kid yourself the only reason this thing was successful was because they unlocked TextMate, a $50 value, and included it with the rest of the $240 worth of apps that they were giving away for $49.
This basically boiled down to: Buy TextMate and get these 9 other applications free. - slantyyz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I tend to think that Gruber needs to make yet another mountain out of a molehill (Apple Wi-fi security holes, anyone)?
Sure, it might be a bad deal, but is it worth bitching ad nauseum about? As far as I can see, there were two primary drivers of MacHeist discontent - Gruber and Mueller. Whether intentional or unintentional, I tend to think that the negative hype transformed itself into greater sales of MacHeist bundles.
Let's be realistic. Gruber, more than Mueller, has more to gain from being a 'heist hater. He makes a full time living blogging, and has a young mouth to feed. Preaching to the Mac choir drives traffic to his site, and inevitably helps him feed his family - and if I recall correctly, he's "breaking even".
Seeing how everyone involved in MacHeist was happy about their participation and return in the campaign, it's really irrelevant if Gruber thinks that the devs got a raw deal. What should get his grind is that initial essay probably drove greater awareness of the bundle and helped the purported "villians" make the $400+K that they made. Not a bad return. Definitely a better take than curmudgeonly blogging, that's for sure.
If I'm Phill Ryu, Jon Gruber and Gus Mueller are my two favorite people today. - threepio, on 10/12/2007, -19/+28Ah yes, you cited a second article from the same author wherein he pulled the numbers out of the air THE FIRST TIME.
- knowall, on 10/12/2007, -34/+43he's making up numbers... he doesn't know how much everyone got paid.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Phill said something to the effect of: 2x more is a much closer estimate. Although I'm happy they got more than is speculated, that still isn't a lot.
- SeniorElGuapo, on 10/12/2007, -16/+25As great as this was for the consumer and charity, it's by no means a sustainable business model. If the devs. are in fact only getting about 1.6% of the sales, that is far from enough revenue to compensate for the additional support they will have to provide.
Sure, some are gaining additional sales, but how much? Enough to cover additional costs? Will profit margins remain the same level as they would have otherwise? We'll probably never know unless some of the participating devs talk (or they try to do this again and no big name devs sign up... kinda like MacZot is now).
The MacHeist guys claim that this is a great thing for developers, but the developers got the smallest cut. How's that make a lick of sense? - SeniorElGuapo, on 10/12/2007, -17/+25He's not pulling numbers out the wazoo. It's deductive from what information is public.
Read the article previously and you will learn how those numbers came together.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/12/iniquities_of_the_selfish - SeniorElGuapo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It should be noted too, that devs are getting a flat rate in this. As sales and suport costs increase, there are no additional profits to comentsate; only the hope that enough people will pay for upgrades.
- avolant, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12O RLY?
(haha.. i love that....) - dandiemer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14i'll take 1.3 precent of $400,000 with free hype and advertising anyday.
- blastin311, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I agree with supershawn. Quit being so damn greedy. If you're that good, distribute it yourself. Don't let Macheist take your precious money.
- slantyyz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I think you're referring to Mueller, not Gruber. Gruber's a blogger, not an indie Mac developer.
- euth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9The only devs complaining about MacHeist are the ones who didn't participate.
- blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Well they all made between 5k and 12k for a week of sales. Sure MacHeist made more, but no matter how much "screwed" they got, they still got a nice amount of money (and free publicity) without moving their little asses.
I am a techie as much as can be, and I don't really like commercial people. But one has to recognized their job has a huge value. Without them they would have made very little sales (in comparison). You'd better have 10% of something, than 100% of nothing. - yzerman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9You should also consider the fact that these shareware developers just got their apps out and in front of a lot of people they normally would not. Now all these people will show these apps off to their new Mac buddies and in turn those people will not get the same deal anymore and will pay full price for those apps, thus generating a new revenue stream that the intial little bit of money made would be made up by even new sales.
- longboarder543, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11Even if these numbers are accurate, I don't understand the "outrage" that this story tends to elicit. These developers were not forced to participate in the program, or am I missing something? I could go out and sign up for a credit card with a 23% APR, but I don't, or I could get my "novel" published by a vanity press, and lose money or make very little, but I don't. Every developer made a decision and signed an agreement, and it was spelled out. Unless the "heist" in MacHeist was referring to the fact that the MacHeist people pirated the apps and then sold them for a tremendous profit (which it doesn't), then I don't want to hear it.
- splatnik, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10You should consider this something of an advertising expense.
I have never bought shareware before and probably would never have bought any of those applications on their own but because of macheist I now have. What's better, no exposure and a trickle of sales or a lot of exposure and some money on top of that? - rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11This constant whining from Gruber is getting ridiculous. He was invited and didn't want to join, great, but then why doesn't he stfu and let other people do whatever they want with their own businesses?
He is focusing too much on the financial side of the thing, and it seems that he can't grasp that this was not about money, this was about marketing, creating awareness, shaking things up. And it worked tremendously. I for one was never really into paying for shareware, always prefered sticking to the free aps, but the bundle deal was just too sweet to pass, and you know what, I found out that it doesn't hurt, it actually feels good to support an independent developer who works so hard to put a good product out, so I might start spending more with shareware from now on.
BTW, the title is innacurate, so I flagged it as such. - pinkgreenblue, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I agree. It's a great demonstration of capitalism and trying out new marketing. If the figures are correct ($5,000 flat fee to each developer), that means that Phill Ryu and friends risked $50,000 in an attempt to revitalize the Mac shareware community (albeit make some money for themselves at the same time). 25% of sales went to charity, so I don't think there is much to complain about. Now every developer knows that it may be smarter to only opt in if offered a reasonable percentage of the sales. I think if more MacHeist-like sale opportunities arise, it will be more fair to the developers while still offering great deals and rewarding the organizers with profit of their own. Everyone wins, although MacHeist will be the least clear example of this. The future looks bright for Mac shareware!
- ddn3d, on 10/12/2007, -7/+101) Misleading headline
2) Repeated and repeated story
3) Non-participant party makes writing irrelevant
4) Risk often brings reward. MacHeist took the risk, and reaps the reward
5) It bears repeating, this story has been posted over and over
6) The participants aren't complaining
7) Kevin Rose doesn't know ***** about the iPhone - Tabou, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11Yet another inaccurate "article" by this jealous loser.
Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own. ~Harold Coffin - shodson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Don't undervalue the exposure these apps gain from having new users banging on their apps. If these new users like the apps they will spread the word.
- blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4That charity thing makes me a bit unconfortable. It is clearly a move to drag profit. They give 25% to charity but they got more than 25% in free publicity because of this. Everyone will mention how buying stuff helps little children. If this was a generous move, they would simply take 25% of their profits afterwards and donate silently. The fact that you brag about being charitable is a bit shamefull.
On the other hand, without the "it's for charity" advertising trick they wouldn't have made that many sales and they would have given less to charity. So whatever you think of the means, and how much money they made, in the end they still gave some money to charity. - SeniorElGuapo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Exactly. MacHeist was a brilliant marketing device. The only issue here (and one that a majority visiting this thread have grossly over-looked) is simply that of fair compensation for those creative individuals that made the software.
I think it would be great to see another MacHeist or something like it in the future but with reasonable compensation to those who deserve it. - shm1, on 10/12/2007, -10/+13Sour grapes anyone? Or has Gruber never heard of advertising and its costs?
In the UK, every month, several magazines give out CDs/DVDs with shareware and full apps on them. Heck, I got the Concise EB 2006 off the cover of Macworld for a few pounds. It was good enough to make me go out and buy the full version. I would guess the developers involved in this bundle viewed it in the longer term as advertising. You get installed on a dude's machine, and he's going to eyeball you all the time as a good deal.
Oh, and BTW, this just confirms that Gruber's an idiot. - daGUY, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I'm a big fan of Gruber, but I think he's way off the mark on this one. It seems like he's trying to create a controversy where none really exists, just so that he has something to write about.
He keeps reiterating the fact that the MacHeist team is getting a disproportionate amount of money relative to the developers involved. That may be true, but he glosses over two large points. One, there was a substantial RISK taken by the MacHeist team. Apparently, given all the costs involved in setting up the website, paying the developers (a flat fee regardless of how many bundles were sold), etc., they had to sell almost 3,000 bundles just to start making a profit. I.e., anything less would have been a loss. Granted, they far exceeded that, but given that this was the first time anything like this had ever been done, there was no way to know if they could sell that many bundles. So the MacHeist team put down a LOT of money to get this thing started, without any assurances that it was going to be successful. And if it wasn't, they would have still had to pay the developers, etc.
Two, Gruber keeps ignoring or dismissing the fact that all the developers involved were happy with the promotion! The tone of all his articles on this is "the developers are getting screwed because the MacHeist team got so much more money," but that's a red herring. The developers all got paid exactly what the MacHeist team said they would get paid. "Getting screwed" implies that they were promised one thing and got something else instead. They agreed to the terms knowing exactly what they were. And, in the end, they got the money they agreed to. Any developer that didn't think that was a fair deal DIDN'T PARTICIPATE. It's as simple as that. - dandiemer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5except that the people that macheist appeals to will not be satisfied with anything more than a sequel. If it's not a new innovative strategy to sell the products it just won't work, for the same reason that American Idol and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire lost their fluff in the viewing publics eyes. User will always tire and move on,
- mephistus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'm sure there are plenty of shareware developers that would gladly trade places with any of those 10 people and take a couple thousand dollars to boot. I've been using shareware since it got passed around via the sneakernet and modems. And to be honest, there's a lot more shareware that I never paid for than those that I did pay for. And I know I'm not the only one. I think if any of the developers had a big problem with their cut, you would have heard more by now.
So would whoever drags up these half assed articles give it a rest until we hear from an actual primary source (ie. one of the 10 developers) and not submit another lame "I've made these numbers up because I need Adsense/Amazon/membership money" article? - PatrickFisher, on 10/12/2007, -13/+15Don't you just love it when the description is the exact same as the title? It's worse than "title says it all"!
- jccalhoun, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This guy didn't agree to it. He didn't have anything to do with it. Depending on how you look at it, he's either just pointing out to people that this isn't as great for teh developers as it might seem or just stirring stuff up.
I'll let you decide which he's doing... - repins, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I would not place too much faith in a company that has the word "Heist" in its name, seems that you are asking to get ripped off to me.
- acomj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5When Charity and business mix. Its never pretty. There was a NYtimes magazine article on the guy who did the promotion for the "AIDS Ride". In 3 years he made the event a huge success. He profited a big way because he got a very small % of donations. (I think he donated 100,000s of his own money as well). People were pissed as they always want 100% of there donations to go to the cause. United Way comes to mind as a non profit with huge overhead.
What if the MacHeist was a huge failure and they hardly sold anything? Yet if some reports are to be believed the cost for each package was fixed? MacHeist would disapear and the developers cashed there checks.
The greater the risk the greater the reward. In this case you can bet for macHeist2 the developers will ask for more. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The whole thing is retarded.
- koick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Of course MacSanta won't move as many copies, it's a totally different model -- you still have to pay for each product (you only get 20% off), there's no bundle, and it's not being promoted on every mac software site known to man.
As for the MacHeist team, I personally don't think it was a huge risk at all. 1) They had arguably 3 or 4 very good products to promote, 2) the price value to users was outstanding (especially if you chipped in with buddies and got 3 bundles = $33 each!), 3) and the charity bit was a clincher. I'm pretty disappointed to know that the people that actually put a lot of blood sweat and tears into the product (let's not even acknowledge *their* risk!) were compensated so little. For some of those developers, it was probably a tough decision: ~2% of something vs. 100% of nothing, knowing that the promoter would pocket the lion's share. It's the same issue with the music industry -- are you happy to know that the artist you like only got single digit percentage of the money when you purchased a CD? Now that the model is changing to iTunes Store type on-line distribution, the overhead is *greatly* reduced, so we should expect the artist to get a higher percentage, but I'd doubt that that is true.
To me it's just a deceptive tactic to appear like your for shareware developers, when you are actually taking advantage of their situation and are only promoting your own profits. Why do you think it's 'sour grapes' for Gruber (or anyone) to expect that the developers should have received a little more compensation? - slantyyz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I don't think that any of the indie dev shops participating in the heist considered it to be a sales effort. I think it was more about eating some license revenues in exchange for mass exposure (i.e. marketing vs. sales). The fact that everyone seems to have taken a side on this issue demonstrates that the Heist was a very effective hype machine... perhaps better than spending the $$ to put a full page ad in a MacWorld magazine.
I wonder how much return on investment each of the developers would have gotten if each put in full page ads in MacWorld. I'm sure MacWorld would make decent profits off the developers and escape any of the flaming that the Heist organizers received.
If this was purely about sales and commissions, then Gruber would be totally correct... but MacHeist isn't a distributor like CDW or MacConnection. MacHeist was an event driven marketing campaign. There is a difference. - bookishboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Wow, thank you John Gruber, for protecting the Mac Development community from their own collective lack of business acumen.
Is anyone willing to allow for the possibility that the developers involved were aware of the terms and are OK with the result?
1. They might consider their involvement in the project to be a donation, either to the charitable organizations involved, or to Mac users.
2. Maybe they just wanted to make a few bucks, quickly, in order to defray their personal holiday shopping.
3. Maybe they're confident enough in their product that they are anticipating lots of future paid upgrades, and word-of-mouth sales now that their product has been introduced into the social circles of their new customers.
4. Maybe, since they run their companies and make their software, it's not our place to ridicule their approach to distributing software. - etherbob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They actually did a good job on locking the bundle itself down. As to the freebies: most of them can't even get bug fix updates never mind support. Anyhow I'm this close to taking Devon up on a discount update to the pro office version of Devon-Think for email archiving and I think they at least will make out like bandits on upgrade sales.
- serpicolugnut, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I usually see eye to eye with Gruber, but not on this. The MH guys took a HUGE risk. They put their own money up front to pay the developers and everyone else associated with the promo before they got paid. That's entrepreneurialism. Gruber somehow believes that because they aren't the actual developer, that everything they did to make the promo a success "just happened" and isn't worth the reward that they reaped. I understand that he believes the dev's should have gotten a bigger cut or a percentage, but that wasn't the deal put in front of them, and to my best recollection, nobody was forced to sign at gun point.
Guber, I hate to say it, but you are sounding more and more sour grapes everytime you talk about Macheist.
Look at MacSanta. It's a currently running promo more favorable to the devs. I'm not sure what MacSanta's definition of success is, but I can almost guarantee you that it won't move as many copies as Macheist did.
Gruber. Sour. Grapes. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Gruber is a douchebag who loves to hear himself talk, or rather, loves to read his own typed babble. He is taking on a new target of opinion because the last one -- the MacBook wi-fi ***** -- gave him so many page views.
None of what is going on with MacHeist -- which is one of the most innovative marketing campagnes -- concerns that ***** in the least. He should shut up. - cow6oy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If the developers are ok with this, then that's ok with me. But I feel misled as a possible customer. If I buy software at "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer", I would never expect Mac-Heist to keep 75-87% of the revenues. I would expect the developers get most of the money ... more so if the bundle is sold at that low price.
- cow6oy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+675-87% for Mac-Heist is just too much. IF they call it "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" ... that's the whole point ... and this is what John Gruber is saying ...
- coit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The real issue is that the vast majority of shareware is overpriced. I'm not saying that a particular program isn't worth $29.99 to *someone*. I'm saying that a particular program isn't work $29.99 to large numbers of people.
So, you have a program, and you charge $10 and one person purchases it. What if you charged $1 and 20 people purchase it? Which would net you more money? What if you upgraded it each year, and again charged $1? This is a hypothetical argument, so issues like support costs and such don't come into play. Besides, set up a forum, and let your best users provide support to you for free. It seems to work for commercial publishers..
Charge less, and make more money. -
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