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independence2 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 5 claims against 3

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

8 claims · 7 articles · 4 receipts

window

2017-01-19 → 2023-12-27

2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Launch inside somebody else's marketplace

A host platform's store can hand you category searches, support referrals and forum recommendations you would otherwise have to buy. It works when you are early or alone in the category and stops working once the store is crowded, which is why the same move built a business for Tyler Tringas and produced a single-digit install count for Cory Zue.

Where this splits

Tyler Tringas and Nick Dobos got their first customers from a host store, while Cory Zue's app sat unnoticed without promotion and Justin Jackson reports the large bookstores producing about one per cent of revenue.

  1. side 01 · 5 claims

    Distribute through a host platform's store or directory

    Justin Jackson · Nick Dobos · Tyler Tringas

    1. 1For a genuinely solo software business, build an add-on distributed through a large platform's app marketplace, letting the host platform supply the customers.
    2. 2Launching as the only option in your category inside a young app marketplace hands you every category search, every support referral and every forum recommendation.
    3. 3Ship your app inside the AI platform's own store so its users find you without you buying traffic.
    4. 4Submit the feed to the two directories that matter - Apple Podcasts and Spotify - and treat them as your primary distribution.
    5. 5Distribute through the place your buyers already go looking for that kind of tool, and include a plain readme stating the price and how to pay.

  2. side 02 · 3 claims

    A store listing is not distribution on its own

    Cory Zue · Justin Jackson

    1. 1Publishing to an app store is not distribution: with no promotion at all a shipped app simply sits there with no users.
    2. 2Do not expect the big stores to sell for you; they surface almost nothing on their own and you never learn who bought.
    3. 3Skip a publisher for a digital product: unless you are their priority author you will run the promotion yourself anyway, so keep the full revenue instead of a tenth of it.

What it returned

  • $2,192

    Nick Dobos earned $2,192 from GPT apps including Grimoire.

  • $20

    Fried uploaded Audio File to the Mac file section on AOL with a readme asking $20 and giving his address; the first payment came from a stranger in Germany who posted back a printout of the readme with the money.

  • Like2Have.It sells mainly through the Shopify app store while leveraging Instagram, Expedited SSL used the Heroku add-on store, and DBinbox built on Dropbox.

  • Storemapper was the sole store locator in the Shopify app store at launch, while the store is now saturated with copycats

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in partnerships

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.